I'll Take The Message of the Cross for Five Hundred: A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany

 

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke's Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 1 February, 2026, the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Yr A).

Texts for this Sunday: Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

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?  (1 Cor 1.20)

Some of you longtime ˆJeopardy fans may remember the David Sibley, who had a four night run on the show in 2022, and came back in 2024 to win the quarter final but lost in the semi final.  A pretty good showing for the Rector of St Paul’s, Walla Walla, Washington, whose smarts earned him around $78,000, though as he said, his bishop reminded him that his winnings should be tithed.

Sibley is in fact one of three Episcopal (Anglican) clergy who have appeared on Jeopardy, for which, I suppose, we as a denomination might take some pride.   Anglicanism has long valued the education of its clergy, many of whom have been scholars and scientists, such as Edward Stone (inventor of aspirin) and Charles Darwin, who began his career in a seminary.   Indeed, a famous quote from long ago, one of the Popes, then arch enemies of the Anglican church, admitted that the clerics of England are the wonder of the world (clericus Anglicanus, stupor mundi).

However, lest we get too self-congratulatory, it’s worth noting that Rev. Sibley was knocked out of Jeopary’s semi-finals because he got a bible and Shakespeare question wrong (what biblical city is Comedy of Errors set in?  Ephesus.  Sibley guessed Corinth).   In life, as in quiz games, our intellects only get us so far, and the same is true of theology, which is what Paul tells the Christians in Corinth in our second lesson today.

So for the last few Sundays, our second reading has been from the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.   After praising this church as a collection of saints called by God and “enriched in him in speech and knowledge of every kind” (1 Cor 1.5), he then scolds them for falling into rival factions, each with its own leader and message.    For Paul there is only one message, the message of the cross of Christ.  And the message of the cross has nothing to do with things that smart people value (“eloquent wisdom”), rather it is a message that Paul calls “foolishness”.

So what is the message of the cross, and how is it foolish?  First, I think we have to understand what Paul means when he dismisses “earthly wisdom”.  Wisdom for Paul is a lot more than just Rev. Sibley’s command of Jeopary facts and figures.  It is the whole cultural and religious system of his day and what it values.   

For Greeks (and Romans), wisdom was science and philosophy, art and beauty, the purity of math and astronomy and logic.  Greek gods were powerful, handsome and gorgeous.  It made no sense to wise Greeks that a god would die in shame and agony on a Roman instrument of torture.  Likewise Jews saw their salvation in a Messiah who would come like a second King David, so ditto for them not understanding how Jesus could be Messiah when he died on a Roman cross.

So for Paul, the cross is the complete oppositie of what his world values.  It would be like Paul, if he were here  today saying that technology, AI, the stock market, finance, capitalism, ideology, fashion - it’s all meaningless. 

Likewise for Paul, the cross has to do where people are in society.  When he talks to the Corinthian Christians, he reminds them that “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many of you were  of noble birth” (1 Cor 1.26).   The Corinthian Christians might have had a few well off people in the parish directory, but by and large they did not call the shots.  Some scholars estimate that between 70 to 80 percent of people in the ancient world lived in poverty, either at or below the level of subsistence.   Cities were crowded, political life could be violent, taxes were high, and of course many were enslaved.  Human rights as we understand them simply did not exist in the ancient world.  So if you think about the kind of elite people who gathered last week in Davos, Switzerland, Paul would say, “yeah, not you guys”.

I think that when Jesus looked down at the crowds at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, he knew exactly who they were and what their lives were like,   Matthew tells us that the crowds included “the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases  and pains, demoniacs, epiletics, and paralytics” (Mt 4.24).   No doubt most of these were poor, or who, like the woman with the hemorhrage in Mark’s gospel, had spent all they had on the limited skills of physicians (Mk 5.26).  Jesus knew who these people were, and the Beatitudes tare about them and about God’s commitment to them.

I think that when we hear the Beatitudes and hear phrases like “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or “Blessed are the meek”, we think that that these are moral commands.  We think that Jesus is telling us to be betters people,  humbler, more peaceful, and more committed to good causes.    In part this is true, but I think the Beatitudes are about the message of the cross, that God stands with those who are as hungry for their next meal as they are hungry for an end of oppression,  that God sees the downtrodden and the unimportant.  The  Beaitudes are as much about the people of Gaza and Minneapolis as they are about the people of Jesus’ day or Paul’s day, and indeed, they are really the same people.

Mixed in with Jesus’ compassion is the same commitment to justice that we see in the prophets like Micah.  When Jesus says that the reward of the righteous will be “great in heaven”, this is more than a consolation of some afterlife where things will be better.  It’s God’s commitment to be there in the struggle until oppression is overcome.  The Negro spirituals which saw freedom as a from slavery to the promised land knew where God’s heart is, as Dr King knew so well, and as the clergy and people arrested in Minneapolis know.  Tech billionaires, oligarchs and dictators may see talk of freedom and human dignity as so much foollshness, but God’s people know better.

So to conclude, the wisdom of the cross is not a celebration of ignorance.   Jesus told his disciples to be wise and innocent.  Perhaps we can say that the message of the cross, and the vision of the cross, is about seeing and valuing the people that Jesus sees.  I’ll give the last word to Rev. Sibley, who put it well after his run on Jeopary:

“One thing that I love about Jeopardy! is that it is, in many ways, a celebration of curiosity about the world around us. So if I can hope for any one thing, it’s that my little turn in the spotlight might inspire you to become more curious — about others, about our world — and in so doing, grow in love of God and neighbor for seeing the beautiful web in which we all live and move.”