Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 NLT
With whom do we identify in our societies? With those who live in big luxury houses in our suburbs, or those who rent a house or flat from the local council? With those who work in a “white collar” job in an office, or as a “blue collar” worker in a factory? Do we still separate people in our minds into “working class” or “professional class”, “middle class” or “upper class”? In these enlightened days we tend to avoid classifying people for fear of offending them, but distinctions still apply below the radar. TV programmes such as “Downton Abbey” highlight the distinction between the wealthy aristocracy “upstairs” and the working class servants “downstairs” in years gone by. Well, it appears that the Corinthian church had a congregation drawn from the “downstairs” demographic because Paul wrote, “few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy” when they became believers in Christ. These were ordinary folk, and in many churches and fellowships today we will find them well represented. Nothing wrong with that of course, and there may be a good reason for churches to be populated from the less well off in society. Those who have much are less likely to realise that they need God for their salvation. They believe that by their own efforts they have added to their wealth and have no need for any form of religion. A few years ago I found myself walking around the more affluent area of a Central Scotland town with a local pastor and we prayed much, lamenting that there was no-one from this area represented in the local church. They had their neatly manicured lawns and flower beds resplendent with colour. They had luxury cars sitting in their driveways, and money oozed from every brick of their big, architect-designed, houses. In Paul’s eyes, these would have been those who thought they were “wise” by human standards. But a short distance away was a housing estate made up of what has come to be called “social housing”, populated by people who had little, who often struggled to make ends meet, and who lacked the education and employment that would have elevated them into the same league as the “have’s” just down the road. But such people were represented well in the local church, and Paul would possibly have referred to them as those the “world considers foolish”. These were the people who were “powerless” and Paul said that God would use them to “shame those who think they are wise”.
Perhaps in Paul’s days the same principle between the “have’s” and the “have-nots” applied, with those puffed up with their human wisdom looking down on those who were at the lower ends of society, the slaves and servants, considered of little relative value and therefore expendable. But Paul emphasised the fact that God uses those the world despises to do His work. There is a tendency of the earthly wise to have an overblown sense of their own worth, and in their pride and arrogance they have no time for the things of God. They instead adopt a critical view of Christians, remembering that it was Karl Marx who disdainfully referred to “religion” as being the “opiate of the masses”, implying that it was only ordinary people, who made up the “masses”, who would benefit from a belief in God.
Paul put things into context when he wrote, “When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?”(Romans 9:21). All human beings are created by God with a similar appearance – two arms, two legs etc. – and all from the same lump of “clay”. As Jesus told in the parable of the talents, we are each given different gifts and opportunities, and no-one is better than anyone else. The people in the Corinthian church were a gifted people, because they were initially chosen by God and He used them, despised by the world as they were, to “to bring to nothing what the world considers important“. In the context of eternity, a short life span on 70 or so years is but the blink of an eye, and the message of the Cross, no matter how foolish it appears, becomes the most important account that human beings will ever need to hear. Death is a great leveller, because at that point all the wealth, education, and belongings will be left behind, souls traveling on into what for many will become a distressing experience.
Jesus founded a movement that shook up the world in the First Century and it all started with ordinary folk. A few fishermen were the first called by Jesus, and we know what the “have’s” thought of them from Acts 4:13, “The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognised them as men who had been with Jesus“. Ordinary men transformed by the wisdom of God. Men not puffed up by their knowledge, but instead in love with Jesus, determined to follow Him regardless of the consequences. With God in their lives they went on to establish the early church, and today there are estimated to be 2.4 billion Christians on our planet. A phenomenal number of people and far beyond anything that could have been established by human wisdom.
Today, we pilgrims are “ordinary folk” who are sold out for Jesus. We may have all the human knowledge and wisdom in the world, but along with Paul we have made this a secondary factor in our lives. Instead, we promote what the world considers foolishness, the message of the Cross of Christ, wisdom indeed.
Dear Father God. You have upended the priorities in society and we are accordingly re-orientated. Your message of hope is now ours to share and we ask for Your help in leading us to the right people. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 