Hilton Head Island, SC – May 17, 2020
The Chapel Without Walls
Proverbs 6:1-11; II Corinthians 12:1-10
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” – I Corinthians 12:9 (RSV)
THE POWER OF WEAKNESS; THE WEAKNESS OF POWER
It is one of the pithy gems of the Book of Proverbs. “Consider the ant, O sluggard,” it says in Proverbs 6:6. “Consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man.”
Nobody knows who wrote the Book of Proverbs, even though it is attributed to King Solomon. Probably these folk sayings were in the process of being passed down from many sources for several centuries, and somebody decided to collect them into a proverbial anthology.
Whoever wrote Proverbs 6:6-11 probably had a lazy, ne’er-do-well son or nephew or stepson or son-in-law who drove the proverb-writer half mad with furious indignation. He was venting his displeasure over the indolent oaf by comparing him to the lowly and insignificant ant. We have all observed how industrious ants are, going back and forth from their sandy burrows, carrying food particles many times their own size. I once read that ants are the strongest creatures on earth in terms of lifting things many times their own weight. The writer of this particular proverbial advice was instructing the lazy galoot who prompted his proverb to consider how weak and insignificant the small insect looked, but how strong it was in reality. “Consider her ways, and be wise. Don’t lie in bed all day long, or you’ll end up a pesky pauper, yuh lazy lout, yuh!”
Both strength and weakness can be deceiving. Some things look very weak, like ants, but they are incredibly strong. And some things look strong, like mastadons or mammoths or saber-toothed tigers, but a group of clever hunters, armed only with sharpened flint spears, managed to send these and many other powerful species into extinction. Thing are not always as they seem.
The apostle Paul referred to that truth in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. Throughout his epistles Paul told us little snippets of information about his personal life. Some of the things he said we wish he hadn’t, and some of the things he didn’t say we wish he had. But he said what he said, and II Corinthians 12 is an example of that.
In these verses Paul tells about himself in the third person; why, I don’t know. “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.” Maybe you knew there was more than one heaven, but I didn’t. Anyway, said Paul, this third-person man heard and saw things in the third heaven which no one could ever properly describe. “On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.”
Then Paul tells us about his famous “thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan.” Scholars have debated for centuries exactly what this thorn in the flesh was. Some say it may have been an actual physical disability, like polio, or diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis, while others say it was a psychological infirmity, like post-traumatic stress syndrome, if they had then identified PTSD, which they hadn’t. One of my professors in seminary speculated that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a nagging wife he made it his business to avoid for a lifetime, tooting off on missionary journeys hither and yon, permanently by-passing the old girl in the noble process.
Whatever it was that caused his life-long problem, Paul said that three times he implored God to remove his affliction from him. But God’s response was brief, and poignantly to the point: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
What a superb but sobering truth that is! When we have a weakness of any sort, whether physical or psychological or spiritual, we want to be made strong, but God tells us that His kind of power is made perfect in weakness. Not always, not every time, but often. For you see, our dependence on God may be made clear to us only when we incorrectly suppose that we are completely free and independent of God and the need for His strength. To express it another way, we sometimes gain strength only by admitting our many weaknesses. Or in another way, we sometimes learn how strong God is only by admitting how weak we are.
In the Broadway musical Les Miserables, one of the resisters of the cruel government troops in the plot is a young boy named Gavroche. He has a song called “Little People.” In it he declares that though they are greatly outnumbered, and though their weapons are old or faulty or primitive, nevertheless the little people “fight like twenty armies and we won’t give up.”
Sometimes the Davids defeat the Goliaths. Not usually, but sometimes. It happened in the American Revolution. The colonial army didn’t have a prayer of winning, but they won anyway. It happened at the Battle of Marathon in Greece, when a small band of Greek patriots defeated a huge Persian army in 490 BCE. Was it God’s power that was made perfect in the weakness of the American or Greek armies? Probably the Americans and Greeks thought so.
In Viet Nam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the USA was (and in two cases still is) involved in what have come to be known as “asymmetrical wars.” That is, we greatly outnumbered our foes in men, money, and materiel. One of those wars, Viet Nam, we clearly lost, one (the Gulf War) we decisively won, and in two, Afghanistan and Iraq, the jury is still out on who shall be the victor. As citizens of the purportedly most powerful nation in history, it behooves us to ask ourselves from time to time if there is any divine activity when the asymmetrical weakness of a small force overcomes the massive power of a much larger and better equipped military. We have oodles of bombs and shells and bullets, but they were ineffective against IEDs which cost only a few hundred dollars to construct, and yet hugely undermine the will of both our citizenry and our soldiers to want to continue the conflict.
There are millions of people who thought that they were living charmed lives until late January of 2020. Then the COVID-19 virus started its rapid dash throughout the whole world, and now untold numbers of people are living in a disabling dread of being afflicted by the virus. Among those who are infected, probably most are stricken by intense anxiety over dying. Nonetheless, only two to three percent of those who are infected actually die from COVID-19, so the chances of dying from it are somewhere between 1 out of 50 and 1 out of 33. Your chances of dying from the “usual suspects” in the death process (heart disease. cancer, other illnesses, accidents. etc.) are far higher than from COVID-19. Never forget that.
Still, when people suddenly are confronted by something like a killer virus, they are much more inclined to ask God to intervene in their lives than when they think that life is just a bowl of cherries. So listen carefully, Christian people: In this pandemic, God’s power is made perfect in OUR weakness! When things appear very dicey to us, we turn to God! God uses our feelings of powerlessness to make His power manifest to us! It is when things might turn out much differently from what we hope that the presence of God becomes the most evident to us.
