Pentecost 7B (lectionary 14)
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:5b-10
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
July 4, 2021
Make or Break, on the Fourth of July
I’m preaching on the first lesson this morning, from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Christian community, and to do that I need to tell you about the situation in Corinth that Paul was addressing. We’re going to start out here with a little bit of Bible study.
Paul writes Second Corinthians because he is in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Corinthian Christians. The struggle was between Paul and some other missionary evangelists – in chapter 11 of this letter Paul derisively refers to them as the super-apostles – who had visited the Corinthian congregation and who were teaching that they had special knowledge, special power, in the faith; knowledge and power that they implied Paul could never offer, limited as he was. You know how this goes. You’ve got people in your life who just think that their way of faith is somehow more powerful, somehow superior, to yours.
Paradoxically enough, when Paul responds in the letter we read this morning, he essentially agrees with his critics. Special knowledge? Special power? Yeah, says Paul, you super-apostles are right; I really haven’t got any of that to speak of. I have proclaimed Christ, he says in chapter 11, and that gospel of Christ has really not made all that much of me. It’s never made enough of me to have anything to boast about, that’s for sure. Where has it got me, really? Five times for the sake of the gospel I received – what did he get? The Congressional Medal of Freedom? Did he receive invitations to the White House? Did I win Olympic gold as the Best Missionary of the Year? Nope, five times, says Paul, what I got was the 39 lashes! Been beaten with rods three times. Had ‘em stone me once. Three times I was shipwrecked. Those make-or-break moments did not make much of me, says Paul; they broke me. You super-apostles in Corinth are right, Paul concedes in our lesson for this morning: I have nothing to boast of, except of my weaknesses.
At first glance Paul’s gambit here seems a remarkable example of poor salesmanship. You got your choice, Paul seems to be saying: you can follow the super-apostles with their demonstrated success in the faith and their power to draw with their preaching and their right-and-rewarding relationship with God. Or you can follow me, the apostle who consistently gets the livin’ bejeebers kicked out of him.
But that’s only at first glance. Because then comes the lesson we read here this morning, and Paul brings the argument to one of the most arresting and vivid images of faith that I know. Paul writes: To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, he says; a messenger from Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.
What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh? Scholars have all kinds of opinions. A very old tradition about St. Paul holds that he suffered from epilepsy, and it is perhaps this to which he refers: epilepsy. Some who study Paul believe the real thorn in his flesh was the failings of the Christian communities he founded – the Corinthian community chief among them! – and the hostility those communities often directed at the apostle: their failings and hostility. Whatever it was: Three times, Paul tells us of the thorn, I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but the Lord said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect, in weakness.
I have said that this is one of the most vivid images of faith that I know. If it is vivid, it must be because it is so familiar to us. Who among us has not prayed for something, for some kind of healing, and then wondered that God’s response was not what we asked for? Who among us has not prayed that God’s will be in this way conformed to ours, and then been disappointed when it turned out God’s ways are not our ways?
Again here it’s a make-or-break moment that comes to St. Paul, and he doesn’t really make it, but he winds up broken, and he stays, broken. And what he learns is to speak “even more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” Paradoxical; counter-intuitive you might even say – but that is exactly how the cross works. Make-or-break-it time comes, and you go for the break, for the brokenness.
There is one among you this morning who is struggling with the developing diagnosis of a chronic and debilitating disease. It’s a watershed moment in your life, a make-or-break moment. Go to the broken place, then. Go to the cross. This is not about that there should be, oughta be, no brokenness. That is true, but this is not about that. This is instead about the power of Christ dwelling in you still. How will Christ be manifest, made known, in you as a person who carries now that disease?
There are those here this morning who struggle with the demons of old stuff about you, psychological stuff you would have hoped to overcome years ago. Again and again you appeal to the Lord about this, don’t you?, that it would leave you. Paul is saying here that you’re thinking about that all wrong. It will not leave you, that thorn, but will hang around with you for the rest of your life, like an old unwelcome friend. The good news is that God’s grace is nevertheless sufficient for you. You’ve got to go to the broken place! You’ve got to go to the cross! And the power of Christ, nothing less, will be made known not when your weakness leaves you; no, the power of Christ will be made known right through – even in! – your weakness.
There are those here this morning who have lost someone beloved, perhaps because of death. And an empty place is left there, a wound that will not heal, not completely, not ever. You will feel from time to time the stab of that thorn in the flesh for the rest of your life. Those are make-or-break moments for you. You don’t even want to make that wound heal; not if you loved that person –it will always be felt. But you can go to that broken place. You can go to the cross. And the power of Christ to overcome death – resurrection power! – will come alive in you, and will come alive to others through you, and you will know that power is made perfect in weakness.
Today is the Fourth of July. What St. Paul has to teach us here has something to say, a similarly paradoxical lesson, for our national community and for what I have called over the years our beloved American prospect.
Traditionally what we celebrate on the Fourth is our country and its strength. We are the most powerful nation in the world, we say. The oldest and purest democracy in history! We’re livin’ the American dream.
But from the beginning of our nation, and in our own day, we learn constantly of things about us that are not so strong. In the pandemic our nation’s response was one of the weakest, and in the end most deadly, among the world’s nations. We had people in our streets reminding us that our democracy is not nearly as democratic as it could be, that we’re not there yet – we’re still on the journey toward “liberty and justice for all.” And today as we celebrate the truths that the Declaration holds to be self-evident, we also remember the uncomfortable and embarrassing truth that those words about all being created equal were written by men who held slaves.
Uncomfortable and embarrassing, but you can go there!, says St. Paul. Don’t be afraid, America, to be open and vulnerable, to listen to new lessons as we continue to live into the American prospect. Lay all of that blustering macho patriotic strength business aside, to let the true power of the American prospect become real, through our openness, our vulnerability, our national humility, and yes – in the word of St. Paul here – our weakness.
There’s a lot at stake here, for us individually and personally, and for us as a nation, in moments such as these, make or break moments. Your whole world is at stake, in fact. Will you hold to the old way, your own way, the way of the super-apostles, the way that says making it in this world is what you need to do, what you need to project to others, what you need … to save yourself and prove yourself worthy?
Or can you live into weaknesses – the insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, as Paul names them here – live into them for the sake of Christ? When it’s make-or-break, can you go to the broken place, and live there? Can you go to the cross? For it is when you know and claim your weakness … that you are made strong. The grace of the Lord is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect, in weakness.