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[Music] Soliloquy of an April Fool, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Do not go beyond what is written.

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Then you will not take pride in one man over against another. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?

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Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. You have become king. And that without us.

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How I wish that you really had become king, so that we might be kings with you. For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession. Like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe.

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To angels as well as to men. We are full for Christ. But you are so wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong.

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You are honored. We are dishonored. To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty. We are in rags.

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We are brutally treated. We are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed we bless.

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When we are persecuted we endure it. When we are slandered we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth and the refuse of the world. And may the same spirit that inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding.

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Amen. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Of all of Andrew Carnegie's great gifts to the city of Pittsburgh, none surely is finer than the gift of the magnificent library in Oakland. He gave it to this city in November of 1895. Today the collection houses more than two and three quarters million volumes, all free to the people. The section of the library which I make use of most often is the reference section,

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and I made use of them this last week when I tried to discover about the beginnings of April Fool's Day. It seems that April Fool's Day came about in 1564 when Pope Gregory decided to change the first day of the year from April 1st to January 1st. There were some people who resisted this change, and people began to chide them and make jokes about their insistence on starting the year April 1st. These people came to be known as April Fools.

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Well, ever since that time, of course, April 1st has not been the beginning of a new year. But in a sense, it's the beginning of a new era for us as pastor and people. So as I sought the leading of the Holy Spirit into what we should think about this morning, I felt led by him to these chapters in 1 Corinthians, specifically the third and the fourth chapters,

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where Paul talks about being fools for Christ's sake. I speak then this morning to the theme, "The Soliloquy of an April Fool." It seems to me that great persons have great emotions. Those who can have their hearts lifted the most high can also find themselves to be pushed down to the deepest despair.

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The Apostle Paul, for example, hated Christ and the things of Christ with a murderous zeal before his conversion. But no one loved Christ and the things of Christ more after his conversion than did Paul. He was a great man, and so he knew great emotions. Here in these chapters in Corinthians, we encounter those emotions.

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The Corinthians were engaged in a squabble as to which of their pastors was the most important and significant. Was it Paul? Was it Apollos? Was it Cephas? Paul, writing to them, says, "You must grow up. You must not be so immature. All ministers," he says, "are the servants of God and the stewards of the mystery of God."

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Now when Paul uses the word "servant," he uses a very interesting word. It refers to the individual who was on the third row of a great pryrene. A pryrene was a Greek or Roman vessel of war, and it was propelled through the waters by three rows of rowers, oarsmen. And the word that Paul uses refers to those who are on the bottom level.

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No oarsman, you see, is to be preferred over any other. In fact, it is as they row in perfect harmony that the ship will best be moved through the water. Then he adds to that picture by saying that ministers are not only rowers together for God, but they are also to be the stewards of God.

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And the word "steward" refers to that one who was put in charge of the slaves within a household. Now while this steward directed the activities of the other slaves, the steward himself was also a slave. And in the economy of the Church, what Paul is saying is this. There are some who, by virtue of gift or election and ordination, are put into positions of responsibility.

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There are teaching elders and ruling elders and deacons. But all of these, he says, though they may be leading in the affairs of Christ, are like everyone else, the servants or the slaves of Christ. The Church is pictured here, you see, as a great ship.

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Christ is the pilot. And the rowers down below are the ministers. And they serve with everyone else, even when in leadership positions as slaves. Thereof, then, Paul says, to be no bickering over who is best.

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For we all row and serve together. During my conversations with the pastoral nominating committee of this Church, one of the members of the Church said to me, "You know, there are the shadows of some great pastors still to be found in First Church. How do you think you can get along with those shadows?"

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And I replied, "Well, in the first place, I cast a rather large shadow myself." But then, turning away from the facetious, I went on to say that I look upon those men as my teammates, as my brothers in Christ. Because Samuel Barr, the first pastor of this Church, went east and got the land grant on which this building now stands, I don't have to do it. Because Robert Steele opened the first real Sunday school in America in this place, that task does not wait to be done.

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Francis Heron preached here 49 years, a record I cannot hope to equal. William Poshton created sermons which were like finely tuned legal briefs, a skill utterly beyond myself. Sylvester Scovel held this congregation together when the nation was being pulled apart by the war between the states. George Purvis was the greatest orator, perhaps, ever to stand in this holy place.

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David Breed called this church to minister to the city. And Maitland Alexander insisted on staying here when many churches were moving to the suburbs. And he called this church to always be the church, to be open and composed with people from all classes, and to have a ministry not only of preaching, but of also serving this city.

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Clarence McCartney was the great master of public relations and the defender of covenantal orthodoxy. Robert J. Lamont brought this church to its greatest membership, expanded the radio ministry, entered into significant building campaigns here and at the camp. John Huffman had a great heart for the young people and the young families of this congregation.

