I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven - whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person - whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows - was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 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. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. 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 my 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 12:2-10)
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There’s a story told – a sort of parable actually - about an old grandfather clock that had stood for three generations in the same corner of a room, faithfully ticking off the minutes day after day. In the clock was a heavy weight that had to be pulled to the top every night to keep the clock running. One day, the clock was sold and the new owner noticed the heavy weight. “Too bad,” he thought, knowing nothing about how the clock worked, “that such an old clock has to carry such a heavy weight.” So he took the weight off the chain, and immediately the clock stopped running. “Why did you do that?” the clock asked. “I wanted to lighten your load,” the man replied. “Why?” asked the clock. “Didn’t you realize that the weight I bore was what kept me going?”
We’re a lot like the old lock. Many people think that they want an easy way through life, with all the burdens and all the weights taken away. We assume that if that happened, our lives would be happy and blissful. We don’t realize that sometimes it’s those weights and burdens and struggles that keep us going; that push us forward and that ultimately bring our faith to perfection. Even Paul had to come to understand that, and our Scripture passage today describes what you might call his “AHA!” moment, when he realized that his struggles and hardships and weaknesses were actually tremendous opportunities to build his relationship with God. In the same way, it’s in our own times of conflict and defeat and struggle that we need to find a source of strength beyond ourselves. And, in the end, we can rejoice that there is such a source of strength available to us – and it’s found in the inexhaustible grace of God. God’s grace will sustain us, no matter what hardships and challenges life may bring. From Paul’s own writing, we discover that it was in his own weakness that he discovered the power of God that would give him strength to persevere through all hardships. “My power is made perfect in weakness,” God had revealed to Paul. Surely that’s a revelation we could all take comfort in.
It does sound strange, though. How can any power be “made perfect in weakness”? The words puzzle us and intrigue us and confuse us because they seem so contradictory. We think of power and weakness as being mutually exclusive. One is either powerful or weak, but one can’t be both. And yet, it’s true, at least in a Christian life – power and weakness do go together. We may not understand it, but most Christians have experienced it somewhere along the way: that strength that comes from outside ourselves when we’re facing some struggle or trial that has such a hold on us that we know we don’t have the strength within ourselves to keep going. Paul talks in Philippians about a peace that passes understanding. That’s the sense of peace that we feel – and I think everyone feels it from time to time – at those times when we shouldn’t feel peace; when we should be disturbed or frightened or uneasy or doubtful – but we’re not. “The peace that passes understanding.” I believe that’s the presence of God in our midst; God’s Spirit reaching out to us and filling us and telling us that – no matter what – all is well. It’s often hard for us to acknowledge our weaknesses. Usually, we try to hide our weaknesses. We play to our strengths, so to speak. But Paul learned that if he played to his weaknesses, he’d find a strength and a peace – and a presence – that would make him more powerful than he could ever imagine.
Paul wrote in this passage about a strange divine revelation of heaven he had received. It’s hard to know what to make of the rather strange cosmology he speaks of (the so-called “third heaven”) but maybe we don’t have to understand the details. The point is that he’s had a marvelous spiritual experience of some sort that has made him powerfully aware of God’s presence with him. What he became aware of almost immediately, though, was that this experience didn’t relieve him from his earthly sufferings. His “thorn … in the flesh” (which could have been a disease that couldn’t be cured or a sinful temptation that he couldn’t overcome – he never actually explains it) caused him great suffering – perhaps both physically and spiritually – but it also caused him to understand his need to draw ever closer to God. But it’s important for us to understand that Paul did not get relief from his suffering. We need to understand that if we’re going to understand what happened to Paul and make it relevant to today. Many people pray for many things, and when they don’t get them they say “God didn’t answer my prayer,” and they give up on God. What they fail to understand is that Christian faith is never about what we get but is rather about what we become. God may well say “NO” to a specific prayer – just as he did to Paul’s prayer for relief from his “thorn … in the flesh” - but God didn’t abandon Paul, and neither does God abandon us when we’re facing some struggle from which there seems to be no release. Instead, God worked to give Paul enough strength to deal with his struggle, and Paul ended up using his “thorn” to tap into the all-sufficient grace of God. You see, God always works – even if God’s answer to a specific prayer is “NO.” If we understand that God is still working in spite of that denial of our wishes, we can then suddenly find ourselves boasting in our own weaknesses, and, ideally, showing others God’s presence and strength through how we’ve been able to deal with them and go on.
A denied desire is painful. As children, probably none of us liked it when our parents said “no” to us, because children tend to live in the moment with little thought of anything else. Whatever we wanted at any given moment was the most important thing in the world to us at that moment, and not to get it was a crushing thing. It was painful for Paul when God refused his request to remove the “thorn … in the flesh”(whatever it was) and we know that God’s “NO” didn’t sit well with Paul – because Paul says he asked “three times” before he could finally bring himself to accept the answer. It seems as though he begged; he pleaded with God to do this for him. But finally, while his “thorn … in the flesh” remained, Paul found something infinitely more valuable than a relief from this particular trouble: he had found that God was always with him and that God’s grace was always upon him and that God’s strength would always be available to him – and that he needed nothing else. He had discovered that he would always be able to go on, no matter what he might be facing – whether it was this current weakness or any time of weakness or trial that he might have to face in the future.
The father of the Swedish hymn writer Lina Sandell Berg was a Lutheran pastor in Sweden. When she was 26 years old, she went with her father on a boat trip, during which he accidentally fell overboard and drowned. Later, as she reflected on how she overcame the ordeal of seeing her father swept away by the waves, she wrote the following words that, once translated, became a popular hymn in the English-speaking world as well, and translated into English it begins with these words:
Day by day, and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
The “Father” she wrote about, of course, wasn’t her earthly father, but her heavenly Father, who had helped her overcome the trauma of what she experienced that day on the sea and move on to a life as a writer of gospel hymns. Even then, her trials weren’t over. She married a man who would become a member of the Swedish Parliament, but their only child died at birth. She later battled typhoid fever which she recovered from but which left her with ongoing health problems until she died in 1903 at the age of 70. But for everything she experienced, she never wavered in faith and she wrote hymns in praise of God that are still sung in Sweden to this day.
When you face trials and challenges and burdens, many people will tell you to look within yourself for a source of strength to see you through. But the reality is that those inner resources often aren’t enough - we need a source of strength beyond ourselves. We need to learn, as Paul needed to learn, that ultimately the greatest strength is made available to us when we face our greatest needs. Remember that, again in Philippians, Paul wrote not that we can do all things, but that we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens [us].” We can overcome any hardship, persevere through any crisis, battle through any challenge and triumph over any temptation – all because of Christ, who strengthens us, because God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.
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