What, exactly, is the nature of a thorn in the flesh for any of us? If it can be concisely defined, is it an actual apostolic thorn in the flesh? Or might it be a severe case of anxiety, or uncertainty, or the sudden awareness that we are no longer in control of every aspect of our lives?
In my life, as in everyone’s life, there have been many major personal disappointments. But there was one professional disappointment in particular which I can never forget, but which also I needed resolutely to put behind me. I did not get what I thought I wanted, but as a result of it I think I was enabled far more effectively ever since to hear the still sad music of humanity in the hearts of others as well as in my own heart. God’s power was made perfect in my weakness, or at least in my inability to engineer what I had always most wanted and which was never to be.
Weakness is not limited to physical realities; it can also manifest itself as intellectual, personal, psychological, or moral realities. God’s grace is sufficient for all of our weaknesses, and His power can be perfected by means of all of them. Weakness need not always assault character. It can also greatly enhance character, if we allow God to work His will within us.
Sometimes the things for which we are the best equipped are the hardest to do, and the things for which we are the least equipped are the easiest to do. Rocket scientists may not figure out how to make rockets go higher and faster, but they can help a neighbor plant a garden. Complete klutzes who can’t fix anything can fix a meal for a sick friend. We too often want to be smart when instead we should want to be wise. Being smart helps us in the world around us, but being wise helps us in the world within. God’s power is made perfect in wisdom more than in smarts. Raw intelligence is useful in making the world serve us, but wisdom is useful in making us serve the world.
Too often we misunderstand the nature of power. We presume that power is immediately utilizable force or instantly employable authority. God’s power frequently is not like that at all. We long to be able to call down the divine shazamm when we get in a pinch, but God almost never uses the divine shazamm. For every crossing of the Red Sea there are a thousand still small voices in the wilderness such as Elijah heard. For every resurrection from the dead there are a million resurrections of faith which had turned to ashes, hope which had crumbled to dust, love which had grown cold from disuse or misuse. Most miracles are so mundane they are never perceived to be miracles. We want flash and splash, but God uses dimmers and glimmers. We want bombs bursting in air, and God uses gentle words spoken quietly in dark bedrooms. God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Again, not always, not everywhere in everything, but often.
Do you want to see the power of God made manifest among us? Look at a newborn baby. I was there when our daughter was born. It was in a 28-room hospital in northern Wisconsin, and the room cost $16 a day. Even in 1965 that was a terrific bargain. There were two doctors in that hospital, and they did everything: internal medicine, neurology, urology, proctology, orthopedics, surgery, endocrinology, cardiology, gastroenterology, gynecology, obstetrics, podiatry, the whole nine yards from top to bottom. Dr. John Telford became a good personal friend, though we had lived there for just a month when he delivered Amy. He invited me to come into the delivery room (which was also the E.R.), and I jumped at the unique opportunity. Six and a half years later our son was born in a large hospital in Chicago with hundreds of rooms. None of the doctors there did everything, but all of them did one particular thing. No fathers got into the delivery room there (which was only for deliveries) because of liability concerns and because obstetricians then had grave reservations about paternal parents observing the birthing process.
Anyway, when Amy entered this world she gave an instantaneous yodel. No whack on the backside for her, like in the movies. She knew that where she was now was not nearly as quiet and warm as where she had just been, and she wanted everyone to know she disapproved of the transfer. She looked quite gooey, but when they got her cleaned up in a few minutes she looked spectacular: ten fingers, ten toes, pink skin, dark, unfocused eyes. All parts appeared and turned out to be normal. John Telford said all newborn babies look like Winston Churchill. Truth be told, that pretty much says it all. But when you put a finger out to that little hand with those tiny fingers, and they take hold, you see that the indescribable power of God is made perfect in total weakness. Infants are completely powerless. They can’t do anything for themselves. But through them, and because of them, we see the mighty power of God, which, besides making the mountains rise, also makes the Amys live. We can’t see that in grownups to the degree we see it in infants. Only very little people enable us to perceive how great God is in that particular way.
There is great power in weakness. There is great weakness in power. Bombs and shells can’t pull it off in the end. Soft words and small deeds will, however. We want to see our Sodoms and Gomorrahs snuffed out in an instant or the Nile River turn to blood or the blind to see or the deaf to hear or Lazarus to be brought forth from his tomb. What we get are millipedes slowly crawling across the road, or little kids going with their parents to the community swimming pool, or cardinals, chickadees, wrens, and nuthatches taking their turns, or not taking their turns, at the birdfeeder.
A few feet beyond the windows I look out of when I write sermons are some holly trees, a magnolia tree, a few palmettos, and a whole host of very tall pines trees. It is an ever-changing panorama of nature red in tooth and claw and also green and growing in every passing hour. Birds of greatly varied sizes and squirrels dart in and out of my homiletic panorama. There is power in that scene, divine power. But it isn’t big or flashy or spectacular. Instead it’s just small and stolid and splendid. Every day there are a few new sights. There is divine power in that ever-changing scene, but it is the power of weakness and not a whole lot of strength.
God’s universe is an exceedingly complex place, and the world itself is scarcely less complex. The eyes of faith see power in small displays of divine activity, whereas ordinary eyes may demand unmistakably huge acts of God to verify His power. “Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” When weakness is the only medium through which divine power can be made manifest, may God grant us the ability to see what only He can make us see.