A couple weeks ago on Sunday at St. Luke’s we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Cross. Rev. Dr. Randall R. Warren set the stage for the celebration in the homily. He introduced us to a “fool for Christ,” named St. Nicholas the Cabbagehead.
St. Nicholas the Cabbagehead
St. Nicholas the Cabbagehead was a very pious youth. People noticed this. And as he grew older, they praised him for it. He decided he didn’t want a big head, so he gave up everything to be a fool for Christ.
He lived on the streets. He wore rags. He acted wild and crazy. He lived on the edge of society and said things people didn’t want to hear. He was unpopular.
People did not see him as a saint until after he died. They just saw him as a fool.
But he and another fool for Christ showed them how foolish the feud dividing the city was. They fought each other every time they met, just to teach the people a lesson. During one fight, St. Nicholas threw a cabbage at the head of the other fool. And that’s how he got his name.
A Little Bit of Play
According to Rev. Randall, being a fool for Christ means acting crazy, wild, and playful in order to give up the ego.
And, as Rev. Randall said, giving up is Jesus’ way. He did it by dying on the cross.
At the end of the service, Rev. Randall held up a cross in the cardinal directions and led us in prayers for the whole world. To add an element of play to the liturgy, he asked us to hold scarves in the air during the prayers.
He explained in the homily: play helps us let go of the ego and discover the presence of God. And that’s why it’s good to be foolish and silly sometimes. Christianity isn’t all seriousness. Some aspects of it appear foolish.
Foolish Appearances
For instance, a feast of the holy cross would seem as foolish in the 1st century as a feast of the electric chair would seem to us, as Rev. Randall said.
And, he also observed, using a little piece of bread and a sip of wine as an eternal memorial of Christ’s sacrifice seems foolish. After all, bread goes “moldy and stale.”
But God’s logic is paradoxical. God “invites us to the foolishness of the cross,” Rev. Randall stated, so we can let go of our egos, making room for God.
And that’s why Rev. Randall had us hold up the scarves during the prayers, so we could be playful, silly, foolish. So we could encounter God.
Great homily!
About the Ego
Lately I’ve been thinking of the ego as the root of sin. Even though I don’t like the word “sin.”
It’s when we indulge our egos that we hurt other people and hurt ourselves. So the idea that letting go of the ego makes room for God fits right in to my thinking. Gotta love it.
And the homily was clearly rooted in the passages for the day. Let’s take a moment to look at them more closely.
Numbers 21:4b-9
The reading from Numbers told a story about the Israelites complaining in the wilderness, something they seemed to do a lot. God punished them for it by sending poisonous serpents which bit and killed many of them. The Israelites repented and God had Moses make a bronze serpent. If the people looked at the serpent when they were bit, they would live.
Rev. Randall pointed out that God provided the “healing at the moment of pain.” He speculated that could be because we’re more open when we need something.
He also said that God’s tent was in the center of the camp for the forty years in the wilderness. God was with the Israelites. He didn’t leave the center of the camp until they didn’t need him there anymore.
Some Questions
He didn’t address something I struggle with. What kind of God would punish people by sending poisonous serpents to bite them?
Wouldn’t a God of unconditional love understand when people doubt the path he is leading them on, especially if the path is difficult? Wouldn’t he understand frustration, complaints, and questions? Wouldn’t he accept our weaknesses?
Rev. Randall emphasized that God sent healing at the point of pain. But why did God send the pain? Does God really punish us? Does God send suffering? Does God want us to suffer?
When the Bible says that God punishes the Israelites, is the lesson that God is in control of life and death, suffering and joy? Was God trying to teach them to trust him, to accept the path he was leading them on?
Does God allow us to suffer when we stray from his will to teach us we can find healing by trusting him?
The Ego, Again
Does this all have something to do with the ego?
It is the ego that questions God, that doubts God, that refuses to surrender to God’s will. When the ego takes over our lives, we suffer. A part of us dies. But when we surrender our ego and put our lives in God’s hands, God heals us.
