Foolish Power
1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Chris Maland, and Alex Pretti
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel—and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
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.
1 Cor 1:10-18
Like last week, we are staying in our Corinthians reading again, which has one of my favorite verses when thinking about preaching: “Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel--and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. 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.” (1 Cor 1:17-18). This is both a red sky at night and a red sky at morning, a preacher’s delight and warning: if I preach poorly, then God will be even more glorified than if I try to preach well. Please keep that in mind later.
Sometimes it takes great leaps of imagination to picture ourselves in Scripture and understand what it was like in Biblical times. When I read this passage hearing about all the different teams and factions in the Corinthians church, it is not much of a stretch.
I was reminded of a game I hadn’t thought of in a long time, “Follow the Leader,” the game I imagine most of us played as kids or as parents. It is a delightfully simple game, where a leader is picked, and they march around and do all sorts of things trying to see if everyone else can follow along in a timely fashion. The fun is in seeing just how ridiculous and silly you can be and have people still mimic you—rub your belly and pat your head on one foot while saying the Pledge of Allegiance (let’s not all try that now). In Follow the Leader, you try and do harder and harder things so that people trip up and lose.
Many adult leaders play this game, but with different rules. Instead of harder and harder games, we play follow the leader with easy things to keep us mimicking and following them. Their desire is not to lose followers, but to keep them by stoking hatred, tribalism and spiritual pride. Nevertheless, we as Christians still pray for them.
When we read Corinthians, I wonder what “follow the leader” games were being played. Apollos, according to Acts 18-19, was a good-hearted, correctable, and humble teacher. But we know from 2 Corinthians that other leaders in the Corinth church were more explicitly divisive, offering people what they wanted to hear instead of the gospel. Paul presses with more questions for us about our allegiances: “Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Denigrating himself primarily, Paul challenges us: who is the leader you are following?
Paul adds that some also insisted, “I belong to Christ,” and one can infer it being said with a certain amount of spiritual pride, that great old diseases which says, “Unlike those other Christians, I actually follow Jesus.” Huh, Paul wonders, “Has Christ been divided?”
When we see the world with resurrection eyes, Paul says all of us sinners are one in Christ, whether we like it or not. I have felt this too often to deny its truth.
Last year, I was grateful to attend the Jesse Strong Patriots Day in honor of our fallen Veterans. Marine Sergeant Strong was killed in action twenty-one years ago tomorrow, January 26th, 2005. As I imagine Jesse would have wanted, and as his mother Vicki ensured,1 his day was not primarily about Jesse. Nor was it only Veterans, and not even only Americans, but all our neighbors who are first responders and Veterans from both the US and Canada in our region.
Out of the many who were honored, the widow of David “Chris” Maland attended. Chris was a border patrol agent shot a dozen miles from us in Coventry on I-91 during a traffic stop. Chris did not deserve to die. But he knew that was the risk he took with his calling. He was not shot by anyone who had anything to do with our current national debates over immigration, but by a member of a bizarre internet cult. Perhaps that is why its time in national news did not last; it did not play into our tribes easily. In some ways it was a blessing that his death was not politicized, for the tragedy in his sacrifice could be more universally recognized and honored in a way that was deserved.
Chris Maland was doing his job to protect our freedom as a border patrol officer. I am sure most who are in Immigration and Customs Enforcement envision themselves doing the same. In the past decade, many in law enforcement have done so despite knowing that part of the job is being hated by large swaths of the public. As one officer once said, it is a strange and hard job knowing that almost every single day, people lie to you.
Chris Maland was from Fairmont, Minnesota. According to his obituary, he was a Veteran of the Air Force and a federal officer, transferred to Newport, Vermont, when he became a Customs and Border Protection agent. Had he stayed in his home state of Minnesota, Chris might have been cared for by a Veterans Affairs nurse who was known as Alex Pretti.
Alex was a nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. His profession was to treat Veterans. As someone who did a chaplain internship at Charles Georgee VA Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, I can imagine him as a nurse I might have worked with. Almost exactly a year after Chris was killed in the line of duty, Alex was killed yesterday. While facts are still coming out, I can imagine he saw what he was doing as his line of duty to care for others.
In videos, we see Alex filming with his phone, likely to ensure that law enforcement upheld the Constitution that all Veterans swear an oath to defend. In a democracy, transparency is the people’s law enforcement, for where more and more people disregard the law, indeed, disregard the truth, being a witness to reality is an important job. But recording on a phone was not his last act, nor was being shot his last act, for that was not his choice. His last act and last words were asking a woman, “Are you okay?” Alex was a nurse.
