Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Fountains: Life In The Spirit- Savannah Charlish: Wisdom
Ecclesia College Lead, Savannah Charlish, contrasts the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the cross.
This is Lydia, our scripture reader for today. She is going to read 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 16 for us, if you want to turn or scroll your screen down to that passage in your Bible.
Speaker 2:Yet, among the mature, we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish, but we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who loved him, these things God revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also, no one comprehends what is truly God's except the spirit of God.
Speaker 2:Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak these things in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are foolish to them and they are unable to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritually discerned, all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny. For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Speaker 1:This is the word of the Lord. When I was 19, I read a book that changed the entire trajectory of my life. I was given a copy of Plato's Republic, and its ideas reshaped how I understood the world. In it, plato essentially begins with the question of whether or not justice is desirable for its own sake because of what justice is, or if it's only desirable because of the positive consequences it provides. This question subsequently becomes the basis for a fascinating discussion of what makes an ideal political structure, and one of the most famous parts of this discussion is Plato's Allegory of the Cave, a multi-layered story about coming to have knowledge and what is true. It goes like this A group of prisoners have been chained in a dark cave since birth, facing a wall, unable to turn their heads.
Speaker 1:Behind them, a fire burns, and between the fire and the prisoners, people pass by, carrying objects, casting shadows onto the wall in front of them. They name the shapes and accept them as the only truth, never questioning what might exist beyond their limited view. One prisoner eventually is freed and he turns towards the fire, struggling to adjust to the new brightness. Eventually, he's dragged outside the cave and the sunlight blinds him at first, but his eyes gradually adapt, he begins to see objects as they truly are and finally he is able to look at the sun itself. With this newfound understanding, this prisoner returns to the cave to free the others, but instead of welcoming the truth, they resist it. They reject the freed prisoner's claims, unwilling to let go of the only reality they had ever known. For Plato, the motif of light in the story symbolizes truth, while the prisoner's journey represents the transformative experiencing of realizing what one has always believed to be true, to be merely a shadow of reality. In his brilliance and commitment to criticizing the Athenians that killed his beloved mentor, socrates, plato includes a striking irony in the text that the prisoner who has learned what is actually true is falsely perceived to be a fool by the prisoners still in chains. This foolishness is so disorienting that the other prisoners threaten to kill him. And so we leave the story and the tension that, even though we know the prisoner genuinely knows what is true, the socio-political majority labels him a fool and attempts to silence him.
Speaker 1:This simple story, I think, captures one of the most profound and difficult questions and experiences that we, as human beings, are capable of having Specifically, are capable of having Specifically Plato's allegory of the cave, I would argue, has three fundamental claims about the nature of knowledge, and if I'm wrong you can check with our Plato scholar who attends this church. First, knowledge changes our perception of reality. A transformative experience like being dragged out of the cave changes the way that we fundamentally see the world. These experiences can be something monumental, like giving birth or ascending to the peak of a mountain, or they can be something simple, like reading an argument made 3,000 years ago and changing your entire existence to pursue the life of the mind. Gaining knowledge with the pursuit of truth is a transformative process that permanently alters your perception of the world. Once this shift occurs, the previous way of seeing the world becomes unavailable, because what has been learned cannot be unlearned. In my case, there is the Savannah before Plato and there is the Savannah after, but simply, our beliefs shape who we are and changes to our core beliefs have the potential to transform us.
Speaker 1:Second, plato puts forth that knowledge is genuinely understanding true things about the way the world is. Plato, unlike some of us in our post-modern world, took no issue with the view that there is an objective world around us and that we can either know true or false things about it. And lastly, plato's allegory suggests that true knowledge can seem like foolishness to those who've never experienced it. According to Plato, those who have never gone through the transformative process of discovering truth may find the truth absurd. This is because some experiences cannot be understood until they have been lived, and so, in highlighting this tension, plato challenges the assumption that the one who seems to be foolish is actually always the fool. And it's these three claims that also find a home in our passage from today's teaching. Look back at the text with me, beginning in verse 6. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who come to nothing. No, we declare God's wisdom a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him, these are the things God revealed to us by his Spirit.
