[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]2 Corinthians 12:2-10One of my seminary professors, Ron Hals, used to wonder whether, if he had lived during the time of Jesus, he might not have been as skeptical as Jesus’ enemies (and Jesus's friends) could be.
“I can just imagine,” he would tell us, “seeing Jesus perform a miracle like restoring sight to a blind man or raising Lazarus from the dead and then saying, ‘Do it again...Slower.’”
Dr. Hals was saying that had he lived in first century Palestine, he might have questioned Jesus’ power. And had he seen Jesus crucified, he might well have wondered what good Jesus’ power was if Jesus couldn’t elude suffering with that power.
Skepticism about Jesus’ power and the good it does in the lives of those who believe in Jesus is nothing new. In our second Bible lesson, the apostle Paul, the first century evangelist, some of whose writings comprise a big chunk of the New Testament, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about these very things.
Apparently, shortly before Paul wrote to these Christians, members of the church in the Greek city of Corinth, had been wowed by some preachers who had convinced them that if the power of the God made known to the world through Jesus was really in them, then their lives would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness.
Now, it
is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including healing for all kinds. That’s among the reasons why, here at Saint Matthew, we pray for people’s healing during worship, have healing services, and are starting our parish health ministry. In
our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles two by two, and gave them the power to heal in His Name.
But no healing in this world lasts indefinitely; even after Jesus brought His friend Lazarus back from the dead, Lazarus still died again. This world and you and I are imperfect and death comes to all who are part of this world. There’s no way around that.
“So, where is the power of God and what good is the power of God in your preaching?” the Corinthians asked Paul.
Their questions were pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive figure. By this time deep into his forties or early fifties, elderly in that world, slight, balding, a poor and rambling speaker who scratched together what little income he made by patching together tents, Paul’s career as a Christian preacher wasn’t notable for its successes. In the course of his work, he’d been arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. How far through the call process do you think a preacher like Paul would make it in most churches? Not far, I’ll bet. Most people would look at him and see a big “L” for “loser” on his forehead.
But by the time we get to the point in the letter to the Corinthian Christians that makes up our second lesson for today, this loser has a thing or two to say to these people who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and his authority to share it.
Maybe wary of being a braggart, Paul uses the third person to tell about a personal experience he’d had fourteen years earlier, but, so far as we know, had never shared before. “I know a person in Christ,” he says, “who…was caught up in the third heaven [this is what early Christians called paradise, where the risen and ascended Jesus lives]…and [Paul goes on, this person] heard things…that no mortal is permitted to repeat…”
Paul had experienced a vision of heaven that the preachers who had impressed the Corinthian Christians might not even have been able to imagine.
But, Paul says--and this is the most important thing about our lesson from Second Corinthians--that experience, as awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus. Something else did. In fact, two something elses proved those things. God's power is most readily seen in two ways.
The first is in God's grace.
The second is in our weakness.
A conference of theologians was being held in Great Britain. They’d been debating the question of what was the central teaching of the Christian faith. Apparently by coincidence, C.S. Lewis, the novelist and teacher who had once been an atheist and then a champion of Christian belief, happened on the conference. When Lewis learned that they were debating what was the most important teaching of Christianity, he said, “That’s easy: Grace.” Grace is God’s charity, God’s acceptance us we are.
The super apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said that, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.”
You still hear people saying things like this today. A faithful pastor friend of mine watched, as within months, his wife was diagnosed with a debilitating disease and his daughter was found to suffer from Down Syndrome. At a church convention shortly thereafter, he asked for prayers. During a break, a man approached him and said, “I am praying that you will repent because you must have done something terribly wrong for God to send these punishments to you.” I wish the apostle Paul had been around when that ignorant man approached my friend. Paul would have given him a smackdown!
In our lesson, Paul says that to keep him from being too elated by his heavenly vision, God had allowed Satan to afflict him with some sort of “thorn in the flesh.” We have no idea what it was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. We don’t know. Three times, Paul says, he had asked God for relief. And three times the answer came back, “My grace—my charitable love, forgiveness, presence, and acceptance—are sufficient.”
Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed to make life complete—health, money, connections, the big house, the respect of others—are nice, but they're not what we need the most. What we really need is the grace of God given to all through Jesus Christ. God's grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.
The second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ is our weakness. Two weeks ago tonight, sixteen of us from Saint Matthew, who were on our mission trip in Nashville, gathered for our nightly devotions. From our handbook for the week, Sam asked this question of us, “What changes about a person when the Spirit of the Lord is on them?” I immediately thought of those times when I’ve sensed that God, the Holy Spirit, the Power and Presence of God the Father and God the Son, Jesus, has been with me, and my answer to that question was clear:
I know God is with me when I can do what I can’t do.
Many, if not most, of you know exactly what I’m talking about...
You had to be with a loved one over months as they died and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do what you needed to do.
Or, you had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it.
Or, in order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability.
Or, to make the mortgage payment and provide your kids with a nice Christmas, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the strength.
In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I can’t.” And in each case, God told you, “I know that you can’t. But I can! Lean on me."
This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove the unidentified thorn in his flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “You’re going to have to go through it, leaning on my grace.” Why? Because, God says, “power is made perfect in weakness.”
God’s power is experienced only by people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ. We’re powerless when, by ourselves, we try to make sound decisions, make our relationships work, be happy, deal with our sins, or face life and death. But when we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything. God’s power surges into us. “Whenever I am weak,” Paul says, “I am strong.”
“I didn’t know if I could ever be happy again,” a woman told me years after her husband had died. There were dark days, pain interspersed with lifeless numbness. All the while, there were things to be done—children to be raised, bills to be paid, errands to be run. “I was sure that I just couldn’t do it,” she said. But in the midst of it all, she learned what Paul underscores in today’s lesson. Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us.
If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s good. It means you’re seeing life clearly. Don’t give up hope. Our strong God stands at the ready to give you grace and strength. God will see you through!
