These familiar verses in Exodus are pretty easy to understand.  The God of the universe lays out a divine set of guidelines as to how to relate to the Godhead and how to relate to our neighbor.   Then God writes it in stone and hands it to the man who is the people’s liberator.  The liberator – Moses, reads the rules, slowly and clearly in front of the whole nation and they say “Great!  Now we know what God wants of us.  We thank God for bringing us up out of slavery.  We will show our appreciation for all God has done by following these ten simple rules!”  Then as soon as Moses turns his back and they mistakenly think God isn’t looking, they set about breaking each and every one of them just as fast as they can.

            The God of the universe understandably gets pretty peeved.  “You numbskulls!  Forget the whole deal!  I’m going to let you die right here in the middle of the wilderness!”  (“Amen!  Good for you God”, says the wisdom of the world.)  Moses intercedes in behalf of the people.  “You’re right!  We are a bunch of numbskulls, (Darn right you are!) but we’re you’re bunch of numbskulls.”  God relents – foolishness!  For the next thousand years God foolishly tries to correct and guide the people by calling judges and kings and priests and prophets.  They all speak the truth of God to the people over and over again and again.  The people listen, say how wonderful the words are, compliment the judge, king, priest or prophet on what a good job he or she is doing, then turn around and do the very thing they know they shouldn’t – the very thing they’ve been told over and over again and again they shouldn’t. 

            So after a thousand years or so of that, God throws up the divine hands, exclaims “Enough is enough!!  I tried to warn you!  But you wouldn’t listen!”  (“Alright!  God is finally making some sense”, says the wisdom of the world.)  “We don’t need God’s help.  We can defend ourselves with the help of our friends and their horses and chariots and swords” say the people.  The people are wrong.  Their temple is torn down and they are dragged away into Babylonian captivity.  (“It’s about time” says the wisdom of the world.) 

            While they are there the people cry out.  “We’re sorry!”  “It won’t happen again.”  “Please have mercy on us.”  And God foolishly (or so the world thinks) relents once more.  They are freed from captivity, lead home by God through a blooming desert on a highway with the high spots leveled out and the low spots lifted up and when they get home they’re allowed to rebuild their temple and re-establish the temple practices. 

            You would think they would have learned by now that all God wants of them is to follow those simple rules which were laid out for them so many centuries before. “Worship me alone as your God and treat the rest of humanity with respect and justice.”  You would think that they could do that and just that.  No smelly burnt offerings.  No fluffy and flowing words.  Learn to hate evil and love good.  You would think that by now they could just learn to “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” 

            But no!  They place more emphasis on burnt sacrifices than justice, more importance on the right words and songs than on right relationships.  They trust more in human reason and our ability to understand and follow any little nuance of the Law, rather than trusting on the mercy of God.  They see strict adherence to every letter of the Law as the way to salvation, the way to please God, so they define the law down to the smallest bit of minutia.  And in so doing, they end up forgetting God’s mercy and the very purpose of the Law in the first place; which is to establish the right relationship between humanity and God and the right relationship between us and our neighbors.

            Then God foolishly tries once again.  God sends Jesus into the world to reconcile the world back to the divine self.  Jesus comes to the temple and he can’t believe that yet again they have forgotten the whole point of faith.  The people have placed so much emphasis on offering up the right kind of animal they have forgotten the meaning of sacrifice.  They have placed so much importance on the physical temple as the dwelling place of God that they can’t see God dwelling in each other.  So Jesus foolishly stands up to them.  He picks up a whip and starts driving moneychangers, merchants and animals from the outer temple!  What foolishness is this?  To stand at the very heart of the religious establishment, the center of ritual worship and to tell them they have it wrong.  “God is doing a new thing in me.  I replace the Temple you have built with stones and mortar. God now dwells in me not in a cold hard temple.  And this temple, this residence of God will be torn down by you who don’t believe and won’t listen to God, but God will prove you wrong by raising this body up again after three days.” 

            “Foolishness!” says the world.  They just don’t understand.  But we who are walking in the way of salvation know better.  The foolishness of God is wiser than any wisdom we can contrive, because the foolishness of God is based on the inexplicable and unending love and mercy of God.  It is a foolishness that saves the world.  Christ dies a national disgrace, a criminal on a cross without a penny to his name or a friend in the world.  The wisdom of the world says “look out for number one.  Don’t get involved.  Play it safe.  Watch your back.”   But the wisdom of God says; "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose themselves?”  In other words those who live a safe and self-centered life will save it, but it won’t be a life worth living.

            A while back I saw an interview with Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple.  The reason for the interview was that she had just been arrested.  No, not for drugs or drinking and driving or any of the other things we think of when we hear of celebrities being arrested.  She had been arrested while protesting the war.  She stuck her neck out and ended up in jail.  When asked how she felt about it, she replied; “I was the happiest I have ever been, because I did what I had to do.”  Whether you are for the war or not, you have to marvel at that.   How foolish is it to be yourself?  How foolish is it to act on your faith, to do what you believe is right with little regard for your own comfort or safety? 

            Lent is a time when we are called to make a sacrifice.  We make a resolution – a promise to ourselves and more importantly to God to give something up.  Then every time we have a craving for that special something, we are forced to think about God, to think about our promise. 

            I never used to make that resolution.  I couldn’t, in good conscience, make a promise to give-up something, even something as insignificant as chocolate, knowing I would probably break that promise.  I thought it better not to make it at all than to make it and break it.   That is the wisdom of the world, the logic of reason.  But I’ve come to a new understanding of giving something up for Lent.  I do make that promise of giving something up.  I do go out on a limb.  But now, when I break that promise I am so much more aware of the goodness of God, because I know I am forgiven.  After all, it’s not that we can be perfect that counts.  We can’t.  It’s understanding that God loves us even when we are not, that count. 

            The wisdom of the world says that God should only reward good behavior by offering gifts-- blessings.  The foolishness of God says, “I love you even though you can’t stop turning away from me.”  The wisdom of the world says, “Keep your head down.  Mind your own business.”  The foolishness of God keeps on calling us to hate evil and to love good, to work for the reconciliation of the world.  

            Right from the beginning of creation our God has not been ashamed to demonstrate foolishness.  When we boil it down to the very essentials there really isn’t a lot that goes into making life work.  As simple as nature can be, God foolishly decides to expend tremendous creative energy to make the world beautiful and interesting and fun.  The colorful riot and enticing fragrance of spring flowers, the boisterous cacophony of the dawn chorus, the audacious beauty of a sunset.  God endows the natural world with an extravagance of beauty and wonder.  How foolish is a peacock?   What bird needs that many feathers and so big?  How outrageous is the sound of a flock of geese honking?  What animal needs to make that much noise?  Why does a baby’s head smell so good? 

            Why do humans sing and dance?  What foolishness is that?  Our lungs are only needed for breathing.  Our legs are only needed for walking so we can hunt food.  Our hands are only needed for putting it in our mouths.  Yet, we can and we want to write poems and plays.  We kiss and sing.   We have emotions like; fear and anger and love.  How much easier the world would be if we just kept our heads down and always did what is right, what is necessary to exist.  It is God’s foolish choice to give us beauty and the freedom to have independent thought.  

            It is God’s foolish choice to let us make mistakes.  And it is God’s foolishness to come to us, even while we are still in our sin and offer us the way to a better life – a life filled with beauty and goodness and wonder and love.  It is God’s foolishness that gives us a Savior who is Christ the Lord.