Pentecost 2 (NL4) John B. Valentine
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 June 7, 2026

“IT’S ABOUT THE CROSS”

Okay folks ... I want to see a show of hands this morning.

No hiding on this one .....

“HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EVER IN YOUR LIFE TRIED TO WALK UP A DOWNWARD-MOVING ESCALATOR?”

Be honest ......

Now look around ... and see who the other rule-benders in the room are!!!

No ... seriously ... this isn’t going to be a sermon about “breaking” ... or even “bending” ... the rules.

That’s not where we’re headed.

Rather ... what I’m after is the sorts of feelings that walking up that downward-moving escalator evoked.

You know ...

• You start with a smile and a little lilt in your step ...

• But then you discover that it is actually hard work ...

• And ... soon enough ... you’re running as fast as you can ... with your legs pumping and your heart racing ... and you’re completely out of breath.

Now ... if you run fast enough up that escalator ... you might manage to stay in the exact same spot for a few seconds.

But the moment you start to tire ... the moment you pause to catch your breath ... the stairs carry you right back down to where you began.

And ... quick as can be ... it goes from being fun to being frustrating ... from being exciting to being exhausting ... from being playful to being a pain-in-the-backside.

Now put that image on hold for just a minute ... and we’ll get back to it.

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You see ... today we’re diving into the heart of that document that’s been handed down to us as Paul’s first known letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth ...

Paul’s pointed remarks about how and why the cross is at the very heart of everything that Christianity is about.

But ... in order to understand the impact and the import of Paul’s words here in the second half of 1 Corinthians ... chapter 1 ... you’ve got to understand a little something about Corinth.

You see ... Corinth ... at least at the time of Paul’s writing in the middle of the 1st Century ... was a big deal as ancient cities go.

It was located at the isthmus ,,, the pinch pont ... this skinny little stretch of land that separated the farthest east point of the Ionian Sea to the west ... and the farthest west point of the Aegean Sea to the east.

And ... because of its location ... literally “at the crossroads of civilizations” ...

• Corinth was a major transportation hub ... and

• Corinth was home to some very wealthy folks ... which we may touch upon in weeks ahead ... and ...

• Corinth was home to just about every religious expression under the sun ... which is particularly significant to what we just heard Nina read.

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Now ... just to be clear ... while there were lots of different religious options in ancient Corinth ... massive temples dedicated to Apollo and Aphrodite and the emperor’s sister Octavia just to name a few ...

All of those religious options were based a some shared assumptions.

• For one ... “the gods” ... as it were ... were ELUSIVE. They didn’t want to be found.

• For two ... “the gods” were FICKLE. If the stars were wrong ... if the weather was bad ... if your sacrifice wasn’t just so ... you weren’t going to get their attention. And ...

• For three ... “the gods” just really DIDN’T CARE. And thus “worship” was about getting this, that or the other gods’ attention ... and keeping that god’s attention ... and trying to wheedle out of them some small blessing if you might.

Regardless of the temple you went to ... and you may well have gone to different temples when you needed different things ...

“Religion” was work. It was HARD work. It was every bit as exhausting and frustrating as climbing up that downward-moving escalator even!

And ... unless you were extra-diligent in your efforts ... being “religious” got you nowhere.

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You know ... if we were honest about it ... that ancient Corinthian attitude about religious enterprise is probably a whole lot more prevalent in our day and age than any of us would like to admit.

We view “God” as being “Up there” .... at the very top ... shrouded in holiness and mystery and perfection.

We ... on the other hand ... are “down here” ... in this broken ... messy ... imperfect world.

Wherein just about everybody ... or at least “just about everybody else” ... is part of the problem ... rather than part of the solution ...

Wherein everybody else’s brokenness makes your journey to heavenly perfection all that much more difficult.

And thus we assume that the entire goal of the Christian life is to climb ....

• To pray a little more constantly ...
• To worship a bit more faithfully ...
• To give a little bit more ...