I know there are more facts to emerge as we try to discern the truth from our bias and chaos. I do not know what side you are on here or on every issue. I never fully identify with a “side.” I hate that we even have “sides.” But I do not believe Alex Pretti was against your side. The truth that I witness is that ICE agents are not monsters and Alex was not a monster. Nor was Alex a terrorist. He was a nurse.
There is a tradition at the VA that I have had the privilege of witnessing a few times. It is called the Final Salute. It is done for any Veteran who dies while in a VA hospital, even if their war was long ago, even if their service was small, even if they never had to face bullets themselves. Their body is draped with the flag and wheeled out. Taps are played over the hospital intercom. When we hear this, all VA staff who are not in the middle of a procedure come to the hallway. We civilians hold our hands on our hearts while Veterans give a military salute.
Veterans are given the Final Salute even if they might have signed up for war for the wrong reasons. They are honored even if much of the country feels their war was a mistake. They are honored even if the Veteran themselves no longer believes in the cause they once served. They are honored because war is a tragedy, and because they were willing to donate their life for the sake of someone else. They are honored because sacrifice for the sake of others always means something.
Since yesterday’s shooting, someone shared another video of Alex. In this video, there was no chaos, no shouting, but a quiet hospital hallway, where Alex was taking part in a Final Salute in the hospital for someone’s father, a Veteran who had passed away. In the video, Alex recites these words:
“Today we remember that freedom is not free, we have to work at it. Nurture it. Protect it. And even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we render them our honor and our gratitude.”
Some will argue he should not have put himself in the situation that got him killed. Perhaps an investigation will discover more truth, discerning guilt and innocence in humility before God who alone knows the full truth. But it is horrible.
And so for Alex, the nurse to Veterans, I give a civilian’s final salute, not only for him or Veterans, but to all who have served and sacrificed for freedom. Please take a moment in silence with me to render them our honor and gratitude.
I do want to close by returning to our text, especially thinking about spiritual pride, something I have wrestled with my whole life. Spiritual pride is one of our universal human problems. Because spiritual pride always involves puffing yourself up over someone else, it pairs well with our tendency towards tribalism. We do this as Christians, saying, “If only the Church didn’t have those looney other Christians messing it up, we would be perfect. Thank God I’m not like them.”
I’m sure Paul was at least occasionally guilty of this, too. Yet Paul is also very careful to always return to the unity in Christ and to point out his own failures in humility. Humility does not mean we do not try and discern what’s right and wrong, and that we lose ourselves in moral confusion; a humble criminal court judge must, after all, still arrive at a verdict, but not out of an arrogance that can cloud judgment, but out of a grave humility that the stakes are real and we can only do our best to make decisions based on what is truth. Humility does not cloud our moral thinking, but actually brings clarity. If spiritual pride is a big block of ice between us and the truth, allowing us to only see it distorted, humility melts the ice so that we can see things more clearly.
As a new friend in our local Estuary group asked, how do we talk to somebody who is so convinced they are right? How do we talk to each other when there is so much pride and self-righteousness? Perhaps it starts by melting the ice of pride that obscures our vision.
In that clarity, Paul sees that there is no Team Apollos, Team Paul, or even Team True Christ vs. Team False Christ. There is the human team we are all on, trying and failing to uphold God’s will and love, and there is Christ who dies for us all.
I am often reminded of the time when Joshua gets close to Jericho, he sees a man with a sword, and he asks him, “Are you with us or are you with our enemies?” To which the man replies, “Neither. I am a commander with the Lord’s army. … Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground.” (Joshua 5:13-15) Joshua does so.
All of us sinners are in Christ, whether we like it or not. The kingdom of God was proclaimed long before and will exist long after we do. The freedom Christ has granted all of us was not free either, but paid in the sacrifice of his blood. It is such a confronting gift for us that we must ask ourselves, “Who is the leader I am following”?
In Jesus Christ, we have a leader to follow in sorrow and pain and sacrifice. He wants us to follow in unity together, even when the world is in great division, knowing that his body was not broken just for some or broken in two, but broken for everyone. This message about the cross, indeed, may be foolish to so many people out there. “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” May we hold onto this foolish power. May we hold onto it together. Amen.
Vicki is part of our congregation.