“Wanted: A few crazy people”: a sermon for the EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (03 AUGUST 2025)

     Crazies?  So, you’re a group of Christians, are you?  And your faith is based on the New Testament, is that right?  Interesting… I wonder if you are aware of how the founders of your religion described themselves as well as how they were perceived by their contemporaries.  The New Testament, even as it claims to present the truth, makes no attempt to hide the fact that its message is one that strikes the “normal”, conventional person (ancient as well as modern) as utterly absurd.  Let’s look at a few examples:

The gospel (the message): “the message about the cross is foolishness (Gr: moria) to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…” (1 Cor. 1.18, 23)

The apostles (the messengers): “I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. We are fools (Gr: moros) for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless… We have become like the rubbish of the world...” (1 Cor. 4.9-11, 13; cf. 1 Cor. 3.18; Ac. 26.24)

Jesus (the man): “Again the Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind (Gr: mainomai). Why listen to him?” (John 10.19-20; cf. Jn. 8.48)

“Jesus went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” (Mark 3.19-22)

The resurrection (the moment): “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” (Luke 24.10-11; cf. Jn. 20.24-25)

Anyone feeling a little embarrassed?  Your own founding document admits that its authors were perceived as being the deluded followers of a demon-possessed madman who probably got what he deserved.  Even the central piece – the announcement of the resurrection – was initially considered by the disciples to be so much nonsense.  Do you really believe this stuff?  Where’s the logic, where’s the careful reasoning from first principles, where are the syllogisms?  Where are the sophisticated philosophical formulations that can assure my mind that this is a message worth staking my life on (cf. 1 Cor. 1.17-21)?  All I hear is talk of a crucifixion and a resurrection…

     The “normal” consensus.  Another fascinating aspect of these passages is that there seems to have been a consensus at the time of Jesus and the early Church.  Everyone – both Jew and Gentile – thought that this stuff was absurd.  The monotheists thought it was crazy; the polytheists also though it was crazy.  The religious people thought it was nonsense; the irreligious people as well.  A Messiah who doesn’t respect legal precedent?  A Messiah who won’t fight the Romans?  A King who suffers and dies?  A crucified rebel who came back from the dead?  A resurrection whose first witnesses were women?  A kingdom whose power is found in its weakness, whose “citizens” were slaves, women and the lower classes?  A kingdom who dares to defy the Roman empire, its emperor and its gods?  A religious movement whose most passionate spokesperson had been killing Christians before becoming one himself?  Give me a break!  This is crazy!  But then again, you can’t make this stuff up.

Sometimes we are told that the ancient world was somehow “ready” for Christianity, and that is why this new movement grew so rapidly.  Actually, it seems that no one – Jew or pagan – was ready for the earth-shattering news of the resurrection of the peasant from Nazareth, as well as the claim that he was the true Lord of the world, establishing a kingdom that would subvert and replace all the kingdoms of this world (cf. Rev. 11.15).  This was indeed a strange revolution!  The gospel was not “palatable” even for “religious” people!  We are often tempted to believe that ancient people were simply more credulous than us clever folks who live on the far side of the Enlightenment.  This is simply not the case – there have always been gullible people and there have always been skeptical people.  The news of the resurrection of Jesus did not fit into any of the available categories of the first century – religious or irreligious.  Yes, certain Jews (e.g. Pharisees) believed that there would be a resurrection of all the dead at the end of the Age.  But that a condemned and crucified heretic and messianic pretender should rise from the dead, “all alone” as it were – that was preposterous!  In fact, in the first century, Christianity did not fit easily into the category of a “religion”.  Mainstream Judaism considered it to be a heresy (cf. Ac. 24.5; 28.22) and the Romans considered the Christians to be “atheists”, since they refused to worship or acknowledge the gods of Rome!  Christianity was utterly unique, because Jesus is utterly unique.  Christianity is not simply one particular expression of a generic human “spirituality”; it is not simply a species of the genus “religion”.

     Stranger than fiction.  The New Testament claims, not to present the world with yet another religious option, but rather to present the world with the truth, proclaimed by the Word of God become flesh, become a human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen from the dead and enthroned as the Lord of all creation.  This is the crazy message that changed the world of Jesus and the apostles and continues to change our world and whose power has not yet been exhausted.  The gospel is as powerful as ever, and – this is where the rubber meets the road – we are called to proclaim it.

