Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: March 23, 2014 | 10:00am
Straw poll before we begin: by a show of hands, how many of you came here this morning because among the things in your life that you need a little more of, foolishness is one of them? Is anyone here looking for a little less security in their life? What I want to suggest this morning is that if the answer to that question is, “Ummm, Pastor Jonathan, I don’t think so,” then I want to ask you to hear me out for a few minutes. Because what I have to say might just transform your life, and it may cause you to look at your own life a little differently.
I want to begin by telling you a story, a parable of sorts. There once was a man named Prince Myshkin. Nobody really thought much of the prince. In fact, most of the people who encountered him sort of pitied him. You see, he had spent the last four years in an asylum in Switzerland, before returning to his home in St. Petersburg. Prince Myshkin was pretty unassuming for a 26-year-old; he had a way of garnering people’s trust in a very short time because he was so innocent and naïve.
Pretty soon, Myshkin began to be invited into the homes and to local social functions of a number of prominent people in St. Petersburg. And because he struggles with epileptic fits and is thought to be mentally unstable, people are drawn to him out of pity. Some, namely two beautiful young women, see beyond people’s perception and are able to win the affection of the Prince. But as he travels around from party to party and home to home, what the people of St. Petersburg see is a sort of dim-witted simpleton, who is odd because of his purity and kindness. You see, everything and everyone around him was consumed with power grabbing and social posturing, backstabbing and manipulation. So as he travels around to social functions and homes, he stands out as so utterly different and begins to be a threat to their way. Finally, he too, in his purity of heart, becomes the victim of this malicious society, and the one people saw as an idiot, the one who was utterly powerless, who was actually bringing peace and hope into their lives, is sacrificed on the altar of their own greed.
In leaving as the foolish one, the one who was without power or prestige, what we see is the utter irony that it is in powerlessness that he became the hero. It is in his weakness that he demonstrates strength. That instead of casting the protagonist as the hero who swoops down and saves the day, we meet one who comes down into the mire of their world and lives among them, even being rejected by them. Prince Myshkin becomes goodness incarnate. This is the story by the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky called “The Idiot.” And as we look at this morning’s text from Luke, the next in our series called Jesus: The Man for All People, I want us to look carefully at a scene in which our Lord is utterly humiliated, and yet as a part of the larger narrative of the cross, this reveals where Jesus really sought to be a man for all people, by offering himself in service and sacrifice for others.
Download the entire transcript here: Luke 22 62-65 1 Cor 1 Foolishness
