Darla Blatnik
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: July 9, 2006

Paradise and Pain

My grace is sufficient . . . .

In his letter to Corinth, Paul talks specifically about God working through his weaknesses, in his times of pain. And, while it may be important and many times difficult to let God can work through our weaknesses, it is as important and perhaps even harder to let God work through our strengths. In last week’s sermon, David spoke to this when he suggested that perhaps two of the chief Christian sins are:

1. Thinking too much of ourselves; or,
2. Thinking too little of ourselves,

In either case, we’re thinking that it’s all about us and very little about God. You may have heard the quip – "I may not be much, but I’m all I think about."

The over-reaching sin, and I think Paul’s message to us today, involves thinking too much about what we can or can’t do, too much about our strengths and weaknesses, and very precious little about what God actually can and needs to do through us. So this morning, we will be talking first about letting God work through our weaknesses and then about making sure we let God also work through our strengths.

So first let’s address God working through our weaknesses. There is an old legend or parable that may help us here. It’s the story of a water jar - a story whose author and even country of origin have long ago been forgotten. It’s one of those stories that you may have heard before. Yet, it’s the kind of story that never seems to loose it’s meaning – at least for me.

A young woman, let’s say her name is Anna, carried water from a river to her father’s house everyday. It was the only source of water for the family, and each morning she would tether two water jars with strips of leather, one jar to each end of a smooth tree limb that served as a yoke to carry the jars. After a careful trek down the hill to the river’s edge, she would lower the empty jars, first one then the other filling them to the rim. Steadily she would lift them out, slipping the yoke over her shoulders and walk slowly back up the incline to the house.

Anna admired the jars and took great care in handling them. Water gathering with these large aging jars was not an easy task but it was one of her favorite chores.

One particular morning as she was nearing the house after her trip to the river, she heard a faint voice call out her name. "Anna, Anna," the voice repeated. She was startled to find the voice coming from one of the jars.  Overcoming her alarm, she leaned in closer realizing that she was indeed listening to an old friend. "Yes, dear Jar "she replied.

The jar spoke slowly and earnestly: "Anna, since you were a girl, you have carried me to the river; filled me to the brim with water and returned up the hill. Yet I have never understood why you kept choosing me for this task for I am not worthy. I’m sure you have noticed after all these years that I am cracked, and a large portion of the water I hold is lost to you."

Anna nodded in agreement, "Yes dear Jar" she said. I have noticed this. But I would like you to notice something, too. "Tomorrow, as we return from the river, I want you to look carefully around you." The jar agreed.

That next morning, as they returned from gathering water at the river, the cracked jar looked this way and that. The jar noticed the usual things; the trees in the distance, the pale blue sky. But this time, looking downward, he also noticed something for the very first time. It was a strange, but wonderful sight. One side of the path was barren and rocky with only a few tufts of dried weeds and grass, but the other side of the pathway, his side of the path, was overflowing with all kinds of beautiful and fragment flowers.

The jar was amazed, and so Anna spoke up." You see dear Jar; we have always considered each of our jars beautiful and full of purpose. The water you have lost has nourished these flowers. Without you being just the way you are, we would not have been graced with beauty as we walked along this path."

We all have cracks – some of our cracks are bigger than others, some of us are more ready to admit to having them than others. Nevertheless, and like it or not, we all have cracks, we all have weaknesses. Paul, like all of us, had weaknesses, too. And, like countless others including, I suspect some of us, Paul knew that, through faith, God can and does bring strength out of weakness, good out of bad, even meaning out of misery.

Paul tells us of a specific weakness – a thorn in his flesh – a thorn or stake, as it can be translated, that caused him great torment. We don’t know the exact nature of this torment. It may have been a circumstance. It may have been an emotional or spiritual issue. Some scholars speculate that it was a physical problem like malaria (which was common in the area during Paul’s time) or migraines. The point is not the source of the pain. In fact, not knowing perhaps helps us more easily to see ourselves in this passage. The point is that Paul chose to boast on this thorn, this weakness, this great pain. He chose to tell his detractors of this weakness in his life instead of the many other things he could have said for himself.

