2nd Corinthians 12.2-10; Mark 6.1-13
“When I am weak, then I am strong.” St Paul’s confidence at the end of today’s second reading sounds self-contradictory, doesn’t it? Weakness is an odd thing to list as your greatest asset. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” In a job interview, an employer might ask a potential employee about personal strengths and weaknesses and get answers like, ‘creative, but completely disorganized’ or ‘a hard worker but constantly stressed out.’ Now maybe someone has the confidence to think that ‘disorganized stress’ is just what a company needs to move forward. But it’s hard to imagine an employer offering a contract to such a person on the spot. Yet Paul makes the case that weakness is his strength. “When I am weak, then I am strong.”
Paul’s confidence doesn’t come easily, however. It comes only after taking it up with God three times in prayer. Three times Paul pleads for the Lord to take away a weakness he calls his ‘thorn in the flesh.’
Exactly what that thorn is, no one can say. It appears chronic, but an accurate diagnosis can’t be pinned down. In Paul’s other writings, however, he offers some tantalizing hints.
At the end of Galatians, he describes the large letters he writes with when he writes in his own hand. Now Paul dictated to a scribe who wrote what he said but often wrote a personal greeting at the end. Wen he writes, he writes in large print. At another point in Galatians, he says he knows the affection the people of that church have for him because if it had been possible, he says, they would’ve taken out their eyes and given them to him. Do these things—large print and the need for new eyes, plus the fact that Paul’s conversion came in a blinding light—hint at Paul’s ‘thorn’ as partial blindness? Maybe.
But in other places Paul says things that point in other directions. In 2nd Corinthians, he says his opponents mock him by pointing out that he writes great letters—weighty, forceful, we still read them—but when you meet Paul in person his speaking amounts to nothing. Some wonder if that means Paul had a speech impediment, certainly an unlikely condition for a renowned preacher of the gospel.
There are other things to consider. Throughout his letters, Paul lists a range of physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships: lashing, stoning, shipwreck, imprisonment, starvation, constant danger; maybe other people are his thorn.
We don’t know exactly. And maybe not knowing is precisely the point. That means that Paul’s weakness, whatever it is, becomes an opening for us to consider our own weakness and troubles and, in them, trust the blessing of Christ and the power of his resurrection to be at work in us so that when we are having a hard time we might say with Paul, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Strong not on our own but strengthened by God. Because in our weakness there’s room for the Lord’s power to work in our lives. That is, after all, how the Lord answers Paul three-fold prayer about his thorn. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Now God’s power is not only at work there, of course. Wonderful spiritual experiences and visions do happen—exalted, awe-filled events do occur and lift us beyond ordinary life. These are gifts of God, encouraging for our lives.
Paul knows this, too. In today’s second reading, he describes celestial visions that can’t be put into words. The general sense among scholars is that these spiritual experiences are Paul’s own. Yet he is reluctant to talk about them as his own, so he speaks about them as someone else’s. “I knew a person who was lifted up to the heights of heaven.” Why the reluctance? Probably because such experiences, as wonderful as they were, could’ve filled Paul with pride. ‘I may not see well, I may not speak well, but look at me and the amazing things in my spiritual life.’ Isn’t it natural to want to minimize our flaws and failures by talking about our strengths? Yet the broader point Paul is making is that, as an apostle, his calling is not to gather crowds of followers who admire him for his experiences. His calling is to witness to Christ. And the more he talks about his own story, the less the story of Jesus gets told. So to tell us about life in Christ—Paul’s life in Christ and ours—Paul points to his thorn, his weakness, his point of need met by God’s grace.
This is a real challenge to the way we typically see the world, isn’t it? We tend to view problems with the idea that ‘If it’s broke, we can fix it.’ Mostly we want to be, or try to appear to be, strong not weak. We honor people who are successful, independent, find their own way through the world, and carve out their own path. Weakness is something we need to get rid of.
Yet regularly and often in the Bible, God works in the lives of people not at the point of their greatest strength, but at the point of their obvious need. Gideon goes into battle against the Midianites. They have 132,000 troops and Gideon only has 30,000; God reduces that number down to 300. What’s 300 against 132,000? Yet God is at work at the point of obvious need. Consider the disciples in today’s gospel. Jesus sends them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God. As he does, he tells them to take no bread, no money, no spare clothes, no provisions. What’s that about? Any of us would pack more for a Fourth of July outing that only lasts a couple hours! Yet Jesus is sending the disciples on the mammoth task of proclaiming the kingdom of God and they’re sent out empty-handed, not even a cooler filled with snacks. They’re sent out in weakness, not strength, with nothing but the one thing they need—God in their lives.
Paul was an instrument of God in the world, the disciples God’s instrument too, not because of their own strength but because God was at work in and through them. To us who desire to be, or at least appear to be, strong not weak, Paul shows how God is at work in the very place we least expect it so that we can know God’s blessings when we are weak and struggling.
On page 836 in the Book of Common Prayer, there is prayer of thanksgiving that has becomes one of my favorites—see also, “A General Thanksgiving” https://www.bookofcommonprayer.net/prayers_and_thanksgivings#t1
The prayer begins by including the sort of things we would naturally be thankful for: the beauty of creation and the wonder of life, the blessings of love in family and friends. These are all gifts of God, encouraging for our lives. But there’s also a line in the prayer that comes as something of a surprise. “We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.” Thankful for disappointments and failures and dependence on God? I’m not sure how often you pray like that. Bringing disappointments and failures to God in prayer? Yes. But being thankful for them? For most of us, that’s probably not the natural place for giving thanks. And yet it’s today’s story of Paul in the second reading and the disciples in the gospel. I wonder if it is maybe your story, too. Have you ever looked back on a difficult time when you weren’t sure how you were going to make it; found yourself going through something you would never have chosen for yourself and never want to go through again; yet also found that, as you look back, it was the very place you felt God’s presence and strength? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
A life of faith is not marked by independence but dependence. Not to become better and stronger, relying on our own gifts and talents so we need Jesus less and less, but a deepening awareness of God’s presence sustaining us through all things: growth in grace. In another of Paul’s letters, he lists his struggles and hardships, and says, “This happened so that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
When you are looking for, and longing for, a sense of peace and hope that transcends your circumstances, Paul’s unknown and unnamed thorn in the flesh is the opening for you to trust that God’s strength is given in your weakness, the blessing of peace in and through all things, peace beyond understanding. The only strength that disciples then and now need—our truest and best strength—comes from Jesus. In Jesus, “we receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need,” says the New Testament letter of Hebrews. And through the Spirit of Jesus at work in our lives we will, with St Paul and the disciples, also be sent out as ambassadors for the kingdom. Today, in this Holy Eucharist, our need is filled by Christ’s strength to live and love and serve, in small measure, the way Jesus lived and loved and served, and “to do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.”
This is how it was for Paul in his weakness. This is how it was for the disciples sent out empty-handed. And this is how it is for you so that, in Jesus, you can say with St Paul, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness to that the power of Christ may rest upon me…For when I am weak, then I am strong.
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