     Deconstructing normality.  Now, since the truth turns out to be so strange, it should not surprise us that the New Testament is full of irony, paradox and subversive rhetoric.  The New Testament’s rhetorical objective is to deconstruct the value-system of its world – a system based on honour (prestige), power and glory.  The dark side of these values – to be avoided at all costs – was shame, weakness and disrepute.  Nietzsche went so far as to call Christianity a “slave religion” that promulgated a “morality of resentment”.  For Nietzsche, Christianity was the religion of the weak, and he despised it for precisely this reason.  He called for a “revaluation of all values” so that humanity could free itself from this “weak” morality and attain its full potential, that of becoming the “over-man”, the Übermensch.  We saw what happened when such ideas were taken up by people with the power to “engineer” society according to their whims and prejudices…  Of course, today’s values are much the same as those of the ancient world – who are we invited to admire, to “follow”, to take as examples?  The rich, the powerful, the successful.  It’s the same old story.  Actually, the New Testament did for its world what Nietzsche would have liked to do for 19^th-century Europe – it completely transformed the values of its society.  Look at what the New Testament does with the ultimate symbol of Roman imperial power, which was for the empire the clearest public affirmation of its inexorable authority and for the victim an experience of shame and disrepute that was worse even than death.

Look at how the New Testament deconstructs…the cross.  For the Gospel of John, the crucifixion of Jesus is actually his “glorification”, his moment of “exaltation” (cf. Jn. 3.14; 12.32).  For Paul, the death of Jesus on the cross is the moment of victory, it is Jesus’ “triumph”, his victory parade after having conquered his enemies (cf. Col. 2.13-15).  Paul calls Christ crucified the “wisdom” of God and the “power” of God and insists that God’s “foolishness” is wiser than human wisdom and God’s “weakness” is stronger than human strength (cf. 1 Cor. 1.23-25).

This is the New Testament’s unique genius – it transforms the very meaning of honour, power and glory.  These values are no longer to be found in the “glory” of Rome, the splendour of the imperial palaces, the might of the legions and Caesar’s subjugation of the world.  No, they are now to be found in – as shockingly unexpected as it sounds – the cross of a condemned peasant from Galilee, in the small secret communities of his followers who serve him as their Lord and by those intrepid messengers who proclaim his kingship in a world that had known only the power of the sword and more often, the humiliation of being crushed by empire and the arrogance of rulers with divine pretentions.  In such a world, to value humility, vulnerability and shame was indeed crazy. 

     Crazy mission.  If the man at the origins of Christian faith was considered crazy, and if the message that his followers proclaimed was crazy, the mission that Jesus entrusted to his disciples was also…crazy.  As Jesus sent out his apostles two by two during his ministry, he told them: “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10.16).  The risen Jesus sent his witnesses into the empire to make disciples of all nations, armed with nothing but…the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt. 28.19-20; Ac. 1.8).  The experience of those disciples who had accompanied Jesus during his ministry was crazy enough, yes – but it paled in comparison with what Saul of Tarsus went through as a follower of the man from Nazareth.  Apparently, Jesus needed someone even crazier than those who had followed him during his earthly life. 

Indeed, one of Paul’s constant struggles as a Christian was convincing other Jesus-followers that he was indeed one of them, and even had to spill much ink convincing his own converts that he was indeed a genuine apostle, having received true authority from Jesus to proclaim the gospel and establish communities loyal to the risen Lord.  That is precisely why Paul is describing all of his sufferings to the Corinthians (cf. 2 Cor. 11.16-33).  He is defending the authenticity of his apostleship by “bragging” about all the things that were considered – not heroic – but rather shameful.  Paul is listing his struggles and sufferings in much the same way that a Roman governor or general would list his accomplishments and victories.  Only, in the case of Paul, there is nothing to “brag” about – he hasn’t accomplished anything besides a long string of defeats – beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, anxiety, vulnerability and weakness.  Paul is being very tongue-in-cheek as he offers the Corinthians his bona fides as an apostle of the crucified-and-risen Lord.  This is the pattern of the Spirit-filled, Jesus-shaped life – suffering and renewal, death and (eternal) life, strength in the midst of weakness, glory in the midst of humiliation:

“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4.16-18).

     Paul was nothing if not ambitious (Rm. 15.20; cf. Gal. 1.13-14; Phil. 3.4-6).  It seems that even in his previous life as a Pharisee (Ac. 23.6), Paul had always been a self-starter.  Not one to follow precedent or wait for instructions, Paul had always had the tendency to take the initiative, to chart his own course, to blaze a trail into unmapped territory.  Whether it was hunting down followers of Jesus in foreign cities (cf. Ac. 9.1-2), or out-pacing his peers in terms of “zeal” for his Jewish faith (cf. Gal. 1.14), Saul the Pharisee was always out in front, leading the charge.  As Paul the missionary of Jesus would quickly discover, taking life head-on means absorbing a lot of hard knocks (cf. 2 Cor. 11-12).  It might be easy for us to accuse Paul of having lacked prudence, wisdom, or even good old common sense.  “What a sucker for punishment,” we might say to ourselves with a smirk as we read the accounts of his many (mis)adventures.  Whatever our opinion of Paul may be, one thing is clear – Saul of Tarsus was built differently.  Once he was convinced of something, there was no possibility of half-measures – it was always all or nothing, come hell or (often literally) high water (cf. Ac. 27.1-44; 2 Cor. 11.25).

