July 8, 2012
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Imagine if you were in Corinth, standing before a large gathering of good citizens and smart people and you were asked to give a speech. You are to talk about what makes a good life and how God is the difference to a good life. With no notes in your hands, you begin to talk about the event of a humiliating, bloody execution at a garbage dump outside a rebellious city in the Middle East.
It is your assignment to argue that this story is the key to everything in life and to all that we know about God. This is precisely the situation that Paul was in that we read in today’s passage. Before many of the people of this cosmopolitan, sophisticated city of the Empire, Paul had to proclaim that this whipped, bloodied, scorned and ridiculed Jew from Nazareth was God With Us.
Imagine a much smaller group of people like your extended family and you stood up like Paul did in Corinth and talked about Jesus Christ, it would be hard if not outright intimidating. You might not want to do this.
Folly of the Christ
Fourteen years ago, Jesus Christ had an outer and an inner body experience that took him into the third heaven—Paradise. The people asked Paul to explain what the resurrection meant and his reply was that he didn’t fully know. Paul said only God knows.
For the Corinthians who were known to be a sophisticated and knowledgeable people who were looking for explanations from this well-known teacher and speaker like Paul, what they heard was plain foolishness.
They heard about a crucified Messiah. It is an oxymoron, a violation of Israel’s high expectations for a messianic liberator, a violation of our notions of how God must act to be a real God. Paul knew that if he were going to connect with his audience that he would need to speak with “lofty words or wisdom,” the stock-in-trade of the classical orator.
But Paul didn’t want to avoid the absurdity of the cross or attempting to sugar coat the scandal of the cross in order to make it more palatable to his hearers. Paul limited his speech so that he knew “nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Look at 1 Corinthians 2:1-5,
“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that our faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
Paul says that he walks the way he talks and lives the way he lives because of what he has discovered about God. God has come as a crucified Messiah.
For God the Father to allow God the Son to be crucified, dead and buried, is for God to be pushed out beyond the limits of human expectation or human help. The cross is the ultimate dead end of any attempt at human self-fulfillment, human betterment or progress. Hanging from the cross, in humiliation and utter defeat, there is nothing to vindicate the work of Jesus or to make the story come out right except the power of God.
Rather than base his speech on human reason, common sense, or artful arguments, Paul spoke to the Corinthians in fear and trembling so that if they were to hear and to understand, it would have been solely through the “power of God.”
In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul writes, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Fear and Trembling
When someone is invited to give a speech or a presentation, it’s usually over the fact that this person is resourceful and actually has something valuable to offer. If you’re going to charge an admission fee to hear this speaker, it’s better be worth the price of the ticket. Those who were listening to Paul probably felt they didn’t get the answers they were seeking. Paul basically said only God knows.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you that the second greatest fear that people have is death but the number one fear that people have is public speaking. That’s why you would rather die than to give a speech!
Paul said that his manner of giving a speech was through “weakness” and “fear and trembling,” a rather peculiar demeanor for a public speaker. Why? Paul did not want his speaking to convince the people but only from the power of God.
Paul said, “On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth” (2 Cor. 12:5). Paul knew that it’s not about him but it’s all about the crucified Messiah—Jesus Christ. He refrains from boasting about himself so that no one could think about him to be better and that is keeping him from being elated or too full of himself.
And then Paul mentions his ”thorn in the flesh,” that unspecified physical disability under which he labored, a disability that Paul prayed to be delivered from. And yet he wasn’t. He was forced to bear his burden without relief, even as Jesus bore his cross without relief.
By now you know what is the “thorn in my flesh.” As a preacher, a denominational leader, an officiant at funerals, weddings, and birthday celebrations, I perform my public speaking duties for the most part pretty well. People actually ask me to speak because they like what I have to say—only in the times when I can get the words out.
When new situations arise that are particularly frightening and challenging, I fear and tremble. In my weakness, I can stutter and get tongue-tied. I become embarrassed and I wonder what the people are thinking. Just like Paul, I prayed that this “thorn in my flesh” would leave me—believe me, I prayed more than three times. But now, I have come to accept like Paul did when Jesus said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (1 Cor. 12:8b).
Accepting my weakness as a power from God, a reminder that I remain humble and not become elated—full of myself, I can now boast like Paul—“I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”
You cannot imagine what I was like as a child and a youth. I was so afraid to talk let alone give a sermon. I was almost like a mute; like when you press that ‘mute” button on your remote and nothing came out of my mouth. But God used my weakness and my fear and trembling and empower me to recognize that the Good News in the whole world is the power of God found in the foolishness of the crucified Messiah.
Our Pain and Suffering
As far as we know, Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was never relieved. He lived with this disability for the rest of his life. From Paul’s experience, his unrelieved “thorn in the flesh,” challenges many contemporary ideas about the Christian faith. Too often we present the Christian faith burden-free. We like a Jesus that rises above the pain of life in this world. Some come to the Christian faith with the belief that fairly successful people are empowered to be even more successful. It’s prosperity gospel that we are seeking for.
But today’s testimony from Paul reminds us of the gospel truth again and again that Jesus Christ sometimes delivers us from our sufferings and sometimes Jesus Christ thrusts us into suffering. Jesus Christ sometimes preserves us from pain but more often, I think Christ gives us a way through pain. Salvation in Jesus Christ sometimes means deliverance from our difficulties and sometimes it brings difficulties that we wouldn’t have if we had not been met by Jesus!
Paul was a man of unceasing prayer and prayed at least three times to be delivered of his “thorn in the flesh” and it was not. And through it all he has learnt a great truth that even in pain and disappointment God says to us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9).
What is your “thorn in the flesh?” Paul had his physical disability and I have mine. What is yours?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together, said, “In a Christian community, everything depends on whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. The chain is unbreakable only when even the weakest link hold tightly with the others. A community which permits within itself members who do nothing will be destroyed by them. Thus, it is a good idea that all members receive a definite task to perform for the community, so that they may know in times of doubt that they, too, are not useless and incapable of doing anything. Every Christian community must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the community.
You may say that you are the weakest link in the chain or that you can’t get rid of this thorn in the flesh, but it’s in your weakness that we have strength as a Christian community. When God uses all of us in our weaknesses, God’s power is made visible in the world. Your weakness is perfected in God’s power.
When Jesus at Gethsemane prayed to God his Father that if it’s his will, may this cup be removed from him; not Jesus’ will but God’s will be done. We know that Jesus bore his cross without relief.
A crucified God is known not only for what God does but also for what God does not do. A crucified God is one who doesn’t always deliver us from our times of pain but stands with us in the pain.
No matter how severe your “thorn in the flesh” is, a crucified God has been there before and meets you there even now so that we are able to say, not that we have been delivered, unburdened, but rather that we have discovered the truth of the divine promise, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9).
William Sloane Coffin once said, “It is often scornfully said that the Church is crutch. Of course it’s a crutch. So what makes you think you don’t limp? Paul tells us, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, for our sakes you went willingly to the cross. Help us to walk this way with you. You promised us that there would be a cross for each of us to bear. Strengthen us now that we might go into the world in your name without faltering.
Gracious God, who in the cross embraced us with a peculiarly powerful love, teach us your power that is revealed in the weakness we see in the cross, that we might show the world some of the light of your love. May the “thorns in our flesh” serve to remind us that your grace and power are sufficient in our weaknesses. In your name we pray. Amen.