Power in WeaknessPower in Weakness
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 5 July 2009
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, wrote over forty books, was a Fellow of the Menninger Psychiatric Clinic, Kansas, and was professor at Yale and then Harvard Divinity Schools. He was an intelligent man who was in demand as a lecturer and speaker. Yet, in 1986, he moved to L’Arche Daybreak Community, Toronto. He became pastor to a group of people who suffered severe mental and physical challenges. After Nouwen’s death in 1996, an article in the Church Times (19.09.1997) asked, “Why did he make his final home there? One suspects that his decision was bound up with the pressing need to be known in his weakness, to find a home where his inner poverty was greeted without shame.” Here was a man who left behind the hallowed halls of intellect and learning to live with those who could barely speak - if at all - and who lacked social graces and airs. He went to live with people who didn’t care about what he thought, or about the number of books he had written, or about how popular he was as a speaker. Nouwen wrote, “I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment. In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again.”
The Lord spoke to Paul at a time when he felt crippled by weakness: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Nouwen’s discovery at L’Arche Daybreak was the same as that of the apostle, “...whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” At about the time when Nouwen joined the Daybreak community, he suffered a nervous breakdown. In his journal published as The Inner Voice, he writes of the power that is ours when we admit we are powerless: “There are places in you where you are completely powerless. You so much want to heal yourself, fight your temptations, and stay in control. But you cannot do it yourself. Every time you try, you are more discouraged. So you must acknowledge your powerlessness. This is the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous and the treatment of all addictions...Simply start by admitting that you cannot cure yourself. You have to say yes fully to your powerlessness in order to let God heal you. But it is not really a question of first and then. Your willingness to experience your powerlessness already includes the beginning of surrender to God’s action in you” (p. 26-27).
Paul writes about his own weakness in response to attacks from a group of opponents who were accusing him of being cowardly and weak (10:10). These ‘false apostles’ (11:13-15), were seeking to undermine Paul’s apostolic authority. Reading between the lines, Paul’s opponents cite the fact that he does not accept payment for his ministry (11:7-10), as grounds to question his credentials as an apostle. They called into question his religious and social standing as an Israelite (11:22). Paul boasts in his weaknesses...his imprisonments, punishments, and persecutions during his ministry. His opponents may have been saying something to this effect, “Look at that Paul. How can he call himself an apostle? Look at the catalogue of disasters besetting his ministry! Surely a true apostle would have more success than this. Surely God would protect him.” Paul’s opponents believed that credibility derived from great visions and tremendous spiritual success. Paul is about to show them that when he is at his weakest he is at his strongest.
Paul gives an account of an ecstatic vision that he had fourteen years earlier. Paul is so uncomfortable with the idea of bragging that he describes his experience as if it were that of another person. The reason he shares this vision is to show his opponents that their claims to superior visions and revelations cannot top his experience. There is much about this vision that we cannot conclusively understand. We don’t know what Paul meant when he said he was caught up to the third heaven. Was he taken into the presence of God and given a glimpse of the afterlife? There is no doubt that it was a marvellous and mysterious experience. So mysterious in fact, that Paul did not know whether it had been a physical or an out of body experience. So mysterious, that the things he heard were not to be repeated.
Paul’s opponents are known to make things up in order to ingratiate themselves to the Corinthians. Paul is at great pains to affirm the truth of what he is saying. He also is keen to deny that he shares his experience to make people think more highly of him than they should. His purpose is to put himself on an equal footing with his opponents. Then he brushes aside his wonderful experience and focuses on his weakness. He shows that the power of Christ does not dwell in us most perfectly when we are on a spiritual high. Rather, his power is made perfect in weakness.
Paul’s description of his ecstasy is followed by an account of a thorn in the flesh - a messenger of Satan. There have been speculations galore about whether Paul’s thorn in the flesh was physical, psychological illness, or relational. Paul doesn’t enlighten us. In fact it is just as well that he doesn’t. The vagueness surrounding Paul’s weakness is the beauty of this text. It means that generations of believers have come to this passage with their own thorns in the flesh - with their own messenger’s of Satan.
