John 2: 15; I Corinthians 1: 20-23

When foolish is wise

You and I assume that foolishness  is always bad, but the Bible begs to differ.   The Apostle Paul tells us that foolishness can be good.  So maybe there is good foolishness and bad foolishness.  In the Beatles’ song Fool on the Hill they tell of a man on a hill who is considered foolish as he watches the skies.  I always thought they were singing about the 17 century Italians astronomer Galileo who had the insight that the universe isn’t spinning around us, we are spinning around the sun.  Actually the song is supposed to have been about an Indian guru.  But anyway, going back to Galileo:  The theologians of his day could not accept that and punished him for it.  Galileo, the fool on the hill, was a wise fool. A Muslim scholar I know at UC Riverside posted a story on his Facebook page making fun of a Saudi Prince who argued in his thesis that the sun spins around the world.  Bad foolishness on the part of the prince obviously. Had he been right, the people in the international space station would have been in trouble.  Just recently a senator by the name of  James Inhofe supposedly acted like a fool on the hill, Capitol Hill that is, by bringing in a snowball into the senate chambers as an illustration that there is no global warming .  You could almost feel his more enlightened Republican colleagues cringing.  It is a pretty much accepted theory that the melting of the polar ice cap causes a chance in the jet stream that brings cold and snow to the northeast and warm and dry weather to California.  Although it was perhaps meant to be funny, we can chalk this one up in the category bad foolishness.  

John Saville has lived in East Africa most of his life and grew up loving elephants, not just as friends, but also to kill. It seems that John Saville suggested the killing of 40,000 elephants to bring the vast dry overgrazed grasslands back to life (PBS series WILD, February 2015).  It was believed they were trampling the land so badly that grass could not grow. Now he has completely changed his mind, for the after the killing of the elephants, the land and grasslands were in worse shape. Now he is saying that the land needs more and more grazing.  He says that what the land needs is tight frightened herds of animals trying to run away from their predators, including humans.   Their nervous stomping causing the earth to get ploughed through so the nutrients are brought out and the grass can grow in spite of sparse rainfall.

During our Presbytery meeting  key note speaker Presbyterian pastor Theresa Cho shared a bulletin quote from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.  Listen to the following words of welcome: “All are welcome! We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, y no habla Ingles. We extend a special welcome to those who are crying new-borns, skinny as a rail, or could afford to lose a few pounds. We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli or like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket. You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up, or just got out of jail. We don’t care if you’re more Catholic than the Pope, or haven’t been in church since little Joey’s baptism. “We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps or if you don’t like “organized religion,” we’ve been there too. “If you blew all your offering money at the dog track, you’re welcome here. We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.  “We welcome those who are inked, pierced or both. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down your throat as a kid or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake. We welcome tourists, seekers and doubters, bleeding hearts … and you!” Now, friends, that’s good foolishness.  I would not have thought of this and I have come up with some pretty foolish suggestions, most of which you have shrugged off as a congregation.  But what a statement of truth and of inclusion.

Friends, Paul reminds us that to the world the story of Jesus the Christ is foolishness. The ones who put Him to death sure believed that.  The way he went to work with the Temple stalls in today’s lectionary reading shows his wise foolishness as He exposes the hypocrisy and the opportunism of callous business people who are trying to make a buck of religion.  Friends, our faith is nothing without foolishness, the good kind that is. May we loosen up the soil of ministry with creative activity. May we in this church be guided by God to be wise fools.  Thanks be to God for foolish wisdom.