Lectionary readings: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 Psalm 48 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13
Wouldn’t it be brilliant if the Bible had an answer to every question you have ever asked or been asked? Especially on those days when awful stuff has happened and people ask ‘why me?’ or ‘why does God let it happen?’ In the letter to the Corinthians there is an account of the unusual answer received by St Paul when he asked God to change something in his life. It may also turn upside down what we think of weakness, difficulties and suffering, and point us in another direction to find a new approach to this age-old dilemma.
The humility of the apostle
On face value, Paul had the background, upbringing and training to boast, as he reminded his readers:
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Philippians 3:4b-6
Yet he had reached the conclusion, that in the great scheme of things, these privileges really didn’t count for anything:
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:4b-10
In a sense, we have to piece together something of Paul the man from the writings we have of him and by him in the New Testament. So far as we know, Paul never encountered Jesus in the flesh, and only ever makes three references to the time of his vision:
- In Galatians 1:11-24, his description of the revelation of Jesus Christ is followed with a prosaic, factual account of one who turns from zealous persecutor to one who proclaimed the good news of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
- In 1 Corinthians 15:8, where Paul is describing post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, he describes himself as ‘one untimely born’.
- And here in 2 Corinthians 12:1-20, Paul alludes once more to his visionary experience.
This personal glimpse into Paul’s experience is of a qualitatively different order to the kind of boasting that can sometimes take place. We only know of the Damascus Road experience because Luke tells us in Acts 9. So when we read about this experience in Corinthians Paul is describing his own experience on the Damascus road some 14 years previous. It is a deeply humble account that links the vision and the thorn (verse 7). And there is no attempt to describe the vision in such a way as to mark Paul out as some kind of super-believer. It is a mark of Paul’s humility as an apostle, that he keeps his own visionary experience private:
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 6:14
Paul chose not to boast because, then as now, there were self-professed super-apostles. These folk populate many churches and TV channels, and they present as being very attractive and persuasive. As preachers, they offer an easy gospel asserting that all you have to do is to claim the victory of Jesus over Satan, suffering, and the world and everything will be fine. I beg to differ, because my personal experience teaches me that this is not how life is. And my reading of Scripture indicates how St Paul claims to have prayed three times over some issue that troubled him. So for those who also wrestle with life, this should come as a word of comfort. But whatever the ‘thorn’ was in St Paul’s life, God did not remove it. God simply said, ‘live with it’. That may sound uncaring, until you contemplate how St Paul was to live with it, He learned a little more about the steadfast, loving-kindness of God through that experience, and offers the grace he has experienced to the world. Paul’s claim is that the true apostle is the one who lives and experiences the world through the grace of God.
The grace of God
So Paul prayed and God answered. And Tom Wright beautifully describes this response as:
… one of the most comforting, reassuring, healing and steadying ‘words of the Lord’ ever recorded: ‘My grace is enough for you; my power comes to perfection in weakness’.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone 2 Corinthians, (London: SPCK 2012), 133
Such words come with deep compassion reminding us that God is often present in the burdens and difficulties of life, and indeed it is God’s grace that enable us to prevail – over sin, over weakness, over hardship:
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:8)
The witness, both of Scripture and those of deep and mature faith do much to keep us rooted and grounded in the kind of scriptural holiness which is our heritage as Methodists.
The Methodist Conference ended this week and for many its outcomes will resonate for a long time to come. So it is timely to have one or those great reminders for our history. When John and Charles Wesley sailed for America they had no idea of the difficulties they would experience, beginning with the frightening storm on the outward journey. Here is an account from John Wesley’s diary of the faith of the Moravian Christians.
Sunday, January 25, 1736
At seven I went to the Germans. I had long before observed the great seriousness of their behaviour. Of their humility they had given a continual proof, by performing those servile offices for the other passengers, which none of the English would undertake; for which they desired, and would receive no pay, saying, “it was good for their proud hearts,” and “their loving Saviour had done more for them.” And every day had given them occasion of showing a meekness which no injury could move. If they were pushed, struck, or thrown down, they rose again and went away; but no complaint was found in their mouth. There was now an opportunity of trying whether they were delivered from the Spirit of fear, as well as from that of pride, anger, and revenge. In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the main-sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sung on. I asked one of them afterwards, “Was you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.”
From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours, and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not. At twelve the wind fell. This was the most glorious day which I have hitherto seen.
On that occasion, John Wesley freely admits that he had witnessed Christian people who had learned that God’s grace was sufficient – even in some of the most trying circumstances.
The wisdom of God that is Jesus
That grace of course is most powerfully witnessed in the teaching and ministry of Jesus. On the one hand we learn that people marvelled at the wisdom shown in his preaching (Mark 1:21), acknowledged the power shown in his miracles: the calming the storm (4:35-41), the restoration of the man possessed (5:1-20) and the two daughters of Israel (5:21-43). But with all that evidence before their eyes, they were at a loss to explain these things.
They could not make the leap from Jesus, the local carpenter, or even an itinerant rabbi, to Jesus the messiah. There is an abrupt break between the wonder and amazement at the wisdom of preaching and miraculous powers, and what they thought they knew. Familiarity had bred contempt.
It is too easy to assume that you know all the answers, but it can be dangerous when it stifles fresh revelation. By contrast, St Paul discovered that the only possible conclusion left open was that ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. … so that no one might boast in the presence of God’. (1 Corinthians 1:25, 29).
And where are we in the discovery process? Have we experienced the all-sufficient grace of God? And are we able to live it out from day to day? Have we discovered that weakness can actually become an inspiration, a strength and a blessing?
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness
Worship at home 