e-vo for week of March 11

Dearest e-votees-

It can be frustrating or it can be delightful when people do not live up to our expectations. How much more so when God chooses not to be bound by our limited imaginations and constricting structures.

Blessings on us all as we allow our ways to be drawn up into God's ways which are so much bigger and so much better and so different.

Peace,
Karl

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For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
(see Isaiah 29:14)
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25, NRSV

The main thrust of this text seems to be that God confounds our expectations of trying to keep God neatly boxed and sorted. For those who esteem wisdom God comes as foolishness. For those who demand a sign of power the demonstration comes as a spectacle of weakness and humility. What are our expectations that God would confound? If God refused to come in the forms desired by the Greeks and the Jews why would things be any different for us modern Christians? For us who have access to power and influence? For us who live in the privileged status of first world American culture? Are we able to name our expectations that are likely to be confounded and turned upside down?

God’s power comes and trumps our paltry expectations. God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. How might God trump our limiting expectations this day?

How can we find ways to be more open to God’s surprises? How do the learned embrace God’s foolishness? How do the strong enter into God’s weakness? How do the [your Achilles' heel here] enter into God’s [counter Achilles, heel which is counter-intuitive yet remarkably freeing and life-giving]?

The challenge is to direct people to the cross which is the epicenter of God confounding our expectations which is the means of freeing us and giving us life. And so we draw near to that cross and invite others to join us at the foot of that collision of the world's ways and God's ways.

Perhaps our prayer every day should be along the lines of:

Dear God, another day and another chance to follow after you. Even before I even got out of bed I started laying expectations on you. Forgive me. Help me start again. Show me your wisdom and power and strength and glory in whatever ways you might this day. Help me embrace the contradictions that seem to delight you so much. Help me to embrace them and invite others into your exquisite ironies. Amen.