God’s grace in our weakness
Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, year B
Bible reading: 2 Corinthians 12:9
I must boast!
No body likes a boaster. And I feel the nausea well up inside me when some of our cock-sure sports stars boast without restraint on camera after a win. ‘C’mon Cooper’
, I hear you say, ‘Aren’t they entitled to their victory romp, a little air punching and a champagne shower?’
Maybe. And maybe the reason I feel that way is because I envy them. Perhaps deep down I too want to experience the heights of success. If that’s the case, then I need to be all the more careful. I could easily be carried away by the same desire to boast. Many an evil has been done in the world because the weak have burned with envy over the strength of the proud.
But there is a deeper reason for my discontent over such supercilious behaviour, a reason that is not without divine assent. You see, boasting is the voice or body language of pride. Pride always wants to lead a person in the opposite direction to God. C. S. Lewis calls pride ‘the great sin’. It was through pride that the devil became the devil; pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
It was pride that led to the first ever murder recorded in human history – fratricide, at that.
It was pride that hardened Pharaoh’s heart to make a stubborn stand against the Lord, and say ‘I will not let your people go!’
It was pride that fuelled the bitter contempt the Pharisees felt towards Jesus.
We hear throughout scripture that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, and nowhere more eloquently than by Mary, the mother of our Lord, when she sang with inspired lips:
God scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, puts down the mighty from their thrones, and exalts those of low degree.
(Luke 1:51-52)
And so boasting that stems from pride doesn’t befit the people of God. And yet here is Paul, who begins chapter 12 of 2nd Corinthians with the words I must boast!
Now I’m curious! My initial impulse is to cut him down for being such a big shot…that is, until I read on.
You see, Paul is not actually boasting in his success, but in his weaknesses. How daft! Can you imagine Leighton Hewitt facing the press after a big quarterfinals loss, boasting in his flawed performance? Or imagine Ricky Ponting losing an Ashes Test. What would you think if he congratulated his team on the dropped catches and lack-lustre batting, and told the world he was proud of the loss? You’d think it was time for him to retire.
So what is Paul doing here? Well, he’s boasting about some sort of personal impediment for starters. Is it physical? Psychological? We never find out. He calls it a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan
sent to harass him. And he makes his boast in this and other weaknesses.
Paul is not some kind of hypochondriac. Neither is this a sort of false humility on display, because Paul is quick to move on – to show that precisely because he is weakened by numerous forms of suffering, the strength of God’s grace in Jesus Christ is amplified and richly appreciated in his life and ministry.
Now Paul, of all people back then, had good reason to boast. His call to the apostleship was dramatic and spectacular. He was blessed with many spiritual gifts: healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, visions and rapturous out-of-the-body experiences. If he wanted to impress, he had a plethora of spiritual bling to flaunt.
But he refused to make trophies of his successes, choosing rather to highlight and boast in his weaknesses, his impediment, the insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities he had to endure.
Now many a religion would interpret this as a sure sign that God had abandoned Paul. Typically, we too think that God must necessarily be at work where there is heroism, success, and glory on display. The flipside is to interpret our respective failures and burdens as signs that God doesn’t care about us, or that we have failed to win his approval.
But God’s answer to Paul shows us something quite paradoxical – God works for good in our lives despite weakness and suffering. Better still, God is at work even through the experience of failure, pain, loss and the humiliation of his people. This makes us take a radical new look at all our disappointments and helps us trust that God’s gracious hand is at work through them.
How can this be? Didn’t Jesus make the sick well again? Didn’t he come into this world with the intention to ‘fix’ us and to put right everything that causes us grief?
Yes he did. But the road to repair was paved by a love that was ready to shed self-importance and pride, a love that suffered in order to save and embrace its beloved. Even when our Lord came into this world in person, he came not in triumphant glory, but in humility, weakness and suffering.
It’s a most unexpected way of helping humanity, don’t you agree?
We want complete and understandable answers, evidence of tangible, spiritual power, all conveyed by an impressive, well-run, and effective (religious) institution. Instead, God gives us the cross.
— from Veith’s Spirituality of the Cross
No doubt you are occasionally, or perhaps constantly, burdened by suffering of one kind or another – broken body, broken spirit, broken heart. And many a person has prayed, ‘God, if you are benevolent, and if you are powerful, why won’t you take this trouble away from me, and make things work in my favour?’ The same questions can be found in Psalm 88: O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?
What is God’s answer? It’s simple, and initially unimpressive. He says: My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.
When failure, suffering and weakness predominate in the life of God’s church, it is not because he deprives it of his blessings and victory. It is rather that his victory is hidden under its opposite. Only through the cross can we come to see power in terms the world calls weakness, and victory in terms the world calls failure.
Remember that the very root cause of our suffering is pride. Yes, even chronic illness came into being through the ancient desire to be like God. But to tackle this root cause with the impulsive quest for glory and power would be like pouring petrol on flames in order to douse a fire.
And the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote were on that path. They laughed at Paul’s inadequacies. They boasted in their charisma. Many a religion and church program has fallen for the same trap – the ‘fast-food’ mentality that demands God grant success on our terms here and now.
Instead God gives us sufficient grace, he makes us dependant on Jesus Christ the crucified Saviour. Someone once went to their pastor with that difficult question: ‘Why has God let this happen to me? Why doesn’t he free me from my suffering?’
The pastor felt inadequate, as we pastors so often do, but finally said: ‘I don’t have an answer to the reason why you suffer like you do, but I can point you to the Answerer.’
Jesus answers our cry for mercy by entering into our pain. His cross makes us pour contempt on all our pride. From his cross flows grace, the antidote to human pride and self-worship. Grace upon grace! Given in hidden and meagre form – words from the bible, water on a baby’s head, a little wafer of bread, a small sip of wine, a gathering of fellow victims whose weekly pilgrimage brings them to the One victim who wrought victory through suffering and shame, weakness and death.
To be sure, God does work miracles. Our gospel reading today shows the disciples doing this. Our prayers are prayed with earnest expectation and hope. God protects us, shields us from harm. He restores our joy when we are sad. He heals people from their diseases, spares them from the cold grave and grants an extension of life.
But even when such hopes are dashed and pain remains, we have access through faith in Christ to the healing of his all-sufficient grace. Often, as with St Paul, such suffering has rescued us from an elation and conceit that would spell the end of our faith. As we suffer we can be comforted, encouraged, and content, knowing that the power of Christ rests on us. When we are weak, God’s all-sufficient grace – his divine, unmerited favour – is very strong!
It is by this all-sufficient grace that your sins are forgiven, and you are reunited to God. Because of this all-sufficient grace you can be certain that the evil one has no power over you. It is this all-sufficient grace that guarantees the end of all your suffering in due course, be it of body, mind or relationship, and seals the blessed and unimaginable joy of eternal life. Amen.