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Ernest Lewis led this church to task finally its greatest untapped resource, the leadership of its magnificent women. All of these men have done great and significant things, things I could not do because of time or because of place or because of lack of ability. But I stand as one with them. We rose together. We are slaves together. The history of this place is my history. My brothers stand with me. Their shadows make me feel warm.

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And none are to be preferred, not Paul or Apollos or Cephas, not McCartney or Lamont or Longstreet or Thielman. All are one, rowing, serving the common Christ. This is what Paul says first to the Corinthians. But then he goes on. He goes on to call them to being fools for Christ's sake.

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He says in the third chapter, "Reject the wisdom of the world." And he says in the fourth chapter, "Like the apostles, be fools for the sake of Jesus." And then he spells out what that foolishness means. And he identifies specifically three things. First he says, "Let every disciple of Jesus be foolish enough to care finally only for the judgment of God."

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He points out that he is not going to be judged by those about him. He is not even going to judge himself. His only judge is God. We are all surrounded by critics. Critics in the form of other people, critics in the form of the questions we address to ourselves, and the divine critic, our Father God. Paul says, "Never be dismayed by the criticisms that come from others.

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Hear them." He hears the Corinthians. He would not be writing this letter to them had he not heard them and wanted to respond to them. And what he says to them is this, "I hear what you say and it matters to me, but finally it does not matter much." You say, "But this is the Paul who said we are to serve one another, and counsel one another, and reprove one another, and be subject to one another." Yes, this is the Paul who said these things. He is not saying that we are to ignore each other.

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Paul was willing to become all things to all men, that he might win some, not that he might please any. Paul says, "Do not surrender to the tyranny of others." Who is it whose criticism makes you feel small? Who is it whose words intimidate you and push you down?

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Who is it that makes you uncertain about yourself in the midst of a world that seems to major in uncertainty? Whoever that person is, listen to them, but then put their counsel and their judgment on the back burner of your life. And as you do not listen to them, Paul says, "Do not succeed to the judgment of yourself." "Oh, but," you say, "isn't this the Paul who said, 'I am the chief of sinners'?" Yes, it is.

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Paul examined himself, but he was wise enough to know that his judgments with regard to himself were often wrong. He could call himself innocent when he was quite guilty. He could call himself guilty when he was quite innocent. You see, when we judge ourselves, we are often tough and more often tricky. Many of us major on our minors. We focus on those things that are ugly within us to the detriment of our ministry in the world.

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But more than that, we often rationalize what we do. A student doesn't do well on a test and says to the professor, "The test was too hard. You didn't teach us clearly." "My parents intimidate me about grades, and so I choked." A corporate executive bribes the leaders of some foreign nation and justifies himself on the grounds that what he is doing, he is doing for the good of America.

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I read the testimony of a prostitute who said that she saw her work as a kind of ministry to the lonely people of the street. We're very gifted at conning ourselves. So Paul says, "Don't surrender to your own judgment with regard to yourself." God is the only judge. He is the judge we cannot escape.

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Though we take the wings of the morning, we cannot outrun him. He has us wiretapped. He knows our motives. He knows our desires. He knows our crops before they become action. But this critic of ours, this divine critic who knows all and who sees all, loves us all the way to a cross.

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This judge is also our savior. This critic is our best friend. There is now no condemnation, Paul writes, to those who are in Christ Jesus. "Be a fool for Christ's sake!" cries out the apostle, which means you accept as your only final judge the judgment of God. And then he hurries on to say another thing, "Be foolish enough to recognize that we are all together dependent upon God and on one another."

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He writes, "What do you have that you did not receive, and why do you boast of it as if it were not a gift?" Paul, Apollos, Cethas, what they had, they had received from others. This world, when we are born, we open our eyes and there it is. We can invent the telegraph, but none of us can invent a blade of grass.

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None of us can make springtime. The capacities that we have, the eyes with which we see, the ears with which we hear, the bent and the bias of our personalities coming out of our heredity and our environment and our experience of God, all this is gift. Our knowledge. We often describe ourselves as self-made people,

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when in fact every day we use telephones we don't understand, we watch television we could not hope to duplicate if the challenge and task was ours, and some of us ride in airplanes still caught up in mystery when that big heavy thing moves up into the sky. And what about love? All of the love we receive is a gift.

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Love by definition must be a gift. Compelled love is not love on a human level or on a divine level. And that is the reason God's love to us is gift. And he says, "Hosts, come to the waters and drink. Receive ye the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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If any man will open the door, I will come into him. Thank, be to God, for his unspeakable gift." Love, hope, freedom, inspiration, liberty, revelation, all gift. We have earned none of them.

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We are so tied to each other, to the generations before, to our fathers and our fathers' fathers, to our ancestors in the faith, and to the God who is the author of it all. We got up this morning, and the gift of life in this day is a gift from God. We took off our pajamas. They were invented originally by the East Indians.