Speaker 1:Like Plato, paul is putting forth an argument that asserts that what is actually true, by challenging the perception of what the Corinthians believed to be true. In this specific case, paul is writing to the church in Corinth, whom scholars mostly agree was a deeply intellectual community that valued education and being enlightened. If only we knew what that was like here in Princeton. And so it follows in the same way. Corinthians saw their value, status and worth in intellectual capacities. Their prioritization of fancy rhetoric and complex arguments and being set apart and above because of what they knew, not only created a framework that impeded their ability to know true things about Jesus and what it meant for their lives, but it also created a church community obsessed with leadership and power, with the intelligent holding themselves over others and demanding loyalty to their interpretations. Try to imagine an ecclesia in which all of us would gather here on Sunday and debate as a group of you pledged allegiance to Ian, while I know the majority of you would all shout I follow Savannah, drowning out any voices proclaiming commitment to Alfredo. The reason for this kind of division would be based on things like preference, insecurity, affirming our own values, and overshadowing and drowning out the very thing that we profess binds us together in the first place, and so, because of this issue Paul addresses it accordingly Turn your Bible one page to the left, to 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18.
Speaker 1:For the message of 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, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, did not know him, god was pleased, through the foolishness of what was preached, to save those who believe In establishing the wisdom of the Spirit.
Speaker 1:Paul begins by undercutting the entire foundation that the Corinthians built their divisions on, as a way of revealing the sins that were impeding knowledge and experience of Christ's love. Paul takes the perceived truths of the competing narratives and tells the church of Corinth that these values are a mere shadow on a wall, a poor reflection of what is actually true. And so, like the prisoners at the bottom of Plato's cave, paul challenges the Corinthians by proclaiming that what they are calling foolish has actually made them the fools. Now, given our community's shared values with the Corinthians, I think it's fair to acknowledge that this section of scripture might feel offensive, reductionistic or simple-minded to many who are pursuing a rigorous education in the room as well. It can be genuinely difficult to disentangle Paul's commending of the church with its complicated impact in history, and so I just want to take a brief moment to clarify what Paul isn't saying, so that we can hear what he's actually claiming. First, paul is not demeaning knowledge generally or advocating for a kind of anti intellectualism.
Speaker 1:The assumption that drives many interpretations of this passage is that faith and reason are opposed to each other and that we, as Christians, are called to be people of faith. The unfortunate consequence of interpreting the text this way is that you get an idea that a so-called lack of worldly knowledge is the best indication for having a strong faith. Most people hold some version of this view, whether or not they've grown up in the church, because we've all been shaped by a prevailing philosophical and cultural framework that portrays faith and reason as fundamentally opposed to one another. As a result, this perspective makes passages like this especially challenging, as it's difficult to see how one can reconcile the intellectual life with a life of faith. One of the best examples, I think, that captures this assumption and tension is actually in a vein of feminist thought which engages with the motif of Eve in the Garden of Eden, given its broader commitments to the perceived opposition between faith and reason. This perspective interprets Eve's punishment as a consequence for her pursuit of knowledge. It frames her as a victim penalized for rebelling against an unjust system that sought to suppress her intellectual agency.
Speaker 1:The problem with this is both the rejection of intellectualism and responses like these rest on a false dichotomy and a misreading of the text. It is true that someone could read the Bible and reasonably conclude that God opposes human knowledge, just as you can ascribe almost any interpretation to the text. Yet to accept the view that human reason is inherently at odd with faith requires ignoring vast swaths of scripture, including the remarkable intellectual complexity of the Bible itself. If we neglect our minds, we violate Paul's invitation to be renewed through their transformation. If we adopt culture around us that tells us we have to pick between reason or faith, we give in to the very wisdom of the world that Paul himself claims relies on false premises. If we truly accept, instead, that to know God is to love him, and to love him is to know him, and that there is no truth inseparable from his nature, because he is truth himself. Then we must also approach Paul's challenges by leaving false dilemmas behind that can obscure the text.
Speaker 1:Secondly, paul is not advocating for a specific kind of Gnosticism or special knowledge. Just as some have misinterpreted passages like this to suggest that Paul sees knowledge as a threat, others have taken passages like this to mean that personal spiritual insight is superior to the wisdom of others, taking it to mean that being called a fool is proof that you are on the right path. This view, however, can easily feed the kind of intellectual arrogance that Paul is challenging in this passage. It's not hard for us to call to mind the archetype of the cousin at Thanksgiving who has found someone on YouTube who claims the more your beliefs are challenged, whether if it's about when the world will end or the shape of the Earth itself, you can be more certain that you found real truth. And it's easy to make fun of the stereotypes embodied in this extreme, but I think humility is understanding that in all of us resides a human disposition that wants to believe. We are the ones who have exited the cave, and everyone else around us has just failed in doing so. And so, just as easy as we can give in to the anti-intellectualist reading. If we read this kind of disposition onto Paul's argument here, we too can risk distorting the text and missing the very principles we claim to uphold. Okay, how are we doing? I told one of my college students that I would be preaching on wisdom of the spirit, and she said oh, get ready for a philosophy lecture. So I'm aware, but I think all of this is really important because, rather, in contrast to these two readings, what Paul is actually doing in this text is inverting the values of the Corinthians to reveal how they fall short of God's goodness, in order to put forth what it truly means to have knowledge of God.
