"If poverty is strength, may the good Lord make me weak!" I can hear the idea running around in your head from the time you read the title of today’s sermon. This sermon title sounds every bit as upside down as the Beatitudes that we read as today’s Gospel or as the Second Lesson for today. "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are." (1 Corinthians 1:27-28)

To tell the honest truth, the Bible doesn’t teach good common sense. That is why one either believes it or rejects it. For all that appears "obvious" to one who has lived with these truths, the Bible sounds outrageously out of touch with the world that i…