1 Corinthians 2:6-16, The Wisdom of God

Today the church celebrates Pentecost or Whitsunday; the birth of the church when the Holy Spirit was let loose among us mere mortals. As a point of interest the term Whitsunday is derived from the middle English Whitsonday, literally meaning White Sunday; probably from the custom of wearing white robes by those newly baptised at Easter.

Those of us familiar with Pentecost are used to the reading in Acts where we hear about the Holy Spirit crashing through the upper room with wind and fire and enabling all those present to speak and hear in their native tongues; an awe inspiring, slightly terrifying occurrence!

But I’d like us to look at our second reading, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in relation to the Holy Spirit – a quieter, more subtle and perhaps more mysterious facet of the Holy Spirit – Wisdom and the mind of Christ.

As human beings we are obsessed with knowledge – with learning – how things work, how we work, how can we improve, invent and re-invent things. This is to our credit and part of our evolution– we have made the world an extraordinary place with roads, bridges, tunnels, medical and scientific instruments and equipment – all to be applauded and celebrated as we rocketed through the age of enlightenment and beyond. But there are limits – we have limits.

We get so caught up in with what we can achieve and what the pinnacle of success looks like, we don’t like it when we can’t fully, cognitively, definitively understand something – like God.

And so to the wisdom of God, given to us through the Holy Spirit.

This does not follow our rules, our understanding; this is the folly of the cross – the weak made strong, the bottom being at the top – our world made topsy turvy – this does not make sense to our world order. Because it is God’s world order. For us to come to embrace God’s way we have to undergo a transformation of our minds – to put on the mind of Christ, to see the world how God sees the world, to see each other how God sees us. We need the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, throughout 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 Paul places God’s wisdom and the world’s wisdom in sharpest antithesis. The special wisdom to which Paul claims access is God’s wisdom, that leads God’s people to glory, and is knowable only by the Spirit. This stands in stark contrast to the world’s and the world’s leaders’ wisdom and what motivates their decision making –  decisions based on fear and scarcity and it lacks the insight to apprehend the saving wisdom of God.

Verses 1-2 recall Paul’s tactic when arriving at Corinth: he was proclaiming the mystery of God, but not “in lofty words or wisdom.” Why didn’t Paul use lofty words or wisdom? Because (verse 2) he chose instead to know only Christ crucified.

Paul is not revelling in the idea that he only had one thing to say. Instead, to a church rallying to the glories of worldly wisdom, Paul wants to show that the message of the cross demands a particular kind of ministry–a cruciform (cross-shaped) ministry.

Paul’s strategy is not unusual to us. We will often  talk about how a particular person is a “hypocrite” for failing to live up to the standards of the Christian message. But the measure by which Paul takes stock of his ministry cuts against everything that we too often take for granted.

When Paul says he was with them in weakness, fear, and trembling, he is drawing their attention to the type of ministry that accurately embodies the cross of Christ. If the cross is the message, then ministering with integrity means that the messenger will look weak and despised in the eyes of the world–only to have the power of the Spirit of God break through to compel the listeners.

This is the dynamic of the gospel story: power in and out of weakness. It points to the God who brings new life by means of a crucified messiah (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).

If human wisdom is manifest most plainly in the wisdom of the rulers of this age who put Jesus to death, how is a human ever going to be capable of knowing the wisdom of God?

In the final section of today’s reading Paul insists that it is only by receiving the Spirit that one can know the things of God (2:10-16). Because God has given the Spirit, those who receive the Spirit can know the mysterious wisdom of God.

There is not time here to explore how we put on the mind of Christ and the daily practices that we can use to tune in to God’s wisdom, but I am more than happy to talk through these with you – anytime! 

Paul probably has his eye on the competition that has erupted on the ground at Corinth, where Apollos’ high level of attainment in the world’s standards of wisdom has led to the formation of a group that identifies as his followers. Undermining the value of this group’s claim to superior learning, Paul maintains that the Spirit whom believers receive is none other than the Spirit of God with God’s cruciform wisdom–it is not the Spirit of the world with its Christ-crucifying “wisdom” (2:12).

And so one more time we see that the story we tell about the cross of Christ becomes the measure by which the stories of our own communities are judged. Do we hope to draw people to our communities based on our ability to achieve, in step with the corporate, educational, and political systems that set up our own cultures’ assessments of power?

Or, are we participating in the upside down economy of the cross, an economy that can only be known and understood and believed and lived by the power of God’s Holy Spirit?

Amen.