I Corinthians
2:1-16
The Cold War was
on. The Russians were winning the space race. Two dogs and cosmonaut Yuri
Gargarin had all successfully been launched into space and returned alive. Here
in the States, NASA was working feverishly to catch up. They were preparing to
launch an astronaut into space to orbit the earth. While what we have seen in
old recordings and movies are rooms filled with white men – scientists and
engineers of various kinds – there were also many women who worked at NASA. You
might assume that they were secretaries and assistants, but there were also
women who were human computers. There were black women who were human
computers. That is the story behind the movie Hidden Figures. Three of
those women, Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, are the
main subjects of the film and they were essential to the success of the space
program. They are also three of the most incredible women I have seen depicted
in film in a long time.
Katherine Johnson
was a mathematician of extraordinary genius. While I’m still astounded by 2 + 2
always equaling 4, she was computing equations that I don’t have language to
describe. Mrs. Johnson was assigned to work directly with those white men to do
the math required to launch a man successfully into space and to return him
safely to the earth.
In the movie,
Johnson’s new assignment was in a different building. The building where she
and the other black women generally worked was separate from the rest of the
NASA complex. When Johnson walked into the room where she would now be working,
someone walked by and stuck a full trash can on top of the papers she was
carrying and said,
“This didn’t get emptied last night.”
Even when it was
established that she was not a custodian, she was not treated any more
respectfully. In one corner of the large room there was a table with a coffee
urn set up, along with cups, creamers, sugar, etc. Johnson poured herself a cup
of coffee and turned to see all of the men glaring at her. The next day, there
was a smaller coffee pot labeled “colored.” There wasn’t any coffee made in it
so she had to do that as well.
But one of the
points driven home in the movie, and one that I never thought of, was the issue
of bathrooms. Again on her first day, Johnson went to ask the only other woman
working in that level where the ladies room was. The woman answered,
“I don’t know
where your bathroom is.”
This is when a
large part of NASA was located in Virginia ,
a state in the segregated South. Black folks and white folks did not use the
same restroom. There were no restrooms for Katherine in the entire building, or
any of the other buildings except for the one where she and her fellow human
computers worked. In order to use the restroom, she had to run to another
building then run back. Each time she carried her work with her so she could
continue working. I read that the movie took license with this. In reality the
building that housed the segregated restrooms was not as far away as the movie
makes it seem. But geography aside, Katherine Johnson, a woman of extraordinary
genius, who would be fundamental to the ongoing success of the space program,
could not use the same bathroom as the white women she worked alongside. Forget
water fountains, she couldn’t pour herself a cup of coffee from the same coffee
pot.
My
point is this, in a building, in a facility, in a program that housed some of
the smartest, the brightest, the most gifted people of that generation – maybe
any generation – wisdom was lacking. In a place where imagination and talent
and genius worked together to do what was deemed impossible, a fundamental
knowledge of the commonality of all human beings was in short supply, if not
missing entirely.
So
we come to Paul. I struggled – as I often seem to when writing my sermons –
with how to dig into Paul’s message about wisdom without also giving what I
believe to be a false message of anti-intellectualism. I believe that Paul’s
words have been used to defend that stance. I do not think that Paul was trying
to say that knowledge, reason, or being smart was an affront to God. Okay,
maybe he was, but if so I wholeheartedly disagree with Paul on that point. Yet,
I do not think he was. Paul was schooled as a Pharisee. His knowledge of the
Law, his education and intellectualism would have been greatly admired and
respected in that culture. He was also a master of rhetoric. Even as he assured
the church in Corinth that he did
not come to them “proclaiming the mystery of God … in lofty words or wisdom,”
he was using wisdom and rhetoric. In verse 6 he seemingly contradicts
everything he said in verses 1 through 5.
I
didn’t come to you proclaiming God in words of wisdom, but on the other hand we
do speak wisdom to those who are mature. Wait, what? However, Paul stated that
the wisdom he and others who were spiritually mature understood was not the
same wisdom of that age and of the rulers of that time. This was wisdom about
God. The wisdom of God that he spoke was “secret and hidden.” It was wisdom
about mystery, yet mystery explained is no longer mystery. So what was Paul
talking about?
Paul
was not referring to a wisdom that comes from learning, but a wisdom that comes
as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God gives wisdom. The Spirit of God
reveals that which cannot be understood in any other way. We speak the wisdom
of God because of the Holy Spirit and because we see Christ crucified.
That
is not a literal seeing. That is a seeing of perception. As one commentator
pointed out, when Paul wrote about the cross it was in the language of
transformation, of seeing, of visualizing. The cross was no longer the
instrument of death that killed Jesus. It was more than a symbol of faith – no
matter how sacred. The cross was a lens in which those who believed, those who
had seen God revealed through the Holy Spirit, saw the world.
The
cross is a lens in which we who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit see
the world. We see the world through the cross, through Christ crucified. What
is the cross a symbol of? What does our knowledge of Jesus tell us, teach us
about God? If Jesus gave us the fullest vision and understanding of God, then
God must stand with the powerless and the vulnerable. God considers the least
of these. God loves even the most unlovable. God loves the world. God loves us
as we are, in flesh and blood. How do we know this? Because God became flesh
and blood.
This
Word made flesh went to the cross obediently. The cross may have been a method
of death and power for those who killed Jesus, but to us it is God’s
self-sacrificing love in the world and for the world. It is a symbol of God’s
power that is not based on might, but is based on love.
So
if we are speaking God’s wisdom, then we are speaking of wisdom that we know
with more than just the reason of our minds, but through the expanding of our
hearts. As those who believe, as those who have been given the gift of the
Spirit, we see the world through the lens of the cross.
Paul
ends this section by writing, “But we have the mind of Christ.” Does that mean
that we see perfectly or think perfectly? No, I don’t believe so because we are
not perfect beings. Even with the mind of Christ, our thoughts, our words, our
actions are still influenced by our contexts. Yet a commentator described
having the mind of Christ as having the imagination to see beyond what our
senses tell us. Having the mind of Christ is “imagination in action.” We are
able to imagine what God’s world, our world could be, should be, and we can put
our imaginations into action. We can imagine with our feet and our hands as
well as with our minds.
We
who have the mind of Christ are not limited to or by the world’s wisdom. The
world’s wisdom said that people who had darker skin pigmentation were not equal
to those with lighter – no matter how smart, creative or innovative they were.
But the wisdom of God says that the labels we use for others and the categories
we place others in are artificial. In Christ they are broken down. In Christ they
are revealed for the nonsense they are.
We
who have the mind of Christ recognize that what the world sees as folly and
foolishness is actually a revelation of God’s most wonderful love and grace. We
who have the mind of Christ have been given the gift to imagine what the world
could be and what it should be. We have the mind of Christ. We have imagination
in action. So let’s not only speak God’s wisdom, let’s witness to it with our
words, our hands and our feet. Thanks be to God.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.
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