A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 37:1-6
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

Preacher: The Broncos are better than the Falcons.
Falcon booster: Ha! The Falcons are going to beat the Broncos and the Vikings would have slaughtered them.
Preacher: Yeh, well, my team has the experience.
Falcon booster: Oh yeh? My team has a better victory dance .
Preacher: But I have a bigger computer to check the stats.
Falcon booster: So what? I have a bigger house for a Super Bowl party.
Preacher: Well, my house has a BIGGER mortgage!

Competition -- Bigger is better. Winner and Loser. Today's readings make foolishness of it all. In God's Super Bowl the winners are the little guys and the have-nots: the poor and the persecuted, the meek and the hungry, the mourners and the losers of the world.

Hmmm ... maybe that explains how those losers of the world, the Falcons, managed to beat our certainly better team. Even the Falcon's coach had to admit that the only reason they beat the Vikings was that God took pity on the real losers: Dan Reeves explained their victory with "The Lord was just shining down on us today." Well that's proof enough of the foolishness of God, and I bet Reeves wasn't even thinking about the beatitudes. Blessed are the losers? Who wants to be blessed because they're losers?

The beatitudes -- all those "blessed are"s -- seem foolishness; What kind of blessing or happiness is it to be poor and persecuted? Jesus seems to be saying: "You are happy when people are mean to you." That's absurd.

And our Epistle reading from Paul's letter to the Corinthians is even crazier. We Christians are supposed to go around proclaiming the GOOD News: The Good News is that God died on a cross. The Good News is that the way to Eternal Life is through Death. What kind of "good" news is that?

That's the foolishness of the cross that Paul writes to the Corinthians about. To smart, logical, "wise" people the message of the cross is crazy: Why would someone who had access to all God's power just let himself be killed like that? Even to those who believe in God, the message of the cross is a "stumbling block": The cross ‘trips up' faithful people who are too certain that they know all about God. And even if you are given the faith to believe the foolish message of the cross, that Christ died so that we could live, the apostle Paul has a still crazier message for us Christians.

Paul is telling us that we regular Christians -- those of us who are not particularly wise, not really well educated, and not great debaters -- are the very ones that God has chosen to proclaim this message of God's crazy love. It is those who haven't much of our own to brag about that have space inside themselves for God to work. Those who are poor in spirit, receive the kingdom. Those who are empty are filled.

When we realize that we have little of our own to brag about we begin to understand that those gifts we do have belong to God. So then all our boasting is about what God is working in us. And those very places where we are most lacking are filled with blessing. That's the result of "walking humbly with our God."

Jesus came to turn the world upside down; to turn the wisdom of the world into foolishness; to love the miserable losers into blessed winners. Jesus came to show that power is found in weakness, that blessing is found in pain, that life is found in death. It IS absolute foolishness. But that's what it means to believe in the power of the cross. That's what it means to be Christian.

Look at yourself -- consider your mistakes; consider all the things you wish you had, but don't; consider the pain in your life. We, all of us, are in some way the walking wounded, the have nots.

Look at the cross. We Christians proclaim Christ crucified. We proclaim the foolish Good News that an all-powerful, full-of-life God died there on the cross for love of us -- the walking wounded, the have nots.

My sisters and brothers, Take your mistakes, your losses, and your pain and offer them to Christ, leave them at the cross. Offer to God all that you are And let the foolishness of the cross and the love of God who died for us all turn our all our offerings into blessings.

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