Speaker 1:Look back at the text with me, verse 10. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, for who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the Spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the spirit, explaining spiritual realities with spirit-taught words. The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgment, for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ when we read about what God has freely given us.
Speaker 1:Paul is making an intentional and explicit claim about the nature of the cross. Specifically, paul is reminding the Corinthians that to the values of a kingdom without God, the values of God's kingdom will look foolish. What this means is that the wisdom of God revealed through the Spirit is a knowledge that changes our perception of reality, such that, when we encounter Christ and are transformed by his love through the cross, our understanding of the world around us changes in a fundamental way. Where once we might have seen the cross as a symbol of failure, humiliation or metaphysical impossibility. We now recognize it as the greatest act of love, as Paul writes in Romans 5, 5 through 8,. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You see, just at the right time, when we were still powerless, christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, christ died for us.
Speaker 1:Paul argues that, from the perspective of eternity, what appeared to the world as nothing more than the execution of Jesus for truism by the ruling elite is in reality the climax of salvific history, the prelude to God's ultimate triumph in the resurrection. Because of this, those who have begun to partake in new creation see everything differently. Life itself is redefined in light of redemption, a reality that to some may seem foolish. Put simply by biblical scholar Craig Keener for Paul, true wisdom is found in the cross, the antithesis of status-conscious worldly wisdom. And because of the transformative nature of this wisdom, not only do we see Christ's death and resurrection differently, our paradigms for value are also subverted, and we see the entire world around us differently.
Speaker 1:I think one of the best examples of how powerful this was was the role that the early church played in upending the practice of infanticide. In the Roman world, it was common to abandon disabled or unwanted infants, particularly young girls, leaving them exposed to the elements to die. These children were seen as economic and social burdens, and so the practice was widely accepted, and social burdens, and so the practice was widely accepted. However, christians, deeply convinced that every human being bears the Imago Dei, rejected this view. Instead, they rescued these abandoned infants, bringing them into their homes and raising them as their own, despite the fact that they were ridiculed for doing so. Historian Jerry Sitzer explains it this way the Christian movement was especially attractive to women, who achieved higher status in the church than they did in pagan society.
Speaker 1:Men outnumbered women in the Roman world, and there were clear reasons for this imbalance. Roman men did not value marriage very highly. They offered Prussian women, their wives or mistresses, to get abortions because they did not want to be burdened with children, which led to higher mortality rates amongst women. They were more inclined to let female infants die of exposure to, largely because female children were less valued than male children. By valuing and protecting the most vulnerable infants, women and marginalized, the early church demonstrated a radically different vision of human dignity, one that stood in stark contrast to the prevailing norms of their time.
Speaker 1:For Paul, this is the kind of community shaped by what Jesus accomplished on the cross. When we pursue the wisdom of the Spirit, our perception of worth, meaning and relationship is transformed through the experience of Christ's love, made possible through his death on the cross. What would look foolish to values of status, personal advancement and economic flourishing, the cross inverts and reveals a whole new way of understanding the world, in a way that is marked by unconditional love and freedom, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 14-17,. Therefore, all died, and he died so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised. From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective, even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet we no longer know him in this way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is new creation. The old has passed away and, as our series on the Holy Spirit comes to a close and we begin to enter into the season of Lent, we prepare to reflect on Jesus' death on the cross, his resurrection and defeat over death and ascension to the throne. With Ash Wednesday marking the start of the season, we're invited to seek the wisdom of the Spirit, which reveals how our perception of the world is still in need of redemption and transformation by Christ's love.
Speaker 1:I mentioned earlier that Paul's letter to the Corinthians might feel offensive or confusing for some of us here, as our greater community shares so many of the same values as the early church in Corinth. In many ways, our values of excellence, intelligent upward growth, lengthy resumes and extraordinary accomplishments and legacy can create a perception of the world in which we're in constant competition with those around us that our work is more important than people suffering immediately in front of us and that what we do is the best temperature check for our value and our worth. And so, whether you're a part of this culture or you're suffering its effects, I think God's challenge to us will always be discomfort and some frustration. Just this last week at our college Bible study, we looked at the story of Mary and Martha at Jesus' feet, and one student, in just genuine honesty and, I think, quite reasonably, said I take issue with Jesus saying that just one thing is needed. There are a lot of things that are needed and those things are important, and I think in that moment she did an incredible job of capturing the unease that was felt by many in the room that night, and the unfortunate reality was I couldn't interpret it away.