The key point is that the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan was sent to keep him from becoming proud. Paul’s opponents bragged about their superiority. Paul had learned that the things he could be proud of are not grounds for boasting. As Ernest Best aptly puts it, “He was ‘all up in the air’ after his rapture to Paradise. He needed to be brought down to earth lest he give too great an importance to his rapture - and too little to the cross” (Interpretation, p. 119). The thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan was sent to Paul to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground and to drive him to his knees in prayer. Paul prayed three times that the thorn/messenger would be taken from him. Perhaps Paul saw this affliction as something that was dragging him down - preventing him from preaching the Gospel. The Lord’s answer was clear, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” It is at the very point where our pride is stripped away through glaring weakness that we learn to depend on God’s grace.
All the things that Paul’s opponents would have considered signs of weakness were occasions for Christ’s powerful grace to dwell in him. His contentment with “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ,” was rooted in the cross of Christ. In 13:4, Paul writes, “For he (Jesus) was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God.” The Jesus who died on the cross would have had as much appeal as a criminal on death row about to die by hanging, lethal injection, or the electric chair. Jesus’ death on the cross would not have been viewed as victory but as humiliation and defeat. Yet this was God’s plan. In raising Jesus from the dead, he demonstrated that an event which appeared to be weakness and humiliation had turned out to be a routing of sin and a defeat of death itself. God’s work of salvation was not achieved when Christ was transfigured on the mountain, nor when Paul was raptured up into the third heaven. God’s power is made perfect in weakness - in the cross of Calvary upon which Christ died - through the thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan sent to Paul.
Paul had much to be proud of - his lineage, his religious background, his ministry, even his ecstatic religious experience. Yet God sent weakness to Paul and showed him that the only way for the power of Christ to be at work in him was when he was completely dependent upon God.
Henri Nouwen had much to be proud of - his religious background, his educational achievements, his writings, his popularity as a speaker. Yet God sent weakness to Henri in the form of a nervous breakdown. Through that time of excruciating pain and weakness, Henri discovered God’s power at work within him. He wrote, “During my months of anguish, I often wondered if God is real or just a product of my imagination. I now know that while I felt completely abandoned, God didn’t leave me alone...I have heard the inner voice of love, deeper and stronger than ever. I want to keep trusting in that voice and be led by it beyond the boundaries of my short life, to where God is all in all” (The Inner Voice of Love, 98).
Have you ever felt the weakness of physical or mental illness and asked God to take it away from you? Have you ever sunk so low that you thought that life was hardly worth living anymore? Did you feel that unless you were rid of this or that affliction that you could be of little use to God or anyone? The inner voice of love which spoke to Paul and Henri Nouwen speaks to you and me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
Our culture gives status to those who look good, have possessions, and reach the heights of power. There is a general acceptance that justice is exacted through the demand for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Might is equated with right. Even the church has bought into these values.
Jon Walton, Minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church (Interpretation, July 1998 p. 296), shared this story: “Some years ago when Bill Webber, former president of New York Theological Seminary, started the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City, he invited a group of people from the suburbs of Connecticut to a Bible study in the city. On the first night, the wealthy suburbanites went into the run-down neighbourhood of Manhattan where the study was to be held and made their way into the shabby fellowship hall of the church. They warmed to the coffee served by their African-American hosts and made awkward but friendly conversation. Eventually the study began and the lay leader from Connecticut suggested that they start by taking turns introducing themselves and saying what they did for a living.
It was exactly the wrong proposal. While some of the Harlem people worked in offices and stores, many were in domestic work, hospital maintenance, and sanitation. The white suburbanites were corporate executives and board members, insurance agents and college-educated women who volunteered with the Junior League. Webber quickly interrupted and suggested, instead, that they each say their name and tell how they had come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Immediately, all stood on an even plain as each person’s vulnerability and spiritual need was made apparent. As they introduced themselves, they found mutual strength in their mutual weakness.”
God’s way runs counter to the way of the world. In 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” Whatever our income or status may be, we all stand equal as sinners before God. No one has any grounds for pride before God. Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour? Has he forgiven you of your sins? Have you discovered that God’s grace is enough for you? Have you realised that his power is made perfect in weakness? |
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