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We washed ourselves with soap. It was the Gauls that thought that up. The gentlemen amongst us shaved, and razors were invented by the Sumerians. And they're made out of steel, which is an iron-carbon alloy which was developed in Turkestan. We sit down at the breakfast table, and the cloth on it is made of cotton,

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which comes either from Alabama or Uganda. We cut our meat or our food using our breakfast utensils, and that cutlery was made in Germany with nickel, which came from Canada, and vanadium, which came from Peru.

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We drink a cup of tea from Sri Lanka or a cup of coffee from Colombia. We have a slice of Canadian bacon, and then we have an egg, which might have come from about here or from 30 other countries. We sit down and we read the paper, which was invented by the Chinese.

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The words on it are put there in Arabic characters, and the printing process was developed by the Germans. Then we get into our car, which is French or Japanese or German or English or American, and we ride on Burmese rubber over Belgian block streets

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to hear a man talk out of a Greek and Hebrew book in an Indo-European language. What have we that we have not received? How then can we boast of it? And may I digress for a moment to say,

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if you expect me to offer from this pulpit each time you come here something that's worth listening to, something that is in some way a prophet, then you will have to understand that I must have the time to think and to pray and to work. For even as the gospel, which I announce from here is a gift,

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so the words and the illustrations and the examples which I use, they come to me from the minds and the thoughts of a multitude of others, and that takes time. None of us, you see, are self-made, not Paul, not Apollos, not Thebes.

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And Paul says, "Be foolish enough to recognize how we are tied first to God, and then tied to one another." And finally, Paul says, "True disciples believe in the foolishness of the cross." And here his words become very sarcastic and ironic.

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Some commentators say his words are scathing, but if he hurts, it is to heal. He pictured a Roman triumph. A triumph was when a general returned from the field victorious. He was given a triumphal procession.

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He rode at the front himself. Then behind him would come the victorious troops, carrying the trophies, the spoils of the war which they had fought and won. And at the very end of the procession would come some of the captured enemies

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who were going to be put to death in the arena. And they were forced to chant as they marched through the streets, "Te moriturvis salutam." "Before we die, we salute you."

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And Paul says to the Corinthians, "You are like the commanding generals. You are like those soldiers who hold up the trophies of war." "But those of us who are apostles," he says, "the disciples of Jesus, we come at the end of the procession saying, 'Te moriturvis salutam."

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"Before we die, we salute you." We are the ones that are looked upon as being foolish, because we believe that a crucified carpenter and a bunch of fishers, without any royal support, without any schools to teach their doctrines,

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without any armies to carry their banners, and with no finances with which to undertake their goals and desires, are going to finally win the world. We believe that a crucified carpenter and crucified disciples who follow after him,

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through the folly of the gospel, will by the power of the cross, bring this world to the feet of God. And what Paul announced as foolishness, twenty centuries of history have proved to be true.

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The Church has been attacked by heresies. It has been laden and crippled sometimes by its own riches. Its buildings have been brought down to the ground. Its clergy have been declared the enemies of the state.

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But still, true believers gathered in cellars, and there they read the scriptures, and broke the bread, and drank the wine, and showed forth the Lord's death until he come. The dark ages came, but when they passed away,

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the light of faith almost being extinguished, when the curtain went up on a new time, there sat Aquinas, where Aristotle had been. The onslaught of Islam attacks the faith in Europe.

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Darwin comes back from the Galapagos Islands with a manuscript which many people said would be the death warrant of Christianity, but it has not died. And even today, there are those in the Church

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who are tied so tightly to our reactionary society that they will finally and inevitably be blown away by the anger of the hungry and the poor of the world. But there are still within the Church

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those who believe in the power of the cross. They shall go down into the grave, but they shall rise spotless from the tomb. I do not understand this.

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I do not understand why God has chosen to haunt history through the death and the resurrection of his friends. But so it is. Our hope is not in the signs of the times.

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We are the fools at the end of the procession who cry out, "Tamor, atur, solitamus!" Before we die, we salute you. We are the meek who will in the end inherit the earth.

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We hear the cry of God that brings the followers of the faith always up out of the grave, to life through death. "Be foolish enough to believe that," says Paul, "if you would be one of Christ's disciples."

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So this morning we begin our ministry together. I come to you in my 50th year. As far as I have been able to discover, I am the oldest man you have ever called to this pulpit.

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I said to your committee, and I say to you now, before God, that I have come to serve you and to serve with you until I die, or until my time of service is done.

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I commit myself to you as a rower with other rowers, as a slave with other slaves. I will not surrender to your judgment or my own, for my judge is God.

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I recognize that my dependence is upon him and all of you, and call you to the recognition that we are in dependence upon one another. And I give myself with all my heart to the belief that it is through the foolishness of living and dying for Christ,

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through the power of the cross, that the world will be saved. What I say to you, I have said to my own soul. So, if this be folly, then let the world make the most of it. Christus moriturus soliton.

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Let us pray. In this moment of commitment, our Father, we offer ourselves to thee. Use us as thou wilt, in death or life, to bring forth thy kingdom in this place

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to the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. [end of transcript]