"Power in Weakness" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

July 8, 2018

Reading:  2 Corinthians 12:2-10

So confession time… I’m not much of a sports fan.  Sure I will cheer on the Habs when they’re playing, but I won’t go out of my way to watch football or baseball.  But I do enjoy a good soccer match, so these days I’ve been following the FIFA World Cup which is happening in Russia – the semi-finals are this week, with the finals happening next weekend!

So in honour of the World Cup, I want to try a little game that I’ve entitled, “Sport Slogan / Not a Sports Slogan.”  The way that this will work is that I will give you a phrase, and I want you to try and figure out if it’s a Sports Slogan or if it’s Not a Sports Slogan.

Ready?  Let’s start with an easy one:

“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

“Power is made perfect in weakness.”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

“Faster.  Higher.  Stronger”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

“For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

“I will not boast except of my weakness.”

Sports Slogan or Not a Sports Slogan?

So you might have guessed where I’m going with this.  Some of the things that Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthian church are the opposite of the things that athletes and sports teams work for every day.  And if you think about it, the things that Paul was writing to the church in Corinth are the opposite of the message that we get from the world every day.

Every day the world determines our value by how much we have achieved or succeeded.  Think of who becomes famous – who the world worships.  Athletes who win become famous; politicians in power become famous; movie stars become famous – but only as long as they are acting in successful films.

So living in a world that worships and celebrates fame and power and wealth and success, how can we hear these words of Paul when he tells us that “I will not boast except of my weakness,” or “power is made perfect in weakness” or “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Now you might think that things were different back in Paul’s day almost 2000 years ago – the world was a less busy place, there was none of this modern pressure to succeed.  But if you look closely at the city of Corinth – the city where the church was that Paul was writing to – you will actually find a lot of similarities between that culture and our culture.

Corinth was located in what is modern-day country of Greece.  It had deep roots in the ancient Greek culture, but at the time when Paul was writing, it was a modern Roman city.  The old city had been destroyed by the Roman Army – razed to the ground – about 200 years previously; but then re-built by the Romans about 100 years later.  By the time that Paul was writing to the church there, it had a population of over 200,000 people, and it was a major point of trade, commerce, and manufacturing.  There was a big discrepancy between the small group of rich and elite, and the much larger group of people living in poverty.  And there were stories of people who managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so to speak; but there were also stories of people who tumbled in disgrace from positions of wealth and power.

Now in addition to being a busy and bustling city, every two years the city of Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games – a big event where people competed in sporting and artistic activities.  In terms of importance, these were second only to the Ancient Olympic Games held west and slightly south of Corinth in Olympia.  At the Isthmian Games, winners were celebrated with poetic odes and statues and money – they were the celebrities of their day.

Now the early church in the city of Corinth that Paul was writing to was more like a network of house churches.  The church would meet in the homes of wealthier members of the community, and their friends – the other elite members – would be invited to join them early to share in a meal and to get the best seats before worship began, leaving the poorer members of the community sitting out in the courtyard.  The class divisions, and the celebration of wealth and power that you saw in the city as a whole were reflected in the church.

And to this group of people, Paul dared to write, “Power is made perfect in weakness … whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”  These words were likely heard in ancient Corinth in the same way that we hear them today – that’s crazy-talk!  How can we get ahead by being weak?!

But then you have to look at the one whom Paul worshipped, the one who was worshipped by the early church in Corinth, the one whom we worship today – Jesus Christ.

We worship a God who found power in weakness.  In the story that we re-member every year on Good Friday, when God-in-Jesus was brought before Pilate and before Herod, Jesus didn’t respond with flowery speeches or great feats of oration.  Instead he replied with the power of silence; the power of weakness.  When God-in-Jesus was tortured and nailed to the cross, Jesus didn’t reply by throwing lightning bolts at his tormentors or by blasting the cross into splinters.  Instead he replied with the power of vulnerability; the power of weakness.

The God that we worship is a God who embraces vulnerability; who embraces weakness.  I receive a daily meditation by e-mail from Franciscan mystic Richard Rohr, and one of his e-mails this week expressed this very well.  Rohr wrote, “We worship this naked, homeless, bleeding loser, crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem.”  But Rohr continues.  He writes, “We worship this naked, homeless, bleeding loser, crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem … but we want to be winners.”[1]

And I think that this might be the key to Paul’s message to the church in Corinth, and to us today.  Even though the world tells us that we must be winners, we must always be better (after all, just look at all of the self-improvement books in every bookstore); and that it is only by doing our best and trying harder pursuing strength and power and wealth – even though this is the message that the world bombards us with every day, we don’t need to listen to the world.  We follow a different path.  We follow a path where we don’t have to be strong or powerful.

Instead, God invites us to let go of our vain attempts at strength or power.  God invites us to embrace our weakness – to acknowledge the fact that, next to God, we really have nothing.  And by letting go of all of this baggage, we open up space for God.

We don’t have to be “all that” – we have God instead.  Paul had to go through this process too.  He asked God to take away his weakness – what he referred to as a thorn in his flesh – but eventually he had to embrace his weakness, he had to accept that this unnamed weakness wasn’t going anywhere, and he had to hear God when God said, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

The church is a place where we can acknowledge our vulnerabilities – a place where we can acknowledge our human-ness – a place where we don’t have to be perfect – a place where we can be vulnerable together before God.  And there, in our weakness, in our human-ness, God’s power is made perfect.

---

[1] https://cac.org/changing-sides-2018-07-04/

"Silver Jug - Isthmian Games"
CC-BY-2.5 © Marie-Lan Nguyen

What sort of power are we chasing after?