And, Paul did have many strengths that he could have boasted about – a marvelous intellect, a good education, an outstanding preaching, a prestigious Jewish background. And, perhaps above all, Paul could have boasted about having one of those burning bush religious experiences that we hear about but few seldom have. You may know about Paul’s experience. On the road to Damascus, on the road actually to continue Paul’s persecution of the Christians, Christ appeared to him forever changing Paul’s life as well as the life of the church. Paul went from persecutor to leader of the church – a leader of enormous and lasting impact.

Yet, in his defense to this group of detractors, Paul chose not to boast on his Damascus road experience. Instead, Paul only alludes to this experience briefly and then only in the third person. In the first few verses of today’s reading, Paul is referring to this experience when he talks of "such a person . . . who was caught up into Paradise" – caught up into Paradise to hear things so sacred as "not to be told" – as the passage goes on to say.

Now, it doesn’t really matter how we choose to interpret Paul’s conversion experience. What matters is that this type of mystical experience would have carried great import in Paul’s own time. Yet, Paul chose to defend himself against his detractors boasting not on this extraordinary experience with the divine, but on the everyday torment of the thorn in his flesh. Paul chose to boast not of his brush with Paradise, but of his struggle with pain.

Paul boasted of his weakness not because he applauded the weakness. In fact, Paul tells us that he had pleaded with God to remove the thorn. No, of course, Paul wasn’t boasting of his weakness but of God’s ability to work in and through it. Paul’s pain was a part of his life just as pain and weakness is a part of being human for all of us. We can’t really explain why being human works this way. God didn’t cause Paul’s pain anymore than God causes the pain and weakness in our lives. True, God could have answered Paul’s prayer by removing the thorn, and in some cases God does just that.

God, however, didn’t remove Paul’s thorn. Instead God left in Paul’s heart forever the knowledge that in all things God’s grace was sufficient for him. Paul’s pain stayed with him. And, in that pain, Paul learned, through faith, to embrace his torment, this crack in his life, because it was through this crack that God’s power flowed more freely not only into his life, but into the lives of those around him. Kind of like the water that flowed from that little cracked jar making possible the grace-filled growth of flowers along the path.

God can be there in our cracks, in the weak and painful times of our lives. God is also ready to give us the same assurance that God gave to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you." God is ready to show us that God’s grace is sufficient to release his power through our weakness. We need not forget, however, as I said at the beginning of the sermon, that we also need to let God work through our strengths. Remember the sins – thinking too little or too much of ourselves.

In a recent article in Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal, an article entitled "Leader’s Insight: Overcoming My Strengths," the author, a pastor from Iowa, admitted to having "spent a good deal of energy and time in [his] professional life overcoming [his] weaknesses." He went on to say that he, "learned to recognize [his] weaknesses and studied how to overcome them and to rely on other people around [him] whose strengths could compensate for [his] weakness." I certainly can relate to this strategy and, in and of itself, find no fault with the approach. After all, it was Paul who reminded us in this same letter to the Corinthians that we each have different gifts, and it takes each of our gifts to build up the body of Christ.

What the pastor in the Leadership Journal article went on to share, however, was the realization that it was really his strengths, not his weaknesses, that he needed to be concerned about. He was forced to finally pray this question: "’Which of my strengths have I relied on that have prevented me from relying on God . . . ?’" The pastor’s final conclusion was this advice:

While overcoming our weaknesses may be the difference between failure and success, overcoming our strengths may be the difference between respectable results and living and ministering on the front edge of God’s will. Yes, God has given us our strengths and wants us to use them, but . . . does not want us to depend on them. Dependence is something we should reserve for God alone. ⁽¹⁾

Dependence is something we should reserve for God alone – in our weaknesses and also in our strengths. We need to realize that life’s not about what we can or can’t do. We need to realize that the living God, in the person of Jesus Christ, is standing right there before us as he stood before his hometown crowd in the reading from Mark. And, we, like that crowd, have the choice. We can reject Jesus. We can turn him away. Or, we can ask him to stay, and we can get to know him. And, and when we do, when we invite his to stay, when we get to know him, we will also hear him say to us those words of comfort and courage, those words of truth and reality, he said to Paul. "My grace is sufficient for you."

"My grace is sufficient" for us in just such a time as this – in paradise and in pain.

Now may all glory be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, now and forever more. Amen.

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 ⁽¹⁾ Wes Haddaway, "Leader’s Insight: Overcoming My Strengths," Leadership Journal, June 16, 2006, www.christianitytoday.com