Speaker 1:The truth of the scripture is that only one thing is needed, and it's Jesus Christ, and it's our need of him. And the conviction that so many of us were feeling in that discussion was the wisdom of the Spirit, revealing to us the ways that we were perceiving the world in a way that didn't actually reflect the truth of the Spirit, revealing to us the ways that we were perceiving the world in a way that didn't actually reflect the truth of the gospel. As we talked about what it means that only one thing is needed, I shared a story from when we did a college Sabbath practice and how there was a similar moment of in talking about taking a day off. The reaction was I can't take a day off because I need to do X, I need to do Y, I need to do, I need to do, I need to do, and there was anxiety and frustration as we talked through that, even though it sounded so foolish and counterintuitive to everything that they had learned up until that moment. There is only one thing that truly deserves the word need.
Speaker 1:In a world that prioritizes busyness, accomplishment and success, sabbath is a silly thing, and yet it's one of the Ten Commandments, and so on. This past Wednesday, many of us had a painful moment where we realized that our relationship with Jesus was being impeded by our status-conscious wisdom that was at odds with the invitation of Jesus. And just as Paul's reminder that the Spirit reveals a wisdom foolish to the world, we're also reminded by his words that there is an invitation to life and freedom, an unconditional love made possible and known through the Holy Spirit's wisdom. To close, as I invite the worship band up, I began this morning by stating that transformative experiences change our perception of reality. It reveals true things about the way that the world is, and yet it can still look foolish.
Speaker 1:I think that this is the way the wisdom of the Spirit works in our lives. I think that this is the way the wisdom of the Spirit works in our lives, constantly revealing to us the ways we have of perceiving the world that are based on values separated from God. It's this wisdom that serves as an invitation to a different way of perceiving the world and makes us into people who are marked by the fruits of the Spirit. When we read in Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And we ask ourselves how do we become people who are loving, joyful, peaceful, forbearing, kind, good, faithful, gentle and temperate?
Speaker 1:I think the wisdom of the Spirit begins with bringing to the surface where we have yet to experience the transformative love of the cross. This is because we cannot be loving if we believe the narrative that the most important things about our lives are the things that we accomplish. We cannot be joyful if we think there is virtue and pessimism. We won't be people of peace if we allow fear of difference to determine our relationships. We won't be forbearing if we don't see God's Imago Dei in the people around us. We won't be kind if we're filled with self-importance. We won't be good if internet personalities get the most to say about who we are. We won't be faithful if we believe that God is only interested in behavioral management. We won't be faithful if we believe that God is only interested in behavioral management. We won't be gentle if we believe that force is the only way to get our needs met, and we won't be temperate if we let the world tell us our values and determine our insecurities.
Speaker 1:It's the wisdom of the Spirit that, through kind conviction, reminds us that the cross will look foolish to anyone holding tightly to the goodness of the kingdom without the king. It's only when we let the transformative power of the cross make us into people who see reality differently that we start to become people who bear the fruits of the Spirit. Put beautifully again by Keener believers in the present are increasingly conformed to God's glorious image in Christ, as they continue to know what Christ is like. So the question that I want to pose to you all this morning is where in your life do you need the wisdom of the Spirit to transform your perception of the world, give light to truth and invite you into the foolish, wonderful, loving freedom of the cross? Let's pray together.
Speaker 1:Heavenly Father, I thank you for the joy that it is to come together and worship you, jesus, as we think about Lent and we prepare to celebrate what it is you accomplished on this cross. Lord, would you soften our hearts? Would you make us humble and formidable, to the ways that you love us and in your gentleness and your kindness that leads us to repentance. Lord, would you bring to the surface what in us needs to change? Lord, specifically as I prepared for this sermon and I kept hearing just the word joy, especially jumping out and reading about the fruits of the Spirit.
Speaker 1:And, lord, you know more than any of us here how pessimistic sometimes living in Princeton can feel like, and so, lord, I just pray for those in the room this morning who you are inviting into really a different way of life, whether they're permanent residents of Princeton or here for just a short time.
Speaker 1:Lord, god, I just would you use this time to convict those who you are calling to be people of joy on campus, for all that is extraordinary and unique and wonderful about living in Princeton. Lord, there are times where it can feel like it seems genuinely foolish to practice joy in your presence, lord, and so, god, I pray, would you just bring the people in this church who you are calling to be just a light of ease and non-anxious presence in this community in a different way of living. Lord, god, would you convict them with your sweetness in this morning? And, god, would our church become a church that shows that you do not have to be burdened by the lie that nothing you do will ever be enough, but rather that we are set free to celebrate and rejoice in the freedom and the battle that's been won on the cross. Jesus Lord, we pray this in the power that has defeated death and has left the grave empty, and that is making good on its promise that you are making all things new, jesus Amen.