Sunday, July 7, 2024, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
“We Are Weak, But He Is Strong”
Psalm 126:1-6; Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Mark 6:1-13
Divine Service III with Holy Communion
Hymns: #793 “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven”; #588 “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know”; #922 “Go, My Children, with My Blessing”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
“When I am weak, then I am strong,” St. Paul says. Isn’t that odd? Weakness isn’t something most people see as an asset. Who wants to be weak? To “seek to be weak,” to be weak on purpose, isn’t something the world around us has ever admired. In our American culture especially, here on this Fourth of July weekend, weakness is contrary to our ethos, to our way of thinking, to our national mentality, to “who we are.” Self-sufficiency, stubborn independence, “peace through strength,” is “the American Way,” and what we’ve always been about. So how can weakness ever be a good thing? In what world does that even make sense? I don’t want to be seen as weak, or to come across as being a weakling. Lord knows, I don’t ever want to admit to having weaknesses, especially in a world that’s so quick to point out our weaknesses, and expose them, exploit them, and use them against us. But “When I am weak, then I am strong,” St. Paul says; how can that ever be true?
In the chapters before our Epistle reading today, Paul readily admits to being weak, but only to point out and emphasize that “I am weak, but He is strong.” Paul is even proud to boast about his weaknesses, and about all the times in his life when he’s been weak, because when he was weak, he was weak for the sake of Christ. He brags about all the times he’s been thrown in prison and flogged. (What a thing that is to brag about!) He’s proud to have been beaten and stoned and shipwrecked for Jesus’ sake. He considers it a mark of honor to have been hungry and thirsty and naked and cold for the sake of his Savior. “If I must boast,” he says, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness; let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Just before our reading from 2 Corinthians, he tells about having to escape from the king of Damascus by being lowered in a basket like a little baby from a window in the city wall. How humiliating!
Weakness as a source of pride. Weakness as a mark of honor. What a strange thing that is. But isn’t that what Jesus taught, and what Jesus did? Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. He took the lowest place for our sakes. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven. He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. He taught us that weakness is not only not a liability, but the ultimate good. Doesn’t that just turn the whole world on its ear?
Paul says in our reading from 1 Corinthians 12: “I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord.” Why is there nothing to be gained, and no profit, in boasting and bragging about yourself? Self-promotion is just not a good look; it’s off-putting, it turns people off. (I wish some of our politicians would remember that!) It’s best to let others praise you, if there’s any praising to be done. Remember Jesus’ parable about taking the best seat? He said if you go to a banquet and take a seat in the front, and they have ask you to move because someone more important than you has come in, you’ll be embarrassed in front of the whole crowd as you slink your way all red-faced to the back. But if you take a seat in the back of the room on purpose, how honored you’ll be when they call you up to the front. Paul does his bragging reluctantly, and only to make the point he needs to make. The old baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean was famous for saying, “It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true!” And in the end, Paul isn’t boasting about himself, but about his God.
Paul writes, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know--God knows. And I know that this man--whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” Paul, in a humble way, is talking about himself and his own experience. He’s “the man in Christ,” although he’s humble enough not to say so. And he was caught up, snatched up, taken up by God. This wasn’t something he asked for or did for himself; he didn’t climb up to heaven or do anything on his own. He’s not saying, “Look, here’s what I did,” but “Look, here’s what the Lord has done for me.” He gives credit where credit is due.
That business about the third heaven, by the way, goes to the way the Hebrews and the ancient peoples thought about how the universe was put together. The first heaven was the sky, the firmament, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the clouds. The second heaven was what we call outer space, the planets and sun and stars and the visible universe. The third heaven was that place beyond the stars, the place beyond all things, the place where God Himself lives.
Paul says he was caught up to the third heaven, to paradise, to the garden of God; and there he saw “inexpressible things.” Those are things that are unutterable, unable to be described, because there are no words in the human language adequate to even begin to describe their wonderfulness. “Woe is me! My eyes have seen the King!” prophet Isaiah said. “Though the eye of sinful man His glory may not see,” we sing in the old “Holy, Holy, Holy” hymn. Like Jesus at the Transfiguration, where His disciples saw His true glory for a few fleeting moments, and it put them on their faces on the ground. Like the people in our Gospel reading, who saw Jesus do all those amazing miracles with their own eyes, and couldn’t believe what their own eyes were seeing for the sheer glory of it all. They asked, "Where did this man get these things? What is this wisdom that’s been given to Him, that He even does miracles?” When my Grandpa Meyer was fighting his cancer years ago, he almost died one night, a few months before the end of things, but they brought him back. (We never quite understood why). And he told us afterward, “I’m pretty sure I saw God, but I can’t remember what He looked like. I guess I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see yet.”
“I will boast about a man like that,” Paul says, “but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.” I won’t boast about myself, because I know my own weaknesses all too well; and if I’m honest, I know that all of you can see them, too. I know where I’d be without God in my life, and I know where I’d be without Jesus being here to hold me up. “Only by the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul says; and the Lord is still working on whatever it is I’m going to be. Pity the person who’s too big in the head - or too small in the soul - to admit it when they’ve made a mistake; how does anyone grow or learn anything that way? If humility is learned by failures, mistakes, and embarrassments, made before the eyes of all and for all the world to see, then welcome to God’s classroom.
