A Weak Sermon

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

At seminary orientation there was a session where we all sat in a circle in the chapel and were asked to share our “call stories”: how it was that we knew, or felt, or came to believe that theological education was supposed to be a part of our life’s journey. There was a great deal of comfort gained from hearing others’ call stories and realizing the similarities they all contained—maybe I’m not crazy for having noticed, or felt, or experienced an urge to go to seminary and become a leader in the church. Not to diminish this, but I also get the sense the “call story” has become a sort of “credential check” for would-be pastors to prove that they have truly been called by God. There is even a question on the PIF (the Personal Information Form filled out by pastors looking for jobs) that asks pastors to “describe the setting to which you believe God is calling you.” “So you wanna be our pastor, eh? Tell us about your calling.”

There seems to be a bit of this inquiry going on between Paul and the Corinthian community. “So Paul, you wanna teach us about God? Have you had any good visions or revelations?” “Such experiences were viewed in the ancient world in many religions as a special sign of God’s favor,” explains Ernest Best.[1] Paul seems hesitant to “boast” about his calling. We can assume that he’s got some rival, another traveling preacher, who has been less hesitant to brag about all of the powerful visions and revelations he had been granted by God. Let’s call him Mr. Fancy Pants. Paul begins this section of his letter reluctantly, “I guess you want me to brag, not that it does any good…(sigh) but I’ll talk about visions and revelations from the Lord.”

As if to emphasize his reluctance, he then proceeds to describe his experience in third person…“I know a guy,” he begins. I can remember the similar awkwardness with which some of us shared our own call stories that day at seminary orientation. Some people shared their stories which such confidence and gusto, polished and powerful and full of fancy words, as if they had rehearsed for just such an opportunity. But others mumbled and fumbled and shrugged their way through an approximation of “well…I guess this is what I think I maybe feel God is telling me…”

Paul is reluctant to share his vision, but not because he isn’t sure of it or proud of it. I get the sense that Paul is aware of other prophets and teachers who talk about having “visions from God” as a form of divine name-dropping. “You wouldn’t believe what God told me the other day…oh yeah, I know God…he gives me visions and revelations. #worthy.” Some might take this confidence as a mark of these preachers’ authority and trustworthiness, but Paul sees through their tactics. Paul wants nothing to do with this self-promotion.

“If I’m going to brag about anything, it’s going to be about how weak I am,” says Paul. Interesting choice. Think about all the commercials or advertisements you’ve ever seen:

• “I want to tell you about a great new beauty project that saved my skin!”

• “This one little pill will help you lose weight and give you energy beyond your wildest dreams…it’s a fountain of youth!”

• “Don’t worry about your financial future anymore, this one simple course will guide you out of debt and set you on the path to self-sustaining personal wealth!”

What if you were to turn on the T.V. to see a sloppily dressed and disheveled host explaining all the design flaws of the product he was trying to sell? It would catch you off guard, wouldn’t it? I’ve got to imagine that this portion of Paul’s letter induced similar head-scratching among the Corinthians.

“I don’t want to be given any more credit than what anyone sees or hears about me. I was given a thorn in my body because of the outstanding revelations I’ve received so that I wouldn’t become conceited.” Paul isn’t interested in selling himself, in winning anyone’s approval, in becoming Mr. Fancy Pants…he’s interested in teaching people about the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. He’s not trying to impress his audience with his own greatness, but with the value and beauty of God’s grace. How does one demonstrate the power of God’s grace? Mr. Fancy Pants might want to tell you about how great his life is because he has received God’s grace. “Let me brag about how ‘blessed’ I have been by God. Let me boast about how all of my prayers have been answered.” That sounds like the commercial we’d expect. It’s grace! Shiny, sparkly, fantastic!

Paul is content to brag about his own weakness, and to share about his unanswered prayers. “I asked God to remove this thorn from my body, but God said ‘No, my grace is enough for you.’ So…I’m okay with this. And I’m okay with weakness, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ.” Does this sell you on grace? Hardly…right?

The problem isn’t God’s greatness. Nor is there a problem with the goodness of grace. God is great, grace is good. The problem is with our understanding of what it means to be great and good. We equate power and prominence with greatness and are prone to only consider that which is pretty and effortless to be good. Sacrifice isn’t great. Struggle isn’t good. So says the wisdom of this world. But “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, says God.” Paul writes this in his first letter to the Corinthians—setting the stage for the controversial gospel he preaches and the confounding grace about which he teaches.

Think about how God reveals himself to the world through Jesus Christ. God does not walk among us with pride and prominence, but with humility. Jesus joins us in the struggle of human life, and saves our life through the sacrifice of his own. And this is the good news we claim about God’s greatness. Paul explains this further in his letter to the Philippians. “Jesus was in the form of God, but he didn’t consider being equal with God something to exploit. [Like Mr. Fancy-Pants might.] He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and became like human beings. And as a human being he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” “Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul tells them.

God is great, grace is good. And this is revealed against the backdrop of our weakness. Grace gives us strength, but it is not our own. Grace struggles against our supposed self-sufficiency. When we feel strong we’re more prone to look at the gift of grace and say, “I’m good, I’ve got this on my own.” So is Paul trying to tell us that we should constantly feel miserable and worthless? Is self-deprecation the mark of being a “good Christian”? I don’t think that’s it.

