Homily Third Sunday of Lent Cycle B March 11, 2012

Please turn on your imaginations, and imagine a person who has spent her entire life in the deepest jungles of Amazonia, or in the most remote parts of Outer Mongolia, and had never before seen a church.  And then this person is transported to SXSW here in Austin, and accidentally wanders into our church, thinking it must be some large lecture hall.  OK, you can imagine this? 

            Now might not that person find it somewhat odd, even a bit bizarre, that right up front and center, in the most prominent place in this building, is the image of a corpse? 

            And yet that is just what we have in the most prominent position:  a dead man on a cross. 

            Not only that, but that is what we preach.  In the second reading today St. Paul tells us:  “Brothers and sisters:  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified,”    

            Why Christ crucified?

            Would it not, in the terms of this world, make more sense to preach Christ in glory, Christ Risen, Christ the Triumphant King, the Christ of the Second Coming, in power and glory?  That has some spark, some pizzazz. 

But instead we preach Christ crucified.  Why?

            A dead body hanging on a cross is so … unsanitary, so repugnant. 

The Cross does not make sense.  Jesus’ death was a tragedy.  He was condemned on trumped up, phony charges.  There is nothing right and just about it.  It makes no sense whatsoever.

            The cross is certainly not about power.  There He is, pinned to the cross, immobile, helpless, open and vulnerable, totally powerless. 
            And yet St. Paul today tells us: “to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

            What kind of wisdom and power is this?   It is the power and the wisdom of love.  Because Christ crucified is the absolute sign of self-giving love.   And love is what God does.  God loves.  In the face of injustice, in the face of betrayal, in the face of cowardice, in the face of torture, in the face of death, God loves.  And Christ crucified is the full and complete sign of that love. 

Sometimes, love hurts.  And even in the midst of hurt, God still loves.

What the crucifix presents us with is God’s Wisdom and God’s Power in the face of human wisdom and human power.   It is the wisdom of loving obedience to the Father, no matter what the cost.   It is the power of “One who has chosen loving solidarity unto death with us to free us from all fear and bring us into the “liberty of the children of God.”*

            “For” proclaims St. Paul, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

Brothers and sisters:
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 

Amen.

* Sr. Sandra Schneiders, “Religious Life as Prophetic Life Form” in National Catholic Reporter of Jan 04,, 2010