My grace is sufficient
for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.
These
words Paul received from Jesus must have had special significance for him.
These are the only words of Jesus quoted by Paul that are unique to him. The only other time he quotes Jesus is to
repeat the words of the Last Supper. So
they call us to pay attention and wrestle with what Jesus means by them, and
what they meant to Paul.
First,
let’s acknowledge the fact that at face value they are not particularly good
news. We’re not likely to put the phrase
“power is made perfect in weakness” on the sign board outside, or worse,
something like “weakness preached here.”
Even
the context of these words does not provide much softening of them. Paul says he is afflicted by a mysterious
“thorn in the flesh.” We have no idea what this “thorn” was, but tells us that he
has repeatedly asked God to remove it from him.
Jesus’ answer does not sound all that pastoral. Paul’s suffering, his weakness, will not be
taken away.
This
exchange is part of a larger story which might help us understand just what is
going on here.
The
Christians in Corinth seem to have always been in crisis—factions were rife in
the community, some who had certain “spiritual gifts” lorded it over those who
did not. Even their celebration of the
Eucharist was corrupted into something that was a witness to their own social
hierarchy.
Paul’s
first letter to them tried to deal with all these issues. He talked about their
oneness in Christ, their equality in Christ’s body, and the “excellent way” of
love that should pull them together.
It
appears that his teaching and his pleas had little impact. Perhaps they never had a chance to, because at
some point some missionaries showed up in their community who claimed that Paul
was not who he said he was. Their
evidence was that his message was not the power of the Gospel, and he did not
back up his preaching with deeds of power—displays of miraculous gifts of the
spirit and healings. Paul, they said, is
a weak man, who, as a weak man, could not possibly be the apostle he said he
was.
This
reminds me of something that happened in my first parish, many years ago. When
I began at St. George’s, it was a very small community of 40 or so people. I had one teenager. He was a senior when I
arrived, so I had not been there yet a year when he went off to college. He had been in church most every Sunday since
he was born, and was often my acolyte.
He
came home from college at Thanksgiving and asked to see me. He was clearly troubled. He said to me, “I spent my whole life in this
church and no one ever told me about the power of God, the gift of the Holy
Spirit and the gifts he has to give us.”
“What
gifts would those be?” I asked.
“Speaking
in tongues and prophesying and working miracles of healing. Ways that God’s power can work through us. God wants us to have victory in our lives.”
He was
hooked, and I didn’t get anywhere with him.
“The power of God is primarily love,” I said, “and the strength we need
for daily living. It is not for the
purpose of showing off how powerful or important we are.”
That
was 27 years ago when things called mega-churches were just coming into being,
promising prosperity and social power, and, not surprisingly, the clear
divisions between godly and ungodly people.
And
over the years they have attracted many of our own people and have seemed so
successful that we have spent time and energy trying to figure out how we can
be like them, and return ourselves to a day when membership in our churches was
highly valued, a time when people listened to us, a time when we had social power.
The
rapid demise of mainstream Protestant churches is a kind of thorn in our flesh
as a church. We don’t know what to do
about it. We try things. They work a little, but not enough. We don’t know the answer.
I
don’t know the answer. All I know is
what Jesus told Paul, and tells me, and tells us.
My grace is sufficient
for you for power is made perfect in weakness.
Now
that is not a sexy message; it’s not about making anything “great” again; it’s
not about returning us to a position of power.
But it
may be just what we need.
As a
priest over the years I have had plenty of people come to me feeling as if they
were called to be a deacon or a priest in the church. They inevitably want to impress me with their
prayer life, with their leadership in the church, with their passion for the
gospel. And I have wanted to hear about
those things.
But I
also want to know how they have suffered.
I want to know about their weakness and how they live with it. I ask these things because I believe the
answer to those questions to be more important than to hear about their
strengths.
Why? So I know they have a chance to be able to
relate to the rest of us, how to help us find God’s grace in the midst of both
short-term and long-term adversity, how to know the power of God in our
weakness.
Will
that pack the pews? Maybe, maybe
not. As I said, it’s not a very sexy
message and we are competing with churches who offer the exact opposite.
I only
know my own experience, the thorns I carry in my flesh, about which I do not
want to boast. I bring them with me
every Sunday. I do not try to leave them at home. I bring them here and find over and over
again that God’s grace—God’s love for me that I have not earned or deserved—is
sufficient.
And it
has been consistently true that my weaknesses, drenched in the love of God, are
what have made me a good priest, if I dare say that about myself at all.
It may
not be how we want the world to work, but it is how the world—God’s
world—works. The grace of God—that Paul
says elsewhere God has lavished on us—is sufficient and any power and true
strength we have is made perfect in our weaknesses, because it is in those
weaknesses that we experience the depth of that grace and God’s love for us.
And
that is Good News in our real life, the life we are bid to bring to this altar
week by week.
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