Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; I Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
T. S. Eliot describes the cross as “the still point of the turning world.” It is the place where the vertical and the horizontal meet. In that place, we find hope amidst suffering and peace beyond understanding. It is the cruciform life.
Paul recognized that preaching Christ crucified would sound foolish. Ancient Corinth is not so different from our own world, with its desire for a life free from suffering, fear, and hardship. To introduce people to Jesus through the cross seems more than a little counterintuitive. To encourage them to live a cruciform life seems, at best, impractical—and at worst, downright foolish.
The cross itself was a symbol of shame and humiliation. It was a method of torture and slow death, perfected by the Romans to achieve maximum pain. Those condemned were stripped of their clothing and nailed naked to the wood—through wrists and ankles—so that their strength would gradually fail and death would come through suffocation. Crowds gathered to jeer, further humiliating those who hung dying before them. As their energy faded and their spirits waned, they left this world knowing nothing but shame.
There is no joy in death on a cross.
Christ died this way—not because he harmed another or even broke a law, but because he spoke out against the powers and authorities of his day. He named injustice where he saw it and redirected hope away from religious and political rulers toward the Kingdom of God—the reign of the King of kings and Lord of lords. His words and actions challenged the status quo, and they cost him his life.
To live the cruciform life, then, is to accept the sufferings and humiliations of this world.
Paul understood those sufferings well. Time and again, he was chased, persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, and dragged before Roman officials on trumped-up charges. His enemies were many and relentless. Yet Paul’s response was not bitterness or retaliation, but humility and perseverance. Later in this same letter to the Corinthians he writes, “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat.” When they go low, we go high.
Paul preaches endurance, especially in the face of “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger.” He insists that endurance is formed through “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.” And then he says perhaps the most startling thing of all: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.”
This is cruciformity. This is living a life shaped by the cross.
And so, in the very first line of our reading today, Paul reminds the Corinthians—and us—that “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.” This is the heart of what Paul believes it means to be a Christian. Those who live by the way of the cross will look foolish in the eyes of the world.
But Paul knows something else. He knows that the cross is not the end. He knows that the worst things are never the last things. Death and despair do not have the final word.
Just last week, we witnessed the death of another person in Minnesota. Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse at the VA. Grieved and angered by the death of Renee Good, he joined the protests. As a nurse, he went to the front lines prepared to care for anyone in need. When a woman was pushed down, he rushed to her aid. His last words were, “Are you okay?”
Since the deaths of Good and Pretti, something has begun—however tentatively—to shift. Protests have intensified, but so has a growing recognition of the need to work across party lines, to seek reconciliation, and to put an end to this cycle of violence. Pretti’s death will not be the last word. Instead, it has opened—even if only slightly—a space for dialogue and a renewed commitment to hope beyond division.
This is Paul’s understanding of the cross: hope is stronger than harm. Instead of the cross being only a symbol of shame, it becomes the place where courage is born—the courage of Gethsemane that leads us forward in a broken and fearful world. Paul reminds us that the foolishness of the cross is our willingness to bear suffering with Christ, trusting that suffering will not have the final say.
Through baptism, we are brought into the Body of Christ. In the Eucharist, we eat bread that becomes flesh and drink wine that becomes blood, binding ourselves to Christ’s last supper and to his sacrificial way of life. For Paul to proclaim this message—to a people like the Corinthians, to a people like us, who prized pleasure, status, and power—was provocative at best and laughable at worst.
For Paul, the good news of the Gospel is the cross. It is the acceptance of suffering as the path to hope. It is the hardening of the world without the hardening of the heart. It is strength shaped by gentleness and resolve tempered by grace.
Paul understood that strength paired with gentleness—and conviction held together with humility—was the evangelist’s greatest tool. No one can be forced to believe. Power and authority alone are fragile things, easily shattered when they are not rooted in compassion, kindness, and hope.
This is the difference between wisdom and folly for Paul. Those who trust in worldly comfort and their own understanding will find themselves undone when those things fail. But those who choose the foolishness of the cross discover that suffering no longer defines who they are—or determines their worth. Instead, they look to Christ crucified and risen to find strength, resilience, and meaning.
For Paul, wisdom is not gained through worldly knowledge or clever arguments. God is not known through reason alone, or deduction, or philosophy. We come to know God through suffering and hope held together. We do not have to be the best, the strongest, the smartest, or the most talented. We do not even have to know how the story will end. We trust in God, believing that our weakness is the place where God’s strength is made known.
The still point of the turning world is the place where the divine meets the human. It is where peace beyond understanding takes root—even in suffering and despair. It is the point where we discover that there is more than this worldly life we know now. It is the place in which true wisdom is found. It is the cruciform life.
Amen.