sermons
Something New
The Power of Jesus
Lydia Shiu
May 24, 2026
1 Corinthians 2:1-16 (New International Version)
1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a]
2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.
4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,
5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[c]
14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,
16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”[d]
But we have the mind of Christ.
I took my 5 year old to the Harvard Art Museum the other day.
I loved showing my son his first Monet, the French Impressionist.
I took him real close to the painting, saying “don’t touch! Don’t touch!” And I was like, “what do you see? Kind of blurry right?” And Jesse said something like, “I see like swirly things.” And I went, “okay okay, now back up with Umma, back up back up! Now what do you see?” And with excitement, as if he discovered something totally new, he said, “Umma! I see the bridge! And the, and the man, the man on the boat!” and I said, “Yeah! That’s right baby! Isn’t that so interesting? Sometimes when you’re too close, it’s hard to see, but then when you back up, it actually becomes MORE clear.”
And I told him about how Monet had bad eyes, and how he drew things so accurately blurry and that actually made it for a better painting somehow. And then we went around the whole museum getting close to a painting and then backing up to see if we saw something different.
I think that’s what Paul is trying to do in our text today, drawing us nearer, showing us the blurry, and also, back up, it’s totally not what we expect, we see it more clearly. That things are hidden, mysterious, difficult to understand and grasp, and at the same time, God reveals things to us and we CAN totally get it. It’s a bit confusing, totally Paul’s style.
You see, this guy named Paul wrote a lot of the letters in the New Testament, including today’s 1st Corinthians, a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth. But I gotta be honest with you. Of all the biblical characters, Paul is my least favorite. He’s just so talkative. Unnecessarily verbose. Almost like half the New Testament is attributed to him, although 7-8 of them, scholars actually think that it’s not really written by him but just written in his perspective or voice, which the ancient writing world sometimes did and it was cool. I mean we have ghost writers these days too. I just discovered, you know, that designer from Queer Eye, Bobby, I just learned that my friend Jamie wrote his book, so cool. Anyways, if you wanted to write in the voice of Paul, you would need to master erratic, long, run-on sentences and commas, lots, of, commas.
Actually the original language, Greek, didn’t have comas.
This one actually includes some of our text today. It starts at 2:11 apparently. Ancient Greek is just these capital letters. Which the alphabet system is pretty similar to English, so if you want to learn how to read Greek, it’s not that bad. I mean, learning how to pronounce the letters of the Greek. To understand the grammar, well that’s a whole another ball game. Any language that has conjugation is just a lot.
Moving on. So in translating Paul’s letters, just to get his sentences to make it make sense, in English, you have to use a lot of commas. And it still doesn’t make sense. Which is why I get, when he says,
“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”
It’s true, you really do need the Lord’s Spirit when you’re reading Paul’s letters.
But you can see his passion. I’ll give him that. He writes like he talks. He’s a character. A charismatic dramatic leader.
In this text, he’s talking about worldly wisdom, and comparing it to God’s wisdom. But he calls God’s wisdom
“ a mystery that has been hidden.”
A secret.
Is it literally a secret that’s been hidden? Because it kind of sounds like he’s trying to make us understand the secret and reveal it to be known and understood.
It’s a method.
There’s a method to getting a room full of rambunctious kids to listen to you. You could do the: if you can hear me clap once. If you can hear me clap twice. If you can hear me clap thrice. That works too. But my favorite, so counterintuitive, and it’s for the OG preschool teachers who know what’s up. It’s the whispering quietly. Not talking over.
Like if you want to listen, you can listen.
Like when Jesus said, in Matthew 13:9
“Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
Jesus also goes on to say,
“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. “
Biblical scholar Richard Hays, a notable thinker, who was a New Testament professor at Duke Divinity and ordained minister in the UMC, United Methodist Church, he argues that Paul here in 1st Corinthians chapter 2, is being quite ironic. Hays says that Paul is using the popular vocabulary of the time, words like “wisdom”, “mature”, and “spiritual,” words that were considered thoughtful and trending in and around Corinth at the time, to say like,
“you think you know wisdom? I know wisdom wisdom. You think you know what it means to be spiritual? I know the secret of being spiritual!”
It’s almost as if he’s trying to be funny or sarcastic. It’s the irony of trying to explain wisdom by putting the wisdom of the world, right next to the wisdom of God, and making the point that one wisdom is, not wisdom at all!
He might be doing air quotes around the “wisdom,” but we cannot see that in the text. And we often see the Bible more seriously rather than sarcastically. But I’m trying to tell you, that’s who Paul was! And if you try to picture Paul more like a stand-up comedian, I swear, his message will make more sense to you. That’s just my personal opinion. (well, and other biblical scholars that I’ve read that have influenced me to imagine the person of Paul realistically). For example,
New Testament scholars like J. R Daniel Kirk, who actually went to my old church in San Francisco, wrote a book, literally, titled,
“Jesus I have loved, but Paul?”
Cause to be frank, Paul’s quite problematic, some of the things he says. You know, not unlike modern day stand-up comedians who get cancelled for their truth telling jokes.
We might not be “getting the joke” because we are so far away from the world that speaks these languages with all the cultural implications. But that was Paul. I’m telling you, he was a character.
He’s the one who said,
“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
in 1 Corinthians 9:22
To which I used to be like, I’m sorry I had to go to the clubs, “to the party people I became like a party people, that I might save some.” Jesus hung out with the sinners! So, I have to, you know, be one of them.
Another method Paul deploys: quoting something EVERYONE knows, that many will recognize, but then, kind of like changing it and misquoting it. And you may think, well it must be right because it’s quoting a very well known axiom that everyone knows. They say when you say things in rhyme, or in a rhythm, people perceive it more as true.
