No one wants it. Most of us fight it. We'll do almost anything to rid ourselves of it.

Fat.

It's the scourge of this sedentary winter season.

Feeling as though we're in danger of losing the Battle of the Bulge, we grab hold of practically any diet or nutrition program that promises to shave some poundage. The 14-Day Beauty Boot Camp Diet. "Drop 10 Fast" Diet Plan. Suzanne Somers' New Diet. The Miniskirt-Is-Back Workout. Turn Back the Clock Diet. Victoria Principal's 30-Day Diet. The Fat Flush Diet.

We throw ourselves into the fat-fight, even to the point of sweat and painful sacrifice. But recent research is revealing that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to put the label of "worthless" on our extra weight.

Scientists are now hard at work at transforming cells from unwanted fat into muscle, cartilage, and bone. Yes, that's right: They are changing blubber into body parts.

The secret is stem cells.

According to U.S. News, some researchers believe that fat may be a rich source of stem cells -- unspecialized primordial cells that can be coaxed into becoming any number of tissue types. The procedure could offer a potential treatment for broken bones, damaged joints, and even life-threatening neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease. And the beauty of this approach is that it involves only fat, not the human embryos that have been at the heart of recent ethical controversies.

Just think: You can go to the doctor's office, fix the hole in your knee, and lose 20 pounds, all at once. "It's hugely romantic and attractive," says a biologist at Case Western Reserve (Emily Sohn, "Therapy by the pound -- Human fat is a source of coveted stem cells," U.S. News, Science & Ideas, April 23, 2001)

This is such a surprising place to find life -- in fat. If we weren't impressed by the research, we might even scoff and laugh.

The apostle Paul understands laughing and ridicule. He knows that the message about the cross is "foolishness" to many people around him, for they cannot bring themselves to see the truth about God in a scene of crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:18). It's the ultimate symbol of death and defeat, a total embarrassment, no more desirable than an extra 50 pounds. For Jews, the cross is a stumbling block, and for Gentiles it is absolute foolishness -- but for Christians, says Paul, the crucified Christ is nothing less than "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (vv. 23-24).

Think of the cross as a surprising source of life, like therapeutic stem cells from unwanted fat. And why not? The cross is really nothing less than the ultimate stem of life.

Call it the Cross Stem of Salvation.

You know, we've lost some of the surprise of this divine stem of life. The cross is no longer seen as a radical, gasping, shocking scandal. We install carefully polished crosses in our sanctuaries and we admire their beauty. We buy our loved ones gold crosses to hang around their necks, and we tell them they look terrific. We put crosses on t-shirts and bumper stickers and note cards, shaping and stylizing and coloring them for maximum charm and effectiveness.

But what if we were to put a hangman's noose in our sanctuary? Or a tiny gold electric chair on a necklace? Or a picture of a lethal injection on a bumper sticker?

THAT would be shocking!

We must not forget that the cross was an instrument of capital punishment. Jesus was killed -- brutally killed -- for the crimes of blasphemy and sedition, nailed to an instrument of torture between two convicted criminals. There's nothing charming or romantic about the message of the cross.

And yet, Paul says that it is "the power of God" (v. 18).

This is every bit as surprising as the stem cells that can be found in fat. What the apostle has discovered, you see, is that human efforts to fly up to God have all crashed and burned in complete and total failure. While some people tried to reach the Lord through religious signs, and others tried to connect through secular wisdom, both attempts spun out of control. According to Paul, God has destroyed the wisdom of the wise and thwarted the discernment of the discerning, leaving the scholars and scribes and debaters of the world to stand around and scratch their heads (vv. 19-20).

All that's left is "the foolishness of our proclamation," says Paul: a proclamation of the message about the cross (v. 21). This crucifixion-centered scheme is not a plan that any humans would have devised, because it seems so absurd. No mere mortal would have proposed that God close the gap between himself and humanity by allowing Jesus Christ to die on the cross.

It makes no sense, according to the world. It's absurd. Foolish. Shocking. A stumbling block.

But that's exactly the point. It's God's plan, not ours.

The crucifixion of Christ is the Lord's way of reaching down to us, and restoring a healthy relationship with us. Sure, it's a direct contradiction of our earthbound ideas of wisdom and power, yet it achieves what wisdom and power could never achieve. It restores a loving divine-human relationship that has been broken by sin. It brings us forgiveness and new life. It enables us to see just how far our Lord will go to show his passionate love for each and every one of us.

Is it foolish? Sure. Just as any expression of undying love and commitment seems foolish. But "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom," observes Paul, "and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (v. 25).

The challenge for us is to believe in this apparently unbelievable love. To trust that Almighty God was actually at work in a man named Jesus, reconciling the world to himself. To have faith that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16). To have confidence that every baptized child of God is part of the body of Christ … forever.

The invitation has been extended: Believe the unbelievably good news of the gospel. Put your faith in the rugged wooden cross that really is a Cross Stem of Salvation. This is an unexpected development, for sure, but it's every bit as simple as trusting that unhealthy fat may be a source of healing and hope.

The cross does bring new life, sometimes in surprising ways. A supremely secular British man named Malcolm Muggeridge was once brought up short while visiting a leper hospital run by the Missionaries of Charity in India. He had always imagined secular humanism to be the ideal worldview but he realized, while strolling through this facility, that no merely humanist vision can take account of lepers, let alone take care of them. To offer humane treatment to the outcasts of society requires more than mere humanity -- it requires a cross-centered view of the world. Humanists, he realized suddenly, do not run leper hospitals. (Thomas Cahill, Desire of the Everlasting Hills [New York: Anchor Books, 1999], 304-305)

The cross of Christ reminds us that God has chosen to reach down to us in love, whether we are penniless lepers or affluent lawyers. God calls us to follow Christ in faith, without regard to whether we are wise or powerful or famous. God challenges us to be a community of friends in which we care for one another in Christian love, regardless of whether we are black or white, well or sick, wealthy or poor, imprisoned or free. In fact, says Paul, "God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God" (vv. 28-29).

There's only one thing we CAN boast in, and that is the Lord. Our only confidence should be in the Cross Stem of Salvation.

So let's take what hope we can from the innovative therapies that promise to pull stem cells from fat deposits. It would certainly be wonderful if a broken bone could be repaired by a beer belly. But at the same time, we should put our greatest faith in what is the most surprising and shocking of innovations: The cross of Christ. This is the key to our eternal health, the stem on which our relationship with God can grow forever.

Fat cells are certainly promising. But only one Stem leads to salvation. Amen.