Perfect in Weakness

Perfect in Weakness--July 31, 2018

"Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 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 Corinthians 12:7b-10]

I have been putting off writing about these verses.

It's not because I don't like them or don't think they make sense.  It's not because this passage makes me squirm or pokes at me by exposing something I don't want to deal with.  Just the opposite, in fact--the first time I saw these verses, when I was probably well into my twenties, I was stunned with surprise that there was such beauty and grace that I had overlooked or never seen before hiding in the tail end of what we call Second Corinthians. It was like a light went on for me--like something I wish had been shouted from the rooftops and preached in sermons from the church experience of my childhood, but had never been mentioned, or which I had never paid attention to before.

But the reason I have been putting off writing about these verses, in this whole month that we have been exploring the power of Jesus, is that there's simply no analogy for what Paul says here.  At least, I strain to find one, and I have come up short.  I have no other earthly example to point to, no other referent or object lesson, to hold these words up against in order to conclude, "Ah yes, well, Paul is being perfectly reasonable here."  I have no reason--at least, none other than the promise of the gospel--to conclude on my own, logically, that "power is made perfect in weakness."  I have no reason, based on the usual order of the day and the conventional wisdom around us, to believe that "when I am weak, then I am strong."

I wish I could point to some obvious illustration and say, "See, consider the oak tree..." but the oak tree's strength is not made perfect through its weakness.  It is weak for a while, perhaps, as a seedling, and then it stops being weak when it gets large enough to stand and stretch up to the sky.  The same with race horses, rip tides, and wrestlers--they are strong because they are strong, not because they are also somehow weak.  Human logic and human categories want to make something one or the other--either something is weak, or it is powerful.  These are, to our minds, opposite poles on a continuum, as far apart from one another as the north pole is from the south.

And yet, stubbornly, wonderfully, there are Paul's words and experiences, standing out there and refusing to go away, insisting that true power is made perfect--made complete--not in spite of frailty, but in and through weakness.

That is because, as I imagine we have seen over the course of this last month, God's power is simply different from our notions of how power works.  The power of Jesus is a different animal than the brute force and coercion we tend to picture when we think of power.  The power of Jesus runs counter to the usual ways the world thinks of strength.  After all, the smartest and most well-respected minds of the first century--the So-and-Sos of the Roman Empire--thought it was a show of power to crucify Jesus... and in stark opposition, the New Testament sees true power expressed in Jesus' willingness to endure being crucified.  The wisdom of the world says, "Power is when you threaten others to do what you want, and then you make an example of them if they refuse." And the upside-down perspective of Jesus says, "Power is when your love gives you the courage and strength to lay your life down for the ones holding the hammer and nails."

The move Paul makes here is simply to say that what happened at the cross was not a fluke or a one-off.  It is the key-signature for all of Jesus' ongoing presence in the world.  That is to say, the same way that Jesus' power is revealed in an unexpected, even hidden, way at the cross will be the same way that Jesus' power will show up in our lives--precisely through weakness, through failure, through emptiness, and through suffering.

Maybe, now that I think of it, that's the one point of analogy I have been looking for all along--the cross. I don't have a snappy object lesson or pop culture reference to connect this power-through-weakness to... but there is the cross.  The cross is exactly what Jesus' power-through-weakness looks like--the salvation of the world hung on an ugly Roman death stake.  The cross is what God's power looks like in all its unexpected, surprising wonder, and then Paul says here in his letter that the same kind of power shows up in our lives as well.  

So for Paul, struggling with whatever malady was his "thorn in the flesh," the same upside-down logic of the cross shows up again.  Throughout the life of the early church, the pattern was the same: the followers of Jesus didn't start an armed uprising against the empire, nor did they leverage their vast wealth to mount a hostile corporate takeover of the Empire.  The beloved community of Jesus was strong through its weakness--its witness was in its refusal to lash out in violence at the people who persecuted them, and its treasure was shared to make sure that nobody went hungry.  

That is a power the world at large simply doesn't understand.  Instead, it reaches for sticks and stones and clubs and knives, in the hopes of getting a more powerful weapon to keep the other side away.  The world at large sees power as the ability to make the other guy afraid of you, and to force others to bend to your whims. The world at large sees power in terms of your stockpiles of stuff and the muscle you can flex to keep others from getting close to it. In other words, the world at large would nod approvingly at the crucifixion of Jesus every time and say, "See?  We're powerful--look! We killed him."  

And in spite of that, the power of Jesus, seen and reflected in the lives of his community, says back, "See?  This is Jesus' power--look! He laid down his life for them, for us, for all."

So for Paul, real power is not found in some example of when he prayed the right magic words and got what he prayed for on the first try; it is found in the persistent pain of a thorn that would not go away, but which became a channel for Jesus' power to be revealed.  And for Paul, real power is not found behind imperial banners or under gleaming centurions' helmets, but in the footwasher's towel and basin and the shared loaf of bread.  Real power is in the weeping with those who weep, the rejoicing with those who rejoice, the walking with others in their lives' journeys, and the enduring through whatever gets thrown at you.

And all of a sudden, the same surprising, upside down power of the cross shows up everywhere in our lives together.  There's no gimmicky object lesson or single perfect analogy for what this kind of power-in-weakness is "like," because in some sense, it is woven through all of the life of the beloved community, like a thread that binds it all together.  The power of Jesus--the power made perfect in weakness--is revealed in the ways we bear with one another in our differences, rather than forcing each other to fit into cookie cutter sameness or cutting people off because we do not agree.  It is revealed in the ways we respond to hostility with a refusal to hate back, even if the world around thinks that is weak or makes us look like "losers."  It is revealed in the ways we intentionally choose to put the needs of others--especially others who are not followers of Jesus already--before our own comfort, even if the world thinks that looks foolish.  The power-in-weakness is revealed in the way we keep on keeping on, despite thorns in the flesh, ache in our hearts, injustice in the world, and the nagging pull of apathy on our souls.  That is the same power seen in Jesus' love, in his life, and at the cross.  That power then gets refracted out, like white like broken up into a rainbow of colors through a prism, in each of our lives in a thousand different ways.  But it is always the same surprising, unexpected power, the power made complete in weakness.

May such Christ-like power be ours today... and may we have the courage to use it, rather than running off after counterfeit versions of "power."

Lord Jesus, grant us your power... the power made perfect in our weakness.