It’s called “Keats heuristics.” “People prefer rhymes for their “pleasurable aesthetics,” as the rhyme creates a sense of unity and coherence, increasing the aphorism’s appeal, repeatability, and memorability. This cognitive bias is often explained by fluency heuristics, where the ease of processing a rhyming statement enhances its perceived truthfulness.
Like a saying, a penny saved is a penny earned.
So Paul says in our today’s text, verse 9:
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
You’re like okay, I think I heard that before. And so people are like, searching their brain… oh yeah I paid attention in church. I know my Hebrew Bible. And maybe they didn’t have a written bible on hand, even if they did, not everyone was literate. They might’ve relied a lot on verbal narratives and memorization of the holy scriptures. And we all start nodding, at the cue of the perceived smarted person in the room, that’s that, Isaiah…. Sixty….., four! Yeah that’s the one.
So you look it up and it says,
Isaiah 64:4
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
It says, those who WAIT for him.
Wait. Wait a minute.
- What did Paul say?
- Who can see?
- Who can hear?
- What mind can conceive the things God has prepared…????
For those… who .. it’s not waiting. It’s
LOVE.
Paul changed it.
It’s not for those who wait for God.
It’s not for those who fear God.
Or those who obey God.
The understanding, the truth, the wisdom, is not for the ones who work hard or only smart enough to get it.
It’s for the one who loves.
You see, Paul is using words like “wisdom” or “knowledge” or “mind” but that is not what Paul is talking about at all. He’s not pointing at your head saying, “do you GET it?” He’s pointing at your heart and saying, “do you get IT?”
I mean, even as he ends with, “We have the mind of Christ.” he’s saying this after he spends the last two paragraphs talking about how the Spirit works, not the mind.
He says, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” And that same Spirit is the spirit that works in those who love God. When you love God, you are a person that has the “mind” of Christ.
Paul says in an earlier part of 1 Corinthians in chapter 1:30,
“Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God.”
meaning…
and I quote theologian Edith M. Humphrey, a New Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,
“Wisdom is, first and foremost, a who, rather than merely a body of knowledge or a human capacity. Just as the Fourth Gospel (the book of John) celebrates the Logos made flesh, here Paul pictures Jesus as God’s own Wisdom (Gk. Sophia), at last among us with transformative power…”
Wisdom of God, the Logos of God, the “mind” of God, the Body and the Present Spirit of God, at last among us with the transformative power–that is the power of Jesus. This is the supernatural reality, the beauty, the compelling story of Jesus that Paul was trying to convey in so many commas and words.
It’s actually pretty cute. Paul’s excitement and delight, of this Jesus that he’s fallen in love with, so much that he can’t go on about it without run-on sentences that make no sense, but also make all the sense. It’s like seeing someone go on about their new crush. I think that’s what made all of Paul’s letters so compelling. He’s crazy. He’s crazy about Jesus.
Have you fallen in love with Jesus like this?
You see this thing we’re doing at church, it’s not something we’re aspiring to get or understand. We only need to fall, fall in love. Be in awe. See the wonder.
I was walking around Reservoir Beach the other day and I saw this guy, by himself, hopping, doing this little jumping to grab a leaf falling from the tree. It made me smile and giggle inside. So cute, the wonder of this old man, wanting to catch a leaf from a tree.
And I was driving around one time, a few months back. It had been a cold winter for months, but we had one of those golden gifts where it was sunny and the weather was nice. I was stopped at a stop light and I saw this woman, just standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with her hands by her side, her head turned toward the sun, eyes closed with a smile, just receiving the sun. It touched me to see someone receive the warm sun so sweetly.
I think the hidden secret is that it’s actually all around us, the awe and wonder, the love. But we only need to be foolish enough to jump and catch the leaf. We only need to pause and close our eyes, like you’re a scene in a movie, and feel it. When you are in love, you’re not trying to understand, you just get it. You’re just in tune with the one you love.
That’s the invitation and the desperate urgency and charge Paul gives us.
I know I’ve talked a lot of smack about Paul but actually my favorite verse, the verse that actually brought into ministry is, from Paul.
2 Corinthians 12:9
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
Why is Paul so obsessed with weakness and talking about his “weakness with great fear and trembling”? Because Paul was constantly pointing to the power of Jesus that is made perfect in weakness.
What makes God’s love and power that we see in Jesus so compelling? It’s because Jesus used that power to lay down his power. God’s power is revealed in weakness. God’s power is revealed in vulnerability. That was the power of Jesus, the
“self-emptying love of God on the cross.”
No matter what you may be going through, Jesus says to you,
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
So let’s be crazy like Paul, and boast all the more gladly about our weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on us.
Look, you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. Our church is not perfect. None of this is dependent on the strength or capabilities of some pastors. The pastors? We’re just curators.
Do we go to the museum for the curator? For the person who found the art, loved the art, put the best lighting on the art, and spent days hurling over a few words to describe the art? No, we go to the museum for the Artist. We went to the museum for Monet. I don’t even know the curators name. Though I do know the name Harvard. But, God is the great Artist. We are just the curators.
I wonder what it would look like to be the kind of church that boasts in our weaknesses, so that the power of Jesus is on display. May that be so. Let me pray for us.
Jesus, you showed us the power of love by laying down your power and control, showing us what it means to empty oneself for the sake of love. Help us Lord, help us to first and foremost, receive that love, delight in that love. That we may be of one mind, one spirit, one, with you. That is all we long for God. All action, or justice, or goodness we crave, they are mere byproducts. Help us to seek you first, and that all these things will be given unto us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.