Paul And His Pain

"Paul And His Pain"

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
July 5, 2009

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 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.

When preparing for this week’s sermon, the question came to me about why we listen
to some people rather than other people, why we give some people authority, or
credence, and not others? Why do some of you show up to worship here, at this
church, rather than the church down the street, under the leadership of a different
pastor, with a different kind of style and maybe even a different understanding of the
Gospel? Not that anyone gives me any real authority, or credence in this place—being
skeptical about authority and leadership is something we Congregationalists and UCC
folks know something about. After all, our roots are “congregational,” meaning that we
ultimately vest authority and leadership to the congregation in our church settings,
trusting and hoping that the Spirit speaks through the whole of us, rather than just one
of us.

Still, some people show up at this church rather than the church down the street
because they like my sermons, or my ideas, and yet others wouldn’t step back in these
doors again for the same reasons: they’ve heard how I understand the Gospel, and
they simply don’t like it. And yet still others give weight to what I am saying in this pulpit
because they agree with it, and then still others give it importance because I am a
minister, a preacher, and surely, surely, I must know what I am talking about it, at least
when it comes to God. Others are a bit more cynical, and they doubt my words, and my
understanding of God and Christianity for the opposite reason: because I am minister
and preacher, I surely don’t have much to say of any worth, surely we are all
scoundrels, we ministers types. All of this brings up the question: do we give people
authority, credence, because of their roles—because they are minister, a doctor, a
plumber, a farmer— or do we buy what they are selling because what they say, or
believe, really connects to our own experience of God, or the universe, or the way we’
ve come to experience life? I think it’s probably a bit of both, actually, with each of us
falling more on one side or the other—some of us simply give credence to authority
figures because they are authority figures, or experts in their fields, while some of us
only really give people credence if what they say or do matches our own experience of
life, or align with our own belief system.

In the text before us today, Paul finds himself somewhat in the same position—he is
writing to a community in Corinth that has members that doubt whether Paul has any
real authority at all—they doubt his credentials, so to speak, and so they’ve not given
him much respect, and thus they are not willing to believe everything he is telling them.
And one of the reasons why they’re skeptical of Paul’s authority is because of the
presence of other apostles, “super apostles,” whose authority, whose standing in the
church of Corinth seems to rest on the visions they’ve had, experiences they told
others about, and the whole drama has cast doubt on whether or not Paul really is
worth listening to, at least for some. That is the reason why you have Paul starting to
tell his readers in Corinth that he too is a man who has visions, religious vision,
powerful religious experiences of God, because he was snatched up into the third
heaven, that place beyond the skies, that place where God was and is, and he too was
also given visions about God. Now, in the text, it seems as if Paul is pretending to
speak about someone else, but most scholars think it’s obvious that he is talking about
himself, that this is a form of modesty, though it’s the kind that’s obvious to those
earliest readers as well—Paul’s just trying to call into question those other “super
apostles” who have no qualms about bragging on their incredible religious experiences
and visions, whereas he is not braggadocios about it.

It’s only when Paul begins to brag about his weaknesses, boast about his weaknesses
does he begin to use the word “I.” Whereas these competitors in Corinth are bragging
about their connection to God, about their spiritual power and the visions they’ve had,
Paul goes in the opposite direction: he begins to brag about his weaknesses, his
failings, the thing that he has never quite gotten over, the battle in his life that have not
yet been won, and, truthfully, may never be won. Now, don’t get me wrong—Paul is not
the most humble man around—he certainly can be a bit arrogant, a bit sure of himself,
and he rarely seems to doubt himself, which is a trait to be wary of in a person.
Someone who never doubts himself or his beliefs or his experiences is someone who
can be very dangerous, especially if their beliefs are dangerous. And even in this
moment, Paul seems to imply that the weakness he has been given, the thorn in his
flesh that is never quite fleshed out to us, his readers, even the thorn is seen as a sign
of his strength, that he was given this trouble in order to keep him humble, keep him
grounded because the spectacular vision he has had might cause him to be a bit too
full of himself. Again, it shows a flaw in Paul, this complete faith in himself and his
understanding of God and the world, and I say it is a flaw because there is only one
thing, one person, one being we should have complete faith in, and it is not ourselves—
it is the One who created us, and loves us, the living God.

And the reason I am pushing back a bit at Paul here is because I don’t want us to ever
think that when we have troubles in this life it is because God is trying to humble us:
cancer doesn’t come our way because we’ve somehow become too successful at work
or family; financial disaster doesn’t blow up in our lives because we were becoming too
secure, too wealthy, etc, etc. Now, don’t get me wrong: sometimes some things in this
life have a cause and an effect—you smoke heavily, you might get lung cancer, you eat
poorly, you might get heart disease, but many things in life are not so clearly linked,
something that Jesus reminded his earliest listeners, telling them not assume, for
example, that just because a wall had fallen on some folks in Jerusalem that it had
anything to do with the character of the people the wall fell on and killed. The way we
live our lives and the disasters that sometimes fall upon them are not necessarily
linked, at least not casually. We just shouldn’t make the same mistake of blaming the
victim, telling someone that they are suffering because God is trying to humble them in
some way, and that is the mistake I think that some people have made in reading this
text.

Now, we have to be honest here and note that Paul makes that link, and, as I just said,
rarely does Paul ever doubt himself, though it seems, at times, the people in his
congregations often doubted him. What I don’t think we should doubt is the kernel of
truth that he leaves us here in this passage, this powerful idea that those things in our
lives that seem so painful, so hurtful, so completely overwhelming to us, can also be the
thing that God uses in our lives to effect great change. No, I don’t think God sends
them to us, but I do know, in my own life, that God can us those difficult things for the
greater good in my life, in your life. Instead of taking away our pain, our hardship, our
troubles, God uses that pain, that hardship, that trouble, for some greater good, some
greater thing we could never have imagined when we were, like Paul, asking God to
take it away. Somehow, and sometime later, we find ourselves being stronger in the
broken places in our lives, and we come to realize that our scars become a testimony to
the power of resurrection, the power of hope, in our lives.

