2 Corinthians 12:1-10 (Pentecost 7B)
St. John, Galveston 7/7/24
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The message this morning is based on the Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians. It’s a very familiar section of Scripture. Paul talks about a thorn in his flesh, a thorn that troubled him a great deal, so much so that he pleaded with the Lord on several occasions to take it away from him.

We don’t know what the thorn was that Paul wrestled with, and that, no doubt, by design, by the will of God. What we do know about Paul’s thorn is that it was “a messenger of Satan, given to him that it might buffet him.” Ultimately, it kept Paul from boasting about the extraordinary experience he had on the Damascus road, where he was caught up to the third heaven, the dwelling place of God. His thorn drove him in weakness to Christ, that his power, that is, that Paul’s power, might not be in himself, but in God. It taught him that his strength was, in fact, in his weakness, because it was in his weakness that the power of God was made known to him.

To better understand the situation with Paul’s thorn in the flesh, a little bit of context is helpful. When Paul traveled through Corinth on his second and third missionary journeys, he noted that there were some influential teachers in the city who had arisen, who boasted of great spiritual experiences. These false teachers had infiltrated the Corinthian church and they were undermining the ministry of Paul, boasting of their own spiritual-help programs (11:5). In chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians, the section right before today’s reading, Paul mockingly referred to them as “super-apostles.” He said, “I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these “super apostles.”

Unfortunately, apparently these false teachers were quite effective in their efforts in Corinth. As Paul said, “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (11:3). That’s always one of the potential pitfalls of ministry and of preaching, that preachers boast of their own hyper-spiritual, ecstatic experiences, and they lead their hearers, not to Christ, and to God’s grace and forgiveness, but to some other source of spiritual help, or spiritual fulfillment. Again, in Corinth, it was these “super-apostles,” who were leading believers in Christ astray.

That’s a little bit of the context for today’s reading. For our own situation, one might wonder if there are “super-apostles” who trouble the church today? We might think of the ramblings of Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey and pretty much any book Barnes & Noble or Amazon sells in their section on spirituality. Every so often, someone publishes a book that promises to unlock the mysteries of the Bible, or to give secret insight into the mysteries of God. Years ago, many Christians were lead astray by a book called “The Prayer of Jabez.” You may remember it. It turned an obscure Old Testament prayer into a program for spiritual control over one’s destiny.

There are plenty more contemporary