Power in Weakness?

Sermon for July 5, 2009 Proper 9 Text:  II Corinthians 12:2-10 Title:  Power in Weakness? A.   Recently I read a news story about a woman who set a world record for continuous play on an arcade pinball game.  After standing in front of the game for fourteen hours and scoring an unprecedented seven and a half million points, the woman noticed a TV crew arriving to record her efforts for posterity. She continued to play while the crew, alerted by her fiancé (how she had time for a fiancé I don't know!), prepared their cameras for the shoot.  Suddenly, the arcade game went out – no power!  While setting up their lights, the camera team had accidentally unplugged the game, thus bringing her bid for ten million points to an untimely end!  The effort to publicize her achievement became the agent of her ultimate failure.   Sometimes, as my grandfather liked to say, you can't win for losing!  Sometimes, our best efforts are simply not enough.  We have all faced extreme circumstances, and probably more than a few of us have wondered why in the world God would let us go through such trials and tribulations.  There is no good explanation as to why a person has to deal with a chronic illness, or the loss of a job, or a terrible home situation, or a sudden death.  To use the title of an old book that tries to deal with the matter, there is no good explanation as to "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People?"  Sometimes the bad things are of our own making.  The really tragic situations are when the bad things are thrust upon us by life circumstances that we can't control.  Sometimes we say that the tribulation is the judgment of God, put upon us because of some past-unforgiven sin.  Sometimes we think God has forgotten about us, or perhaps doesn't exist at all. This is not good theology, but that fact is little comfort if we are hurting.  It really all comes down to faith.  Can we believe in a good God even in the face of trial and tribulation?  Can we trust that God is as close as our very breathing when He seems to be so far away?  Can we continue to go on through life powered solely by faith when we really don't know how we can? In this morning's passage of Scripture, the Apostle Paul makes an astonishing statement that begins to address these questions.  But to get the answers to some of these questions, we need to unpack what Paul means when he says,  "Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong."  What's up with this? B.  Paul's experience with the Corinthian Christians was long and checkered.  The Book of Acts tells us that Paul founded this Church on one of his missionary journeys, and for 18 months he stayed with them, nurturing and teaching them in the Christian faith before he left.  Evidently the Church continued to grow under several different leaders after Paul left.  But the church had a lot of problems – disunity, dissention, sexual immorality, and theological confusion.  Perhaps the worst problem the Church experienced was the advent of a group of Jewish Christian teachers who came in after Paul and taught the congregation that they must become Jewish before they could become Christian.  They dismissed Paul's prior teaching, cutting him down in a somewhat snooty fashion as being a person who didn't have the proper Christian credentials.  I'm sure you've never known such "perfect" people who look down their noses at folks who they think are not as good a Christian as they are!!  Anyway, they confused a number of folks, and Paul anguished over them as the spiritual father he was.  Many scholars believe that Paul wrote as many as four letters to the Corinthian Christians.  Indeed, according to this theory fragments of three of these letters are in II Corinthians.  It is a fact that portions of II Corinthians read as though they were "stuck" together by a later editor.  But fortunately, whether Paul wrote 2 or more letters doesn't diminish the power of what he says in this passage.   In Paul's day, great leaders were expected to have had amazing visions and revelations.  This was seen as a sign of God's favor.  The so-called "super-apostles" as Paul calls them later on in chapter 12 belittled Paul because they said he had had no such vision.  Although we don't know exactly who these opponents of Paul were, they were swaying many of Corinthian Christians who began to wonder what Paul's true status and worth was. Again and again, Paul felt the need to defend his own calling and status as an apostle. He rhetorically holds his own against his opponents by comparing both his exaltations and his hardships to theirs, and his exasperation at the necessity of this contest of credentials is thinly veiled.  Boasting was a rhetorical device common in literature of the day — credentials were important.  One's social status and one's moral virtue were linked.  Exceptional persons had exceptional things happen to them.  So Paul was pulled into this "credentials game" much to his own dismay.   This is why Paul begins this morning's passage of Scripture with a rather odd way of describing himself:  "I know a person in Christ who..,"  We know Paul is talking about himself, because later on he writes, "So to keep me from being elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelation, a thorn was given me in the flesh…"  But he doesn't want to get into this boasting game, even though he is forced into proving his own credentials in the eyes of many of the Corinthians who had been hoodwinked by slick-talking but false apostles.  To show that Paul is truly a man of God (in contrast to the super-apostles who were happy to tell people they were men of God), he puts this whole credential thing in the proper context.  What Paul relates is intensely personal, something he had kept to himself for 14 years. This was almost certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Most scholars agree that this "revelation" is not to be identified with his conversion experience.  Throughout his ministry Paul was concerned about preaching Christ crucified and building up the church, and he only spoke of his own personal spiritual journey insofar as it advanced his mission.  Paul's conversion was one such public conversation of his private life.  Obviously, it was painful for Paul to speak of these personal/spiritual things. Paul's description of the experience is vague.  He merely says that he was "caught up to the third Heaven," in a kind of rapture.  He cannot describe how it happened or even in what form:   "…whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know.  