Fr. John Allison

9B.2

Ezekiel 2:1-5

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 6:1-13

July 7, 2024

Christ Church, Hudson

“. . . Power is made perfect in weakness.”  These words we read just prior to the Gospel from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians are, at best, hard to grasp. Indeed, in the two thousand years since he wrote them, the human tendency to grasp toward power, to hide away our weaknesses and put on a brave face, has not changed and Paul’s words are for us today perhaps just as perplexing as they were for the Corinthians. 

Paul offers them toward the end of what is often referred to as his “fool’s speech,” which begins in the previous chapter and is his attempt to convince the Corinthians that his ministry is different, superior even, to that of a group of rival missionaries, who he derisively refers to as “super-apostles.”  These “super-apostles” have used elegant speech and have boasted of their visions and revelations to secure for themselves some sort of monetary arrangement with the Corinthians that Paul sees as dangerous. In fact, Paul has resisted taking money from the Corinthians because he believes it will distort his ministry. The speech begins with Paul arguing that he is in no way inferior to this other group and goes so far as to accuse them of deceitful work and of “disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.” He then lists the many sufferings he has undergone as a result of his ministry and what we hear today comes just after that, at the very end of his attempt to persuade the Corinthians of his worthiness as an apostle.  The Corinthians have in mind what an apostle looks like and it isn’t Paul. 

I think it’s still like that today, at least sometimes.  If we are honest with ourselves we may recognize the tendency to project onto the Holy the attributes that we most prize, the characteristics that are lauded and treasured in the larger society. Generally speaking, what’s treasured most isn’t weakness. It isn’t frailty. And yet, Paul’s words, which he offers as God’s response to his prayer to be relieved of the “thorn in his flesh,” resonates with a certain truth: Power is made perfect in weakness.  

Paul never elaborates on just what this thorn of his is; most scholars say he is writing to this audience with some degree of familiarity and they likely know what he is referring to; some have even written lengthy commentary attempting to prove a specific malady; some say epilepsy, or scoliosis. One even goes to great effort to prove that Paul had a chronic sinus infection, that a sinus infection was the thorn in his flesh. But such efforts seem to miss the point, at least for me. As mortal beings, as creatures of flesh and blood, we share in a certain frailty, a certain weakness, that is endemic to the human condition. In body, in mind, in spirit we are imperfect and we spend a great deal of our lives trying to hide that fact from ourselves and from others. 

In our Gospel reading today from Mark, when Jesus returns to his hometown, the people of his village perhaps felt something of this. He begins to teach in the synagogue and, in spite of the following that he has developed through the countryside, they cannot see him for who he really is, they cannot see past what they think they already know. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” They took offense at him. It may sound trite, but familiarity breeds contempt. This one that they know, that knows them, that IS one of them cannot be Holy, cannot be capable of doing God’s work. In rejecting Jesus, in rejecting the familiar, they are rejecting a part of their own humanity. 

The Corinthians, in preferring the “super-apostles,” with their tales of power and visions, are rejecting a core element of themselves. And we, all of us, have the same tendency to locate God somewhere just beyond the ordinary. We do not seek God in the weak but imagine the Divine in power and great glory. The language of our faith is full of such images. 

And yet, God comes to us in ways we do not expect. He comes as a little baby born to a teenage mother; he comes riding a borrowed donkey rather than a great stallion. He comes bloodied and beaten on a cross.  He comes in the weak, frail flesh of humanity because power is made perfect in weakness. 

The Greek word used here for “perfect” is not what we normally think of as perfect, as without fault or flaw. Its root is telos, which is more about being complete or reaching an end point. A better translation might be, power is made complete in weakness. At first glance that may not be helpful; in some ways it sounds even more perplexing but if we understand it in terms of the Incarnation, in the person of Jesus, we see God made complete. We see the outpouring of God’s love to humanity; we see God take on human flesh in all its weakness. We see human flesh raised to new life and in Christ we are raised to new life. We are transformed. 

Paul writes of his prayer to be delivered from his torment, and I imagine many of us have offered similar prayers. I know I have. We pray to escape pain or sorrow or loneliness or loss and sometimes our prayers are answered. Sometimes they are not, or at least not answered in obvious ways. What Paul tells us, however, is that in our sorrow, in our pain, God is with us. Trusting in that knowledge is the beginning of transformation. It’s the beginning of Resurrection. This is not license to wallow in self-pity or pious suffering but to accept God’s grace and participate in Christ’s resurrection. This is our call to healing and wholeness. This is our completion, the point toward which we are journeying, and it is a choice we make.

Martin Luther King Jr. said in his I have a dream speech, “Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.” He later explained this in more personal terms, saying: “ As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force . . . So like the Apostle Paul I can now proudly say I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” 

Power is made perfect in weakness. This is the lesson we have in Christ and it’s a choice that is always before us. May we, with Paul, faithfully live into and trust that with God’s grace we may find strength in our weakness.  Amen.