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Apr 01, 2018

Embrace the “Folly”...

Embrace the “Folly”...

Passage: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Easter 2018

Our cultural moment makes us suspicious of strong truth claims--especially those spoken with great confidence. We think someone’s trying to peddle something; or we think they’re not adequately aware of the complexity of reality. If the apostle Paul is confident about anything, it’s that the cross of Jesus was the defining moment in human history; neither suffering nor the constant threat of death challenged that confidence. But you can’t accuse Paul of lacking in self-awareness. He knew (and himself said) that “if we have this hope for this life only we are men most to be pitied.” He recognizes how this world thought the cross foolish and yet to his dying day he insisted all men take stock of it. On this Easter Sunday we’d like to consider again why it might be wisdom to embrace this “folly.”

Order of Worship

Call To Worship: based on John 20
Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 9:23,24
New Testament Reading: Mark 16:1-6 (ESV)
Sermon Title: Embrace the “Folly”....
Central Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Benediction: Romans 8: 35, 37-39
Post-Service Text: 1 Corinthians 1:25

04.01.18 Lyrics

04.01.18 Sermon Slides

Quotes:

  • If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. The Apostle Paul
  • Few sophisticated people today profess a belief in heaven and hell, the literal truth of the Bible, or a God who flouts the laws of physics. . . .To take something on faith means to believe it without good reason, so by definition a faith in the existence of supernatural entities clashes with reason. . . . If we want to make the world a better place we have to figure out how to do it ourselves. . . .If you’re going to count on God to make the world a better place, then you’re probably going to make the world a worse place. Steven Pinker
  • If Marx posited that religion is the opiate of the people, then we have reached a new, more clarifying moment in the history of the West: Opiates are now the religion of the people…More than 2 million Americans are now hooked on some kind of opioid, and drug overdoses — from heroin and fentanyl in particular — claimed more American lives last year than were lost in the entire Vietnam War. Overdose deaths are higher than in the peak year of AIDS and far higher than fatalities from car crashes.  Andrew Sullivan
  • I love the concept of original sin, the idea that we’re all fundamentally broken and fundamentally incomplete. . . .because it seems to be such a useful starting point. You know, if you imagine a relationship in which two people think they’re great—you know, perfect—that’s going to lead to intolerance and terrible disappointment when they realize that they’re not great, they’re not perfect. Whereas imagine a relationship that begins under the idea that two people are quite broken and therefore they need forgiveness from the other and they need to apply charity to the other and they need to forgive the other, and so that seems a much better starting point. Alain de Botton
  • One has only the choice between God and idolatry,” Weil wrote. “If one denies God ... one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”  Darcey Steinke, Easter Everywhere
  • And did you get what
    you wanted from this life, even so?
    I did.
    And what did you want?
    To call myself beloved, to feel myself
    beloved on the earth.
    - “Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver

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