• To manage our tempers a little bit better ...
• To tidy up our lives and our lifestyles just a bit ...
• To do a little bit to help out our neighbors in need ...

In short ... to engage in the sorts of spiritual and social self-improvement that will make us pleasing to God.

It’s all part of this seemingly-shared deeply-ingrained human belief that ... at the end of the day ... “religion” is a Do-It-Yourself self-improvement project designed to separate the sheep from the goats.

But there’s a fatal flaw with that plan ... and that is that the staircase is really an escalator ... and the escalator is always moving down ...

And no matter how fast we run .... no matter how many good deeds we stack up ... no matter how holy we become ... the gravity of this world ... and of our own human brokenness ... keeps pulling us down.

• We try to be perfect parents ...... we lose our patience.

• We try to be completely honest ...... we shade the truth to protect our image.

• We try to love our neighbors ...... we secretly judge them.

And ... trust me ... trying to be “religious enough” to make it into God's good graces results in either total exhaustion or the deadly delusion by which we convince ourselves into thinking that we are actually making progress when ... in fact ... we aren’t at all.

At the end of the day ... that downward-moving escalator will always ... ALWAYS ... win!

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But how did this morning’s scripture lesson begin?

With these incredibly pointed words:

“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

And then ... a little bit later on ... Paul writes:

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.”

You see ... this “message about the cross” thing ... that thing which is at the heart of Paul’s message and his ministry ... is this declaration that human religious enterprise ... “running up the down-escalator” as it were ... is fundamentally flawed ...

Because that downward-moving escalator wasn’t meant to be run up in the first place!

The question is NOT “Who can make it to the top?” ... but rather “Who is coming down the escalator to meet us where we’re at?”

The message of cross ... the ‘good news’ of Christmas and Good Friday and Easter ... is that God looks at our broken, exhausted attempts to run up the escalator and says “Stop” ... and then ... in the person of Jesus ... steps on that same escalator to come down to meet us where we are.

That’s what is a “stumbling block to Jews” ....

That’s what is “folly to the Gentiles” ...

That’s what ... to us ... is “the power and wisdom of God”.

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I mean ... imagine you’re in Corinth back in the 1st Century.

Here ... in the city center ... is this massive temple to the Greek god Apollo that has been there for like seven or eight hundred years ... to whence folks would come looking for wisdom and wellness ...

And ... if you look to the top of the hill off there to the south ... is the famed Temple to Aphrodite ... the goddess of love ... that’s been there for about four hundred years or so ... to whence folks would come looking for love ... or perhaps just lust ...

And ... in case you’re into something newer and fresher ... there’s this Temple dedicated to Octavia ... the emperor’s sister ... if that’s your thing.

The whole of the city center ... the center of community life ... the heart of the city’s culture ... is structured around the worship of these goddesses and gods.

For Paul to show up and declare:

• In the face of the assumption that the gods were elusive ... that the Creator of the universe in fact DID want to be found ... and

• In the face of the assumption that the gods were fickle ... that the Creator of the universe was in fact eager to give you God’s attention ... and

• In the face of the assumption that the gods just really didn't care ... that God cared and cares about you more than you could possibly imagine ...

Would most certainly have sounded like ‘crazy talk’ and foolishness ... for it challenged the core cultural assumptions of the whole of the Roman Empire!

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But then again ... maybe ... at the end of the day ... the cross of Jesus Christ isn’t so much an invitation to just “get off the escalator” as it is also an invitation to “look at the escalator and realize where it is heading”.

It’s going DOWN!

And that thing we call “faith” is nothing more ... and nothing less ... than the affirmation that Jesus came DOWN that divine escalator for us ....

AND that same thing we call “faith” is an invitation to ride the escalator with Jesus down into the world ... down to the ground floor ... where people are hurting and hurtful and human.

Because “being a Christian” ... “being the Church” ... to borrow a turn of phrase from a guy named Martin Luther ... means being little Christs to our neighbors ...

Giving ourselves away in service and in love ... precisely because Jesus ... on a cross ... came down to give himself away in service and in love ... to us!