Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom.  We might translate this into modern terms: spiritual sorts of people look for signs and intellectual sorts of people look for explanations.  The most common difficulties people have with religion are forms of those two things: either some version of spiritual dissatisfaction: “I don’t get anything out of it” or “I expect an angel to appear to me and that hasn’t happened” or something like that; or, some version of intellectual dissatisfaction: “I don’t immediately understand this and I think of myself as being too smart or well-educated to go in for superstitions.”  Turns out those modern objections are just today’s version of the same old thing: “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.”  And while we might gravitate towards one side or the other, honestly probably every one of us has been a Jew at some point, and been a Greek at some point, in this respect.  But St. Paul says, you’re missing the whole point.  Although there are signs, and there are explanations…that’s not what this is actually about.  This is about Christ Crucified: and Christ Crucified is the power of God (“signs”) and the wisdom of God (“explanations”).  

But St. Paul admits that the Cross is stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles; the Cross is not a particularly warm and fuzzy thing, so it doesn’t do much for spiritual types.  Nor does willingly handing oneself over to certain death at the hands of a weaker enemy make a whole lot of sense on a strategic level: so the Cross doesn’t do much for intellectual types either.  It’s a paradox, on both levels.  The Cross is a spiritual paradox and an intellectual paradox too.  It's even shaped like a paradox: it has a collision in the middle of it.  It’s a stumbling block to the spiritual, and foolishness to the intellectual. St. Paul’s answer to this puzzle is that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.  What we perceive as foolish or weak is the farthest thing from those in actual reality.  So when you think, for example, about the laws that God gives us to observe, as we saw in today’s First Reading: we tend instinctively to mistrust law and government.  Our experience of these things is highly, highly inconsistent.  So isn’t it weak, and foolish, to bind oneself to some ancient morality-code from the Middle East?  That’s dumb and naïve.  And that would be true in fact, it would be weak and foolish to do that, except that the Cross of Christ is real: the Cross of Christ really is the center of human history, it really is the most important thing that has ever been.  The Cross is power and wisdom in the most profound possible sense of those words.  God proves his love for us on the Cross, and he proves that he is who he claims to be, in the Resurrection. 

This means that for spiritual types, the Cross is the most powerful sign and source of comfort and consolation.  It means that for intellectual types, the Cross is the most powerful source of meaning and depth of reason.  It means that the laws God gives us, such as those in the Ten Commandments, are trustworthy and reliable, both on a technical level and on the level of the heart.  And whether we individually tend to lead with our head or with our heart, since every one of us is both soul and mind, all wrapped up in the mystery of the body, the Cross is the answer both to our intellectual questions and to our deepest spiritual longings.  The Cross is everything.  In the words of a beautiful Easter poem written by a 19th century Irishman Thomas Kelly, “The cross He bore is life and health, though shame and death to Him: His people’s hope, His people’s wealth, their everlasting theme.”  The Cross is our Hope, our Treasure, and the underlying theme, not only of our individuals Lives, but of all created reality.  We see it so vividly in the Gospel scene, after our Lord has cast out the money-changers from the temple.  “What sign can you show us?”  Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” [That’s the sign.  There’s the meaning.]  He was speaking about the temple of his body.  [That’s what pulls all of this together.]  Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.”  That’s why we’re not just a spirituality or a philosophy or a set of traditions: we subscribe to a view of reality that defines and informs everything.  And that reality is the Love of God, emanating from the centerpoint of all history, and that centerpoint is the meeting of the two beams of the Holy Cross, the exact place where all things are brought to fulfillment and completion in Christ.  The Cross stands while the World turns.  We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.  Because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.