Strength in Weakness

We finish our series on 2 Corinthians with Paul’s final effort to describe for the church at Corinth the life that they, as disciples, are to seek. Look to Jesus, who became weak, so that he lives by God’s power. So, you have strength in weakness.

Your strength is found in your weakness. Oxymoron? Countercultural, for sure. I spent last week with my family in the Washington, DC, area on vacation. On our tours last week of the Capitol and of Mount Vernon, we heard over and over again how amazing George Washington was, not so much for his strength, but for his willingness to lay it down. At the close of the Revolutionary War, they were ready to crown him king. But he resigned his military post and returned home to farm. Then, when called upon again, he served as President, two terms, they would have re-elected him again and again, there was no term limit. But, he felt that two terms was enough, and again he laid down power. Admirable, humble, and uncommon. George Washington’s greatest strength was his willingness to lay down his power. So uncommon that it is, today, and I guess always has been, countercultural.

Strength in weakness was countercultural for the Corinthians. Corinth was the home to the Isthmuim games. Paul likely made his first visit during the 51 AD games. Corinth was a wealthy port city, and a crossroads for trade, North and South, and East and West. Paul likely went during the games because the population swelled as people came from all over Greece. Plus, because most people stayed in tents during the games, and tent-making was how Paul supported himself, going to the games was a good opportunity for him to sell his tents and spread the gospel at the same time.

So, when Paul says your strength is found in your weakness, the Corinthians would think of the marble statues that they passed on the way to the agora, the marketplace, of wrestlers grappling and sprinters crouched to dash, of the statue of the goddess Nike with her wings outstretched, and of the bronze of Hercules, endowed with brute strength that surpassed any human, that you passed as you left along the Lecheum Road. Strength in weakness…Jesus is victor, in death…is countercultural.

But, if it is our strength that gives us the victory, you know what we do? We climb the podium; we wear the medal; we bend down only to receive the crown. Only when we know that we haven’t accomplished success on our own do we give God the credit. Only then do we acknowledge the power of God working through us. That is how we have strength because we are weak.

One Presbyterian pastor posits that “Weakness is a tricky concept for us workhourse Cavinists and bootstrap Americans. We think we can accomplish anything with enough blood, sweat, and tears. We are incorrigibly self-sufficient. Yet, these pesky thorns continue to appear [in life], and we realize [much to our consternation] that we cannot take care of them all by ourselves. We cannot solve all our own problems and cure every disease and eliminate all injustice, all by ourselves. Weakness is, to a certain extent, the human predicament. Weakness is the reality of not being able to control every contingency. But weakness can,…,open up space inside us to allow God’s grace to enter in. There is no room for God in the self-contained, self-sufficient person.”

So, “Keep testing yourselves,” says Paul, “Putting yourselves through the examination.” The Corinthians have been asking for proof that Paul is really an apostle. Is Christ really living in him? Is he really speaking God’s Word? Is God really working through him? And I wonder if Paul felt that they were looking to see if he was the winner. See, at the Isthmium games, it wasn’t like the modern Olympics with a gold medal winner, a silver medalist, and a bronze. There was one winner, and one winner only. Paul is not trying to be the one winner. He doesn’t proclaim himself to be superior. He is a servant. He talks just before this passage about the thorn in his life. No one knows what that thorn was, but Paul says he asked God to remove it. The answer to his prayer? My grace is sufficient. And Paul has seen that God has been with him through that thorn and even though Paul has seen it as a weakness, God has used it and it has made him stronger.

And Paul knows that the life of discipleship is an ongoing test – it’s not a sprint to the finish. In I Corinthians, he admonished them to focus on the imperishable crown of the heavenly race rather than the perishable crown. Because in the Isthmium games, the winner didn’t get a trophy or a medal. The winner got a crown, made from celery. It didn’t last. So, Paul urges them to go for the lasting crown, using the present imperative, a tense that means examine yourself in the present, and in the present now, and in the present now.

I particularly like the translation The Voice here, “Examine yourselves. Check your faith! Are you really in the faith? Do you still not know that Jesus the Anointed is in you? – unless, of course, you have failed the test. Surely you will realize we have not failed the test, but we pray to God that you will stay away from evil…Our prayer is simple: that you may be whole and complete.” And that word, translated here “complete” is translated in the New International Version as “mature.” It really means getting to the point that you are able to bear fruit. Today, if we were to use the word, we would use it for a machine that runs like a top. Paul wants that for the Christian community at Corinth.

He wants them to live in peace, to be united, to live in harmony, so that they can bear fruit. Because Paul knows, that a church that is concerned with squabbles about power and money and riddled with jealousy and strife is not going to bear fruit. Sadly, we know from the letter of 1 Clement, a letter from the church of Rome to the Corinthian Christians that a generation later, they were still dealing with the same problems of power and money and jealousy and strife. And they still were not bearing fruit. Because they had not allowed themselves to be weak so that God could be strong.

In Romans 8:9, Paul wrote, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” The Spirit of Christ is the spirit that puts God’s will before my own. Less of me, more of God. Weaken me, strengthen God.

There is a poem titled “Somewhere someone” that I like to read as a devotion. I even think of it a little bit like a self-test. But, as I prepared for this sermon, it struck me that Paul’s whole point here is that the measure is not against our own actions, but against our actions being in the Spirit of Christ, like those of Christ.

“The kingdom of love is coming,” says the poem, “because somewhere someone is kind when others are unkind, somewhere someone shares with another in need, somewhere someone refuses to hate, while others hate, somewhere someone is patient – and waits in love, somewhere someone returns good for evil, somewhere someone serves another, in love, somewhere someone is calm in a storm, somewhere someone is loving everybody. Is that someone you?”

Perhaps Paul would finish the poem, somewhere someone set aside their own ambition, and committed themselves to serving like Jesus. Are you like Jesus? Are we like Jesus? Is the kingdom of love coming?

The final line of 2 Corinthians is perhaps the most quoted of Paul’s writings…even more familiar than “Love is patient, love is kind” from I Corinthians. It is said so much as a benediction that a lot of people know the words and don’t know that Paul wrote them. They are a kind of prayer that Paul offers for the church at Corinth. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit remain with you all.

It all starts with grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love how NT Wright describes this grace, “the totally generous and self-giving love of God. We shouldn’t be surprised,” says Wright, “if those whose lives are transformed by grace become, in turn, generous and self-giving people.”

It isn’t possible to transform your own heart. It isn’t possible to know when someone’s heart is fully transformed. We have to keep examining and testing ourselves. Is Christ living in us? Are we grace-filled, generous and self-giving?

May we know the powerfully strong, totally generous and self-giving love of God and may we realize and embrace our own weakness, so that Christ can live in us, transforming us into generous and self-giving people, filled with grace and love. The kingdom of love is coming. How will you be weak and let God use you to be that someone somewhere? Keep examining yourselves. Amen.