According to The Washington Post (November 26, 2005), Army staff sergeant Caesar
was in charge of a long-range 155mm howitzer — a self-propelled gun that resembles
a tank. He was out on patrol in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded. When the smoke
cleared, Caesar looked down and saw that his right leg was severed in three places,
flipped backward, just dangling by the skin. He tried to give his machine gun to a fellow
soldier, but discovered it was bent. Then he yelled for the howitzer hatches to be
closed, and thought to himself, “Oh man. This is it. My life is over.”

But he didn’t die. The insurgents responsible for the attack disappeared, and Caesar
was transported to safety. At Walter Reed Hospital, his missing limb was replaced with
an artificial leg of plastic and steel.

Still, he felt despair about his future. He was in pain, and was worried that he’d never be
able to run again, or be attractive to women. He received word that eight men from his
platoon had been killed by a car bomb in Baghdad, including one of his role models.
The news was devastating.

But little by little he began to shift focus. Caesar met other injured soldiers and heard
them talk about their recoveries. He began to look for the best, and realized that he
was fortunate to make it back from battle with just one missing limb. “I’m grateful for
that,” he told The Washington Post. “I’m thankful for just being here.”

Caesar now completes marathons in racing wheelchairs, and has found a job with the U.
S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He sees the loss of his leg as a minor setback, and
believes that he has come out of the war with more wisdom, compassion and
appreciation for life. (Homiletics Online)

A few months ago I did some training with the Michigan Conference of the UCC on
“post-traumatic stress syndrome,” especially the kind our soldiers are experiencing in
record numbers out of these two wars we’re fighting—or, really, that we are now able to
diagnosis and recognize compared to the other wars where the disorder was never
recognized for what it was. This is a huge problem, this PTSD, no doubt, but every
once in a while, out of such horrible circumstances, you find an example of “post
traumatic growth” rather than “post traumatic stress,” something that Hilbert Caesar
experienced in his own life. Sometimes there are moments that seem like they will
destroy us, moments that feel life-ending, at least emotionally, and then something
happens, something that usually takes time, something that sometimes takes a bit of
work, and that something almost seems like a miracle, because out of that horrible
experience, we find ourselves stronger—stronger spiritually, emotionally, sometimes
even physically. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t ever want to dismiss how devastating
some of life’s hardships can be—and I’ve known a few people that have been wiped out
because of what they experienced, they never recovered, they never got back up on
their feet, for whatever reason, none of which we can ever judge another human being
for. And yet, there is the possibility, one that I have known in my own life, where I
thought I was done with, it felt as if live was over with, and yet, years later, when I look
upon those scars again, the scars in my heart, and I touch them and run my fingers
over them, I find those places to be even stronger than the rest of me. “My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness,” are the words Paul hears
from God when he doesn’t get the kind of healing he wanted for that thorn in his flesh.

Earlier in the sermon, I mentioned the quandary of why and how we humans give
credence, or authority to one person rather than the next, and I posited that, at times,
there seemed to be conflict between those who give people credence because of the
role they play, versus those who give people authority in their lives because the
experience of that person matches their own experiences—they believe in that person,
they will follow that person, because that person has told a truth that matches their own
experience of truth.   I think that as much as the apostle Paul wants to get the
Corinthians to believe in him and his words, and his understanding of the Gospel,
because he is a duly recognized authority figure, an honored apostle of the church, the
truth of the matter is that he ultimately realizes that they will only buy what he is selling,
so to speak, when they see their experience of life and God reflected in the Paul’s own
experience of life and God. And that is why I think he shares this intimate story with
them, this truth born out of his own experience. They will come to believe him, or at
least many of them will, because they recognize their own story of being made stronger
in the broken places, of the scars within them being a sign of their own resurrection, in
Paul’s personal story. And they can hear Paul’s word from God, that God’s grace is
sufficient, that the horrible moments in our lives can be gotten through because God
can meet us in our weakness, and can make us and the world a stronger place
because of that pain, that loss, that horror, they can now hear all of his words because
of this one personal word that he shares with them, this truth about the thorn in his
flesh, this problem he’s never quite overcome.

Of course, I think allowing grace to flow into those broken places within us takes a bit of
risk, it’s a bit of gamble for some of us, those of us who are quite content with our pain,
and the bitterness it can lead to, those of us who are quite content with living in
dysfunction, and being more comfortable with the pain we are familiar with than the
peace we are quite unfamiliar with. This weekend the government is opening up
access to the crown on the statue of liberty for the first time in years. Over the
decades it has been open and closed for this or that reason, but the most recent
reason has been the dilemma of safety, of how to make sure everyone can get up and
down the narrow stairs safely in case of an emergency. There is only one exit, and if
you try to go up it, you got to keep going, because there is no room for you to go back
down again because of the people behind you—that is how narrow the stairs really
are. And yet, for some people the risk is worth it, to be up on that beautiful monument
to American liberty and hope, and to see the great city of New York from the statue’s
beautiful crown. Sometimes the risks are worth it, and if we are willing to let God in,
really let God in, to work on the broken spaces in us, we might find ourselves recipient
of that post traumatic growth that Hilbert Caesar experienced, and that most of us have
experienced at different moments in our lives, when we were willing to gamble, to risk,
that God could do a miracle in our lives—maybe not the miracles we expected or
wanted, but the kind of miracle that grace, slow-moving grace, can do, the one where
the broken places in us become stronger because we were willing to take the risk of
letting God into those difficult and dark places within us. Amen.