Tuesday of Holy Week 1 Corinthians 1: 18-31 John 12: 20-36

We are walking with Jesus in his final few footsteps towards Jerusalem and his arrest leading to his crucifixion. The crucifixion was something of a stumbling-block to the Jews. Their own law tells them that those who are hanged are accursed by God. Therefore, how can someone who is hanged upon a cross possibly be God’s Chosen One. This very act, to the Jew, painted an impossible picture of the Chosen One of God.

In God we find goodness and beauty, we find happiness and all that is best. In coming to us as his Son he immediately encounters the ugliness of humanity. To the Greek this just could not happen. How could one who had suffered as Jesus did be the Son of God.

This is the atmosphere that surrounded Jesus. The questioning, the uncertainty. How could this happen?

There is a well-known sentence in the Bible from the pen of Paul; "What looks like God's foolishness is wiser than men's wisdom; and what looks like God's weakness is stronger than men's strength." How can God allow himself to become involved in such an act? Was it disregard? Here is where some of the problem lay. The wisest of humanity pondered and pondered over this and could not arrive at a solution. But the answer, in its plain and simple truth, is that what might appear to us mere humans as foolishness on God’s part is in fact far wiser than any solution that we might ever possibly derive from all of our deliberations.

There is a similar argument to the second part of Paul’s sentence. No matter how strong we might feel in displays of power, or in the volubility of our language. Or in displays of political manoeuvrability or of emotional prowess, all of these displays of strength may be quite formidable to those around us, but are as mere puffs of wind in the strength of God our Father.

This was the background of the Christian message. Against the Jewish or Greek ideas it looked as if it would have little chance of success. It was a battle. Christianity won through. Comprising of people from all walks of life, from slave to members of the highest ranks of society, all are called. The reward waiting for them was of knowing that in Jesus they look upon the most uplifting thing in the universe. It told them, and us, in all of our humility, that in the eyes of God we are worth the death of his only Son.

Collect for the Tuesday of Holy Week

Lord of all life and power,

who through the mighty resurrection of your Son

overcame the old order of sin and death

to make all things new in him:

grant that we, being dead to sin

and alive to you in Jesus Christ,

may reign with him in glory;

to whom with you and the Holy Spirit

be praise and honour, glory and might,

now and in all eternity.