Sometimes it takes suffering to teach us to surrender our egos and let God lead. Suffering opens us to God.
When Suffering Is a Blessing
Case in point: mental illness nearly destroyed me. For a long time, I felt like I’d lost everything. I wanted to die.
But my suffering blessed me too. To make sense of my suffering, I searched for God in other traditions and in meditation. Eventually I wandered back to Christianity, but in the meantime I learned to quiet my mind and found a peace that quickly returns to me after my mind takes an ego trip.
I also learned a process for confronting and transforming my judgments into more positive thoughts.
I feel that I am more aware of the presence of God in my daily life than I have ever been. Without my mental illness, I wouldn’t have gotten to this place. It has been essential to my spiritual growth.
Who’s to say I would be happier without it? It has been excruciating, but there has been healing in the pain.
I Corinthians 1:18-24
According to the reading from Corinthians, “the message of the cross” appears to be “foolishness” but it is really “the power of God.”
What is the message of the cross? That God works through suffering to provide healing? That God makes us right with God? That God saves us from our ego?
How can something so dishonorable as being executed like a criminal be the way we are saved? It seems foolish. But really, how could it be any other way? What could be more dramatic than God incarnating and dying for us?
Salvation isn’t glamorous. It is awe-inspiring, but not glamorous.
John 3: 13-17
In the reading from John, Jesus compares himself to the serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness. While the serpent extended the Israelites’ earthly life, Jesus transforms our earthly lives into eternal life.
Let me qualify how I understand eternal life in relationship to salvation.
In my mind, the salvation Jesus brings us is for this life. It is having a relationship with God in this life, experiencing our oneness with God in this life, experiencing our divinity in this life, experiencing eternal life in this life, coming to the point where we know death is just a transition from one experience of God to the next.
I used to be tripped up by this passage from John because it emphasizes belief. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Christianity to Me
I don’t believe the Bible is literally true. I don’t believe we can know if things really happened the way the Bible says they happened. But I believe studying the Bible is a way of understanding the mystery of God.
There is a rich history of Christian theology and mysticism which provides many ways of understanding God. There are as many Christianities as there are Christians.
To me being a Christian means practicing Christianity more than believing Christianity. And it means using the Bible to better understand my own relationship with God.
Belief in this passage suggests to me looking up to Jesus, turning to Jesus for help, relying on my relationship with Jesus to get me through.
God with Us
One of the points Rev. Randall made in his homily was that Jesus came to be with us, to experience human life from birth to death.
He came to be with us like God was with the Israelites in the wilderness. And he continues to be with us as the Holy Spirit.
Who could be better to rely on than a God who knows what my life is like?
So What Does God Want from Us?
It seems to me that God’s will for us is that we learn to be free from the tyranny of the ego, put others first, and experience oneness with the divine.
And, as Rev. Randall teaches, letting go of the ego means, at least in part, risking being foolish.
Foolishness for Me
I can’t go out and be a fool for Christ like St. Nicholas the Cabbagehead. I think that would be too extreme for most modern people. In my case, I can’t risk being homeless and living without my medication. I would probably die.
But I can risk telling my story and being open about my experiences and ideas. I can acknowledge my mental illness publicly even though that may appear foolish.
I can also talk about the consequences of my mental illness, like my tendency to oversleep. Even though that’s a little embarrassing.
I can be open about the other spiritual traditions and disciplines that inspire me, even though some Christians won’t approve.
I can work at being true to myself.
Maybe it will appear foolish to some people that I am embracing Christianity now and going deeper into it although I believe that all major religions (and most minor ones) are paths to the same God. And even though I have been wounded by a more conservative, fundamentalist approach to Christianity.
Being foolish to me means taking risks, being vulnerable. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
What about You?
What does it mean to be foolish to you? In what ways are you willing to risk seeming foolish? What rewards do you see in seeming foolish? Share in the comments.