So, says Paul, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” Oh, here we go! The Greek word here for “conceited” means “to raise your own self up” - to exalt yourself, to be puffed up, to be big-headed, to get too big for your britches. A person with a big head or an inflated ego is not only insufferable for the rest of us to live with, but the Lord can’t do much with a person like that, either, because the more I think of me, the less I’ll think of God. The more self-sufficient, strong, and independent I feel myself to be, the more I’ll be tempted to forget about God and put Him aside. And that is a fatal, deadly mistake; that’s the sin that leads to coveting and idolatry and all those sins that will end up ruining a soul. If I get to thinking I’m really something, and forget that “without Him, I can do nothing,” it isn’t going to end well.
God really loves us, in spite of our occasional big-headedness. He cares about His children, and He wants the best for us; and what He wants most of all is for us to be saved, and to end up safe in heaven with Him. That’s why He sent us His Son, and why He calls us to have saving faith in Him. But having the faith we need isn’t something we can do on our own, or by our own power, or by our own ego. In fact, being saved requires us to give up on our own poor efforts and trust in God alone; and that requires an awful lot of humility, more humility than we human beings naturally possess. So the Lord does what He has to do; sometimes an over-inflated head needs a pin.
The Lord blessed good St. Paul with a thorn. In the Greek, a thorn is a skolops – a sharp stick, a goad, something with a sharp point. Like when the Lord told Paul it was “hard for him to kick against the pricks,” or like the crown of thorns they gave Jesus to wear. We don’t know what the sharp stick was that God allowed the devil to poke poor St. Paul with; it could have been a lot of different things. Paul had been flogged and beaten and shipwrecked; his thorn could have been a lingering injury from one of those. He’d spent time in some cold, damp dungeons and jail cells; it could have been an after-effect of that. It could have been malaria, or arthritis, or a bad back, or any kind of chronic, physical ailment. If you’ve ever seen someone suffer from a chronic condition, or suffered from one yourself, you know how humbling it can be, especially if it costs you some of your independence, or forces you to rely on others for help.
In Paul’s case, his “thorn in the flesh” caused him to cry out to God; but isn’t that the point of the sharp stick? Self-sufficiency will only take you so far. Your own strength can only do so much. These fragile bodies of ours wear out, and sooner or later they’re going to fail us, no matter how well we try to care for them. Some people curse God when those “thorny things” happen, but may God grant us the grace to see our weaknesses, frailties, and insufficiencies as the blessings and conduits of mercy that they are. (I never said this was going to be easy!)
“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” Paul says. “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” My grace is sufficient for you. It’s enough, and more than enough. It’s all you’ll ever need. My power is perfected, completed, fulfilled, consummated, once you come to the end of yourself and understand how weak you are, and how much you need Me.
“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,” Paul says, “so that Christ's power may rest on me.” The Greek word for “rest” here is skanous, which is literally a tent or a tabernacle. When we’re weak, when we humble ourselves and recognize our own weaknesses, and are willing to admit to them, Christ has promised to come with His power and spread His tent over us, tabernacle over us, shelter us and cover us with mercy, all so we’ll have the blessing of relying on His strength and power, and never again have to worry about our own poor human power not being enough (because it won’t be!)
As long as I rely on my own strength, and try to do the childish, “toddler thing” and say, “No! I can do it myself,” I’ll be headed for the rocks. “The arm of flesh will fail you, you dare not trust your own,” the old hymn says. What we really need is a Father to hold our hand. “The faith of a little child,” Jesus called it. The fact that He knows how weak we are is why the good Lord gave us a Communion table, and invites us to come.
Humbling, to be sure, to admit that you’re weak, but a necessary life realization. “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up again.”
St. Paul comes to the ridiculous, wonderful, delightful conclusion, even while that thorn is still poking him in the side, that if God asks us to do something for Christ’s sake – for the sake of His Kingdom, for my own good, or for the good of the people around me – then it will be a good thing, even if it hurts. “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” So my weaknesses are delightful, because in them I’ll find the opportunity to point others to Christ. And even the insults and hardships that come my way and become blessings, because in the end they draw me closer to God.
Take nothing for the journey, Jesus told His disciples. Go out in weakness, and show the world My power. “For when I am weak, then I am strong,” Paul says. And the weaker I get, the stronger Christ will be for me, and the more He’ll be able to do through me. I’m not saying we should go looking for thorns or troubles, never that; only that we learn from those things when they come, and that God in His mercy will turn our heartaches into grace.
Dear Father in Heaven, spare us, if it’s Your will, from trials and troubles and thorns and pains. But Lord, when those things do come, may we learn to see Your power and Your mercy in them, and may they in the end make us stronger in our faith. Help us to learn to live by Your power, dear Lord, and not by our own. Bless us, defend us, and protect us, as we walk in this world for You. We pray in Jesus’ name; Amen.