     Whether as a Pharisee or as an apostle of Jesus, Paul had ever seen himself as a man on a mission – whether striving to defend the integrity of the Jewish faith “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” or striving to “proclaim the good news in places where no one had yet heard the name of Jesus” (cf. Rm. 15.20).  This was because he did not want to “build on someone else’s foundation” (cf. 1 Cor. 3.10-15).  Paul was a true pioneer, he wanted to be on the cutting edge of the kingdom of God, to push the frontiers of the gospel to the (literal) “end of the earth” (cf. Ac. 1.8).  As Paul concludes his letter to the Christians of Rome, he informs them that he wants to pay them a visit “on his way to Spain” (Rm. 15.24, 29).  Spain was quite literally the western edge of the (Roman) world – beyond which lay the vast unknown of the “Outer Sea”.  Paul tells the Romans that he has “fully proclaimed the good news” in the eastern end of Rome’s domains (cf. Rm. 15.19), and that it is now time for him to strike out westward, beginning in the very heart of the empire. 

     What were the key characteristics of the apostle Paul that made him “crazy” enough to take on this by-all-appearances suicidal mission to the Roman empire? 

1.     He loved Jesus.  Paul had been embraced by the love of God in Christ and his effusive gratitude can be found on almost every page of his letters.  Jesus gave his life for Saul of Tarsus, and S/Paul intended to return the favour (cf. Gal. 2.19-20).

2.     He leaned into adversity.  Paul accepted hardships as part of the deal.  Jesus had suffered; why should he expect to walk an easier road than his master?

3.     He tasted true joy.  Paul’s most “joyful” letter was written to the Philippians…from prison!  C.S. Lewis defined joy simply as “reality”.  “Joy is the serious business of heaven”, Lewis famously said.  G.K. Chesterton apparently said: “Jesus promised his disciples three things–that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”  There is a joy that can only be experienced in the middle of a good fight.  Let those who can receive this saying receive it.

4.     He depended totally on the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the very presence of Jesus with his followers.  Seen this way, there is something extremely obvious about the Spirit; of course, Jesus wants his followers to experience his presence – and he has provided us with his Spirit (cf. Jn. 14—16).  Paul identifies the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, and that will bring life to our mortal bodies” (cf. Rm. 8.11); yes, beyond death but also even now!

5.     He kept his eyes on invisible realities.  Paul’s vision had been turned inside-out and upside-down by his encounter with the risen Jesus (it also involved 3 days of blindness…).  He saw the crucifixion as the moment of glorious triumph over all the forces of evil; he saw the shame of the Son of God being nailed naked to the cross as the manifestation of the wisdom and power of God.  Paul had tasted the kingdom of God – he had received the honour of being made a slave of Christ!  Remember the Philippians Creed (cf. Phil. 2.5-11).  Paul was absolutely convinced that the very created order was going to be reborn and that he had a role to play in bringing this about: “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8.18-21).  Paul was someone crazy enough to believe that the world could be changed – that it had been fundamentally changed by the death and resurrection of Jesus and would one day be completely transfigured and transformed, with joy flooding the earth as the waters cover the sea (cf. Hab. 2.14).  The “madness” of Paul was the madness of a man in love, of a man enamoured of a dream of the purposes of the Creator being fulfilled and of redeemed humanity basking in the glory of their God and his Messiah, “who loved them and gave himself for them” (cf. Gal. 2.20).

     What about us?  Are we content to play it safe while there is so much to be done to make Jesus known in this city, in this province?  Are we willing to risk it all for the love of God and neighbour?  Are we crazy enough to actually trust Jesus to sustain us with his Spirit as we take a “leap of faith” in obedience to his orders?  There is glory, there is joy, there is power available to us, but only if we are doing what our Lord told us to do.  Otherwise, what use do we have of the strange glory and power and wisdom and strength of God?  To experience these things, we must embrace the cross-and-resurrection pattern that Jesus left us.  Those women and men down the centuries who decided to be “crazy for Christ” experienced the reality of Jesus’ paradoxical power.  Another word for these crazies is “saints”.  This Christian thing began with 12 people.  Today, Jesus is looking for a few more “crazy” people.  What about you?