In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.

This week I heard about a very foolish thing. This man was like many of us, feeling like he should cut down on the salt in his diet. But he had the thought that he should get rid of all salt from his diet. And so that whole sodium chloride—out, out it goes. And then he turned to the all-wise ChatGPT (you might have heard of it) and asked for some advice on what would be a good replacement if you are not going to use any of your table salt. And ChatGPT very kindly came up with a suggestion: a different kind of salt.

The irony, of course, is there are lots and lots of different salts, and not all of them are quite as safe as the nice table salt that our doctors want us to be measured in how we approach. And so, taking this other kind of salt, he managed to rather badly poison himself and had to have emergency medical treatment at the end of it all, as he was having terrible troubles with things like paranoia and hallucinations and other things.

So let that be a little bit of a warning to, you know, take measured advice from your AI and maybe not be quite so foolish with cutting out every last bit of salt from your diet. But regardless, that was pretty foolish.

Then you might have heard of another story that was pretty foolish. This guy heard that it was going to rain—it was going to rain a whole lot. And so he decided that what he really needed to do (in fact, he had this vision where God told him to do this) was to go out there on Main Street building this absurdly big boat. And it's, you know, nice sunny, dry weather. What's he doing with this? And everyone's making fun of him. And then it starts to rain and it keeps on raining. And it rains so much that the whole world floods.

And only that man, Noah, and his family were there to be preserved in the ark that he built at God's command. So, he was looking awfully foolish for all that time—those months, however long it took him to build that ark—but it was exactly the right thing that he needed to do. And anyone that would have listened to this foolish man would have been saved.

So, we can see it really matters who you're listening to, who you consider to be wise.

For you and me, it's difficult because we generally don't like to look like idiots or fools in our daily life. We actually go through quite a lot of effort to avoid that. And in the process, we can often lose sight of our purpose, our goal, our principles as we bend ourselves to the understanding, the priorities, the prejudices of those around us.

Our God takes the opposite approach. He looks only at the goal, the purpose, what He is working to accomplish, and is not worried at all about how foolish He may appear to us mortals.

And that, brothers and sisters, is why faith is so hard—because it's almost by definition that we are going to look like fools at a certain point when we live by faith. Because to live by faith means you don't see the whole way. If you were completely certain of all the different steps along the journey that you're expected to take, then there's no particular demand for faith, is there? You've got a very reasonable course of action and you're following it. Anyone would say to you, "That's reasonable." And even if it doesn't work out right, people would say, "Well, fair enough."

But God has allowed Himself to look very foolish indeed across the generations. He's allowed His creation to ignore Him, to mock Him, even to kill Him. He sent angels and prophets and even His Son, and most rejected them.

And as we hear in the epistle today, the Apostle Paul testifies how he and his fellow apostles have made a spectacle for all the world—like one of those road shows. Look at the bearded lady and the guy with two heads. And here's the apostles. What a bunch of idiots they are.

And he describes them all as "fools for Christ's sake." Fools for Christ's sake.

And there's a whole category of saints that we honor that are fools for Christ—those who were willing, as they followed the commands of God, to look foolish, even to look crazy while following the Gospel. And yet this foolishness for Christ's sake allowed them to say things that others would not dare to say.

You know, St. Basil's Cathedral right in Moscow—it's not the official name of the church (or collection of churches, really), but it's known as St. Basil's Cathedral because Basil the fool for Christ's sake was a terror to the Terrible Tsar. Ivan the Terrible—and he was the one who would speak prophetically when no one else would dare cross this ruler that, you know, has the name "Terrible" right there, giving you a clue of what kind of guy he was.

The world we live in is crazy in so many ways. We live in a society where very often it celebrates ugliness. Crassness is seen as clever. Marriage is becoming an endangered species. And those who dare to uphold the good, to speak the truth in various ways, are told, "You are crazy."

And this, of course, reminds me of the saying of one of the great desert fathers who warned us exactly of this. He said to his disciples, "There will come a time when all the world goes mad, and they will say to those few who are sane, 'You are mad.'"

Might sound kind of familiar. In fact, I suspect that there are more than a few of you who are here in the church today, among other things, because this is a place where we dare to speak the truth about various things that people in general society aren't allowed to say. And we simply affirm certain realities as the truth. Nothing fancy. And that's enough to draw people through.

Brothers and sisters, the pattern that we're shown is something that should reassure us even as it sobers us in our daily life. That yes, we live in a world that's gone crazy and we're wondering, "Where does it end?" But remember St. Paul, remember Noah, remember so many of the saints and prophets and martyrs who have gone before us. They've shown us a pattern of faithfulness even at the cost of being foolish—more than that, at the cost even of their very lives.

We have to be willing to follow where God leads us, wherever it goes.

In the Gospel today, no one was able to heal that man's son who desperately needed healing except Jesus Christ alone. And when the disciples asked why they could not, He told them, "Because of your lack of faith"—that if they had even the smallest grain, as small as a mustard seed, that would be sufficient to accomplish these amazing, unbelievable, foolish things.

But these same disciples, having seen Jesus accomplish this work of healing that no one else could do, when they hear Jesus tell them this foolish thing—that He must go to the cross and be killed and rise the third day—they are exceedingly sorrowful. He has done this wonderful good thing, and they still do not have the faith to trust Him as He leads them towards the cross.

But we know that for us, the cross is life, and it is the measurement of our life. It tells us what really matters, what life is really worth, what my life and your life is really worth. Because there we see the cost that God has been willing to pay to redeem you, to make you whole, to take you from the pit of destruction and place you securely in His kingdom.

And it was doing exactly what Jesus told His disciples He was going to do—to go to the cross, to die, to be raised the third day. That's what the cross means.

And we understand that the whole world needs it, even though the world considers the cross foolishness—great foolishness. Nevertheless, it needs it. And so the only thing we can do in response to that, if we are going to follow Christ, is to take up that crazy cross and follow it.

Dare to be a little foolish, brothers and sisters. Dare to be a little foolish and bring the light and life of the world to a world that's calling crazy. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.