Sermons

This Week's Sermon

“How foolish can you be?”

Sermon on Sunday, September 14, 2025

Hey church!

I have a challenge for you on this Rally Day: How foolish can you be? On a scale of 1 – 10 - can you reach the top and make a real fool of yourself? Or are you naturally proper, risk-avoiding, respectable, “normal”? Most of us, I suspect, would like to be somewhere near 0 on the foolishness scale. You don’t want to be the person who invests money in a shoddy enterprise. You don’t want to be the person who thinks that “being right” in a relationship is what will improve your marriage. You don’t want to make the same mistake twice or even more often. All of that is what we call Foolish with a capital F.

You may be surprised then to learn that in the long history of the Christian church,  church, Holy Fools have played an important role. Saint Francis was a holy fool, giving up his family fortune - for what? Tending to the poor and preaching to the birds. September is the month when the Orthodox church remembers two Holy Fools,  among them “John the Hairy” of Rostov. Have you ever heard of him? No, me  neither… The tradition of the Holy Fool is more rooted in the Orthodox world of Russia and the Slavic countries. But in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, we find the type as well. The biblical prophets often acted like crazy people. Ezekiel ate a scroll, a large roll of papyrus and at another time, he lay on his side for 430 days - all to make a point.

I read somewhere in a conservative magazine that the fool for Christ strives with imaginary insanity to reveal the insanity of the world… Maybe we Westerners have been too straight laced to recognize the importance of people who defy the norms for a higher norm, who eschew worldly success for something far greater, who may look foolish and act quirkily but possess deep wisdom when you get to know them. Where would a Holy Fool live in 21st century America? I think likely on the street or in an insanity asylum... And we wouldn’t get the memo.

Paul wrote in the first lesson we heard today, “For 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.” In Jesus’ death on the cross God is making a fool of himself. And why? So that we may be liberated from the bondage of our normal craziness (sin) that shuts out so many people who do not meet the criteria of the current societal norms and even shuts out parts of ourselves. Are we getting the memo?

In our culture we often abandon the cross, even parts of the Christian church have pushed it away because people don’t know what to do with it. So, we “fixed” it our way.

We are the country that has produced the Prosperity Gospel, mass evangelism, mega churches with all sorts of amenities, cool preachers and TV shows. In the process of creating those outwardly successful brands of Christianity, we tended to bypass one tiny little thing: The Holy Cross… with Christ on it, with his entire life and message on it. As Paul said some 2,000 years ago, which is true then and true now: “For 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.”

So, what do we do with this central symbol of our faith that challenges everything we regard as normal or define as success? It seems clear to me that the Holy Cross is an invitation to go deeper in our faith, to deal with the shadows in our lives, the grievances, the blind spots, the parts that we may want to hide sometimes. It’s an invitation to accept our imperfections and, instead of fighting them, embracing them, for it is through those foolish, imperfect parts of ourselves that God most often touches other people. Frankly, I appreciate the thorniness, the bloodiness, the awkwardness or what Paul calls the scandal of the cross. It goes against marble church imagery but it is powerful.

Have you ever been in a church filled with marble and gold? I have, and I don’t very often feel the presence of God in those places. A simple cross speaks to me more than a shiny one. As people of the Holy Cross we are not trying to pretend that life is easy; it isn’t. Yet, we are not wallowing in self pity but embrace the opportunities to be found even in the shadows and painful periods of our lives. “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me!” (Psalm 23) Often, God comes through the backdoor into our lives: the backdoor of pain; the backdoor of loss; the backdoor of failure. That’s the cross for you.

And here is some practical advice... It can be helpful to be a bit foolish -like kids. I recommend it. And I practice it to some extent as you know. It’s also biblical. King David danced scandalously in front of the people while his respectable wife ridiculed him. The prophet Isaiah… (never mind I am not telling you what he did.) The larger point is… loosen up. Don’t think that by controlling your life, you will gain any more spiritual freedom. Sometimes learning to dance, learning to play, learning to go out of your comfort zone, and yes, looking foolish can open up whole new ways of God being present in your life. How foolish can we be? The challenge is on!

Amen.