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If I’m honest, I’m not a fan of my own weaknesses. (I pause now to await the ones who know me well to stop laughing at my understatement.) I would really like to be strong, capable, and impressive in all ways.
I’m not.
I’m a normal human mix of capable and incapable, strong and weak, impressive and profoundly not impressive. It is truly annoying.
From conversation, I’m under the impression that some of you are more at peace with this than I am, and that is such good news. You are all living proof that wisdom, maturity, and the grace of God are profoundly powerful. I’m also aware that some of you are with me, in being frustrated in your own imperfection, and always pushing yourself for more. May God’s grace transform us too.
Anyway, my own sense of self, and my own impatience, are quite a lens to bring to our Epistle reading today. Paul talks about a “thorn in his side,” one that he has asked God to remove repeatedly, and one that he has come to believe is USEFUL in his ministry. The use of the thorn in the side? Keeping him humble, and reminding him that “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
Paul, who in this whole passage is modeling a different kind of leadership is refusing to play the games asked of him. Others have come to the church in Corinth bragging about who they are, what visions they’ve seen, and what authority it gives them. Paul has been asked to justify himself and his authority.
The passage we read today is part of him refusing to play along.
It opens with a weird piece about “someone” having a vision, which ends up being Paul, but he refuses to give any details or use it to gain any power over anyone else. Furthermore, he refuses to engage in even arguing about what form the vision took. Paul is NOT PLAYING by the rules.
He is facing people who boast, but he refuses to boast, OTHER than about God, so instead of bragging about himself, he talks about his WEAKNESSES. He talks about the thorn in his side. (No, no one knows what it is. Options in likeliness order include physical ailment, mental illness, outside persecution, or spiritual torment.) And then he talks about God.
I found a wonderful passage from a commentary I was tempted to share, but it was so dense I didn’t think it would help anything. So, instead, I’m going to summarize it for you, and put it in the footnotes.1 2
Paul is being told that the thorn in his side, that weakness in him, is a place that God’s grace can work. For Paul, this connects to Jesus being “crucified in weakness” but raised to life by the power of God. If Jesus’ life was defined by his weakness and God’s strength, then sharing the Good News of Jesus is also about letting God shine through our weaknesses. So Paul doesn’t try to overcome his weaknesses, nor dismiss them (like the Cynics and Stoics of his day). He also doesn’t try to be self-sufficient, which would involve limiting his own needs to limit his dependence on others. Instead, he accepts his “thorn in the side” and other weaknesses, and lets them guide him to dependence – on God.
So, to those bragging about what they’ve experienced of God, Paul refuses to boast, except about his WEAKNESS. To those seeking self-sufficiency, Paul responds with his dependence. This is definitely one of those cases where I can see why Paul was such an effective messenger of the story and love of Jesus.
This humble Paul, who only brags about his weakness, who acknowledges his dependence, who speaks highly of others but not himself, and who names the work of God in anything others might praise in his own life – THIS is the faith I grew up with. This is what I saw in my own church, and at church camp, and in the Annual Conference leaders when I started attending as a young teenager. I watched this being modeled, and I internalized it. The faith of bragging about the accomplishments of others, but not of ones self. The faith of seeing remarkable transformation happening, and thanking God. The faith of humility. This all feels like first language faith to me, the way that things are without even having to think about them.
From where I stand today, I don’t know if that’s good. Or, at least, I don’t know if it is equally good for everyone, or for every time. And I wonder if another person had been with me in those faith-forming experiences if they would have heard it and internalized it in the same ways.
This is funny, because there is a HUGE part of me that says “OF COURSE THIS IS GOOD, this is WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE, this is what being GODLY looks like.” But I’ve learned, over the years, to question everything, especially things that refuse to be questioned.
I wonder if “be humble, only speak of the accomplishments of others, praise God for anything praise worthy in yourself” ends up taking especially strong hold in women, in people of color, and in others who are marginalized, which ends up supporting the status quo in ignoring the wonders and accomplishments of many of God’s beloveds. And, I think about the quiet ways women and people of color are shamed for appearing to be insufficiently humble. I wonder if there are ways that those who are not marginalized are immune to the message of humility, and end up being the only ones comfortable with touting their accomplishments. And then, since others are also touting theirs, they seem the most capable.
I wonder if my first language, faith of my childhood ends up doing more harm than good by reinforcing exactly the ways that society wants to ignore the giftedness of many of God’s children.
Rev. Dr. Eric Law in The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb says, “Our vision of the Peaceable Realm is not based on fear. Instead it is based on lack of fear….This lack of fear is created by the even distribution of power.”3 When humility is used by some, but not others, we end up protecting those in power, instead of moving towards power sharing. Law’s book discusses a cycle of Christian living between death and resurrection: 1. Giving up power, choosing the cross 2. Cross, death, powerless 3. empowerment, endurance, faithfulness 4. Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Powerful. He emphasizes that we need to hold things in balance, not staying in one part of the story, but living the cycle over and over again. In fact, he talks about those with power giving power away, and that is if this is a way of life, power gets shared.
I think that maybe the faith I grew up with is one with GREAT value, especially in any situation where I have power. It is good to brag on others, lift others up, focus on inter-dependence, be aware of one’s weaknesses, and take it as an invitation to invite another’s strengths.
However, I think it is, maybe, only part of a fuller story. It is also important to see how God has gifted us, and think about how we want to use those gifts for the kindom. It is important to hear how what we have to offer blesses others. It is important to receive power, particularly when we are in a situation where we don’t have much. I think the full cycle is bigger than the one I’d internalized.
So, I don’t know what message you need today. (I don’t know what one I need today.) Maybe the reminder to look for God at work in our weaknesses, maybe to brag on each other, maybe to give up on self-sufficiency – and maybe to get REALLY REALLY clear on your own strengths and gifts and not let anyone take that away from you.
But I do know that Paul in 2 Corinthians and Jesus in his own hometown know a thing or two about being human, being limited, and finding God in the midst of it. And whatever else the message is in these passages today, I appreciate the reminder that God can bring good out of my weaknesses, and that makes them rather wonderful just as they are. Finally, I appreciate the struggle, to reach for a fuller faith, and acknowledge the complicatedness of trying to live as a follower of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen
1“The apostle is directed to understand his affliction as part of that weakness in and through which God’s powerful grace is operated. It is clear that, from Paul’s point of view, the decisive demonstration of this oracular pronouncement is Christ himself, ‘crucified in weakness,’ but alive ‘by the power of God.’ This is why weakness is the hallmark of his apostleship, because he has been commissioned to the service of the gospel through the grace of this Christ – a grace whose power is made present in the cross. Paul therefore does not, like the Cynic and Stoic philosophers of his day, strive to transcend his weaknesses by dismissing them as trifling. Nor does he, like them, hold to the ideal of self-sufficiency, striving to limit his own needs and therefore his dependency on others. Rather, precisely by accepting his tribulations as real weaknesses he is led by them to acknowledge his ultimate dependence on God.” Victor Paul Furnish II Corinthians in The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company Inc, 1984), 550.
2 Funish, 550.
3 Eric H. F. Law The Worf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1993) 14.
Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
July 4, 2021
Photo Credit to Barb Armstrong.