What if the only message you heard about grace was delivered by Mr. Fancy Pants Preacher, who has his own private jet and who constantly brags about the shower of God’s grace and riches and blessings he has received throughout his life? “Every time I ask for anything in the name of the Good Lord, God looks at me and says, ‘You beloved child of mine, yes! Yes, of course I’ll bless you with whatever you ask, because I’m so proud of the faith you have in me!’” You might be led to believe that your own modest wardrobe, the jalopy you drive, the job you lost, the recurring illnesses you face, the death of a close friend, the doubts in your heart, the temptations with which you struggle, the pain that you feel…you might be led to believe that these things are indicators that God has abandoned you. If you believe that wealth and health and prominence are the marks of a “good Christian” and you struggle with health or suffer from financial woes, you might come to the conclusion that you aren’t good enough for God’s grace. Or what’s worse, you might come to the conclusion that God’s grace isn’t good enough for you. If it were good enough, you wouldn’t have to struggle and suffer.

Paul doesn’t want this. Paul wants us to be content with God’s grace. But Paul’s rhetoric against Mr. Fancy Pants through “bragging about weakness” has proved to be problematic for Christians who have misinterpreted the message to conclude that struggle and suffering are the marks of a “good Christian.” If you aren’t miserable in your life with Christ, you aren’t doing it right. Paul doesn’t want this, either. So he talks about the “thorn in his body” as the torment of a “messenger from Satan.” His struggles were Satan’s fault. Suffering was not God’s will for Paul, nor is it God’s will for us. God doesn’t want a bunch of miserable, mopey followers. But God understands and fully knows that suffering and struggle are a part of the human experience. Jesus Christ reveals God’s will to be present with us in our struggles and suffering.

It’s sexier, perhaps, to believe the Fancy-Pants preacher who tells you that if you get your faith right, you won’t suffer. “If you believe enough in what you ask for,” they say, “your wishes will be granted!” But they’re not talking about God…they’re talking about a genie. Paul even says he prayed to God to remove his thorn…but God said no. Sometimes we pray and God says, “No.” It’s not because we’re not faithful enough, or because God doesn’t love us enough. God never says “No” when we pray for grace, it’s just that sometimes we pray for a little bit more.

Max Lucado writes about this in the book we’ve been studying this summer, In the Grip of Grace. “Would you be at peace if God gave you nothing more than he already has[?] Test yourself with this question: What if God’s only gift to you were his grace to save you? Would you be content? You beg him to save the life of your child. You plead with him to keep your business afloat. You implore him to remove the cancer from your body. What if his answer is, ‘My grace is enough.’ Would you be content?”[2]

Or would you go looking for another god? A genie god who would answer your prayers, who would always tell you, “Yes.” Problem is, such a god doesn’t actually exist. To claim that faith works this way is simply an exploitation of desperate, struggling, suffering people. That is what breaks my heart about the prosperity gospel…these wealthy pastors who are wealthy at the expense of desperate people who are being told to believe in something that doesn’t exist. Satan is well known for telling people exactly what they want to hear in order to exploit their weakness, too.

God doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear, but neither will God ever exploit our weakness or celebrate those who take advantage of the least of these. Sadly we live in a greedy and sin-sick world where people do exploit the vulnerable. Perhaps we, like the writer of Psalm 73, are aghast at this:

“I envied the arrogant; I observed how the wicked are well off: They suffer no pain; their bodies are fit and strong. They are never in trouble; they aren’t weighed down like other people. That’s why they wear arrogance like a necklace, why violence covers them like clothes. Their eyes bulge out from eating so well; their hearts overflow with delusions. They scoff and talk so cruel; from their privileged positions they plan oppression. Their mouths dare to speak against heaven! Their tongues roam the earth! That’s why people keep going back to them, keep approving what they say.”

The wicked don’t get what they deserve. And the faithful don’t get what they deserve. This doesn’t mean that all people who are well off are evil, and all people on death-row are well-intentioned and innocent. But this is the way sin lures us in. Sin causes us to question the benefit of being compassionate, of loving others, of serving our neighbor. Sin wants us to lose hope and give up on living for God. God is calling us to a way of life in which we actively oppose and resist the powers of sin through acts of love and compassion. Lots of people give up, decide to rely on their own strength to exploit the weakness of their neighbor. We suffer because of this. Sin wants us to think that it’s God’s fault that we suffer.

God wants us to care about the suffering of others and show compassion. God wants us to be bothered by the prosperity of the wicked and cry out for justice. God wants us to confess our weakness without losing hope in God’s grace and strength. Grace is real, but not magical. The Kingdom of God is not the result of the wave of a wand, but the result of an ever expanding community, committed to loving God and neighbor, empowering one another to acts of compassion, angered by injustice, inspired by love. If we trust that God’s grace is enough for us to defy the ways of this world, then we can change this world. This is why sin tempts us to serve ourselves, to exploit the vulnerable, to criminalize the outsider, to be annoyed by the needy, to abandon hope for change…because sin doesn’t want this world to change.

This is why Christ calls us to serve, and feed, and clothe, and visit, and love, and care, and eat, and work…because God does want this world to change. Sin wants us to feel too weak to do anything about it, sin wants us to suffer and struggle and give up. But God wants us to rest assured that even in our weakness, God is able to do something powerful. God doesn’t want us to suffer and struggle, but God knows that we probably will. So God gives us what we need to endure the work of building up the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. God gives us grace. And God’s grace is enough.

[1] Best, Ernest. “Second Corinthians.” From Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 116.

[2] Lucado, Max. In the Grip of Grace. 1996, Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN. 115.