God knows."  The "Third Heaven" is the phrase used in Paul's day to mean that part of existence that is in the presence of God.  The pre-scientific view of the world in Paul's day considered the First Heaven to be the atmosphere above our heads and all that is in it.  The Second Heaven is the part of existence beyond that, where the stars, etc. are located.  So Paul got translated into the very presence of God.  Quite a trip!! Paul's describes his experience, not only as being in the presence of God, but also in "Paradise," meaning, that which is like the Garden of Eden.  He was passive during the experience (i.e. he was "caught up"), and it was nothing that he asked for.  No drugs, meditation, or other ascetic practice caused the experience to happen.   Evidently he was alone when it happened.  Most significantly, what he heard during the experience he could not share, for "no mortal is permitted to repeat" it.  All of this is pretty heady stuff, certainly something people of lesser character might consider worth boasting about, but not Paul.  Indeed, God wouldn't even let him boast of these amazing credentials.  To help him maintain perspective, Paul was given "a thorn" in the flesh.     Church scholars have speculated endlessly about the nature of this "thorn in the flesh", also referred to by the Apostle as a "messenger of Satan." Paul's audience may have known the identity of the "thorn in the flesh" but it is certainly unknown to us.  Obviously it was something very painful.  Many have tried to identify a certain physical ailment like epilepsy, migraine headaches, bad eyesight, malaria, or a speech impediment.  Others have claimed that Paul might have struggled with depression.  We can safely make the assumption that it was not a congenital illness, because Paul makes it clear that this condition came from God after his experience of the Third Heaven.  Given that it is called a "thorn in the flesh", we are probably on safe ground to assume that it was a chronic illness, one that had lingered for 14 years. Three times Paul begged the Lord to take this thorn away, but it never happened.  Satan meant for it to hinder the spread of the Gospel.  At first, Paul thought that was all it was meant to do.  But although God answers prayer, He doesn't always answer prayer the way we think He should.  Paul tells the Corinthians as well as us that in fact the spread of the Gospel wasn't hindered; it was enhanced.   The thorn certainly gave him a depth of wisdom in his experience and helped him focus on the reality of the Lord's sufficient grace, which in turn made Paul a better disciple.  Paul came to accept the problem, and then even be grateful for it:  You see, experience taught him that when his own strength was just not enough, when he was pushed against the wall and couldn't do it on his own, God was fully capable of filling in the gap.   When we stretch our abilities, and ourselves when we can't go any further, God takes over and miracles happen.  This is like rocket fuel for our faith.  God made it clear to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness."  And that was why Paul was able to witness to the Corinthian Christians that "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong".  There is therefore no reason to boast, because God provides the power and we give Him the glory.  If Paul had claimed the experience of being transported into Heaven as being something that enhanced his own credentials, then he might have had a lot to boast about, but he wouldn't have a witness that glorified God.  The amazing thing about God's grace is that the weaker we are, the more useful we are to God.  The more we let go and let God, the more He can use us to advance the Kingdom.  The less there is of us and the more there is of God, the greater are the things that are accomplished in the name of Christ! Anyone who travels to Edinburgh, Scotland will find Edinburgh castle a tower of seemingly insurmountable strength. But the truth is that the castle was once actually captured. The fortress had an obvious weak spot that defenders guarded--but because another spot was apparently protected by its steepness and impregnability, no sentries were posted there.  At an opportune time, an attacking army sent a small band up that unguarded slope and surprised the garrison into surrendering. Where the castle was strong, there the defense of the people was weak.  C.  So now we can begin to get an answer to our question about the "why" behind trial and tribulation.   Trials and tribulations tend to strengthen our faith.   Now wait a minute; I know that sometimes trials and tribulations leave us embittered, mere shadows of the way God wants us to be.  That is why we need to be in the Body of Christ called Church.  When we have others to lean on, when we hear the testimony of others who have come through trials because of the strength imparted by faith, we are in turn strengthened.  Whenever I am weak, Paul says, I am strong. The power belongs to God, not to human beings.  And when we are weak and the impossible is accomplished, we know that it is God who did the accomplishing, and it is to God (not us!) to whom the glory is owed.  Paul also explains this power in terms of its perfection. "My power," God says, "is made perfect in weakness". God's power through our weakness allows us to function as God designed us to function.   God in effect tells us, "Although I will not give you the victory by lifting you out of suffering, I will give you victory by giving you sufficient grace and perfect power in your suffering." And when we see that God means what He says, our faith is strengthened.  It is not that God causes suffering for His own ends.  Remember, Paul called his thorn a "messenger of Satan".  But God can take suffering, and bring spiritual growth out of it.   It all depends on how much we decide to trust our lives to the Lord, in good times, or in bad.    A man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he was extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked "HURRICANE."  After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument. The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter.  That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer's needle had been right--there was a hurricane!    As we leave this place today, let us remember that God is in control, that He desires the best for His children, and that if we trust Him, we will see that all things work out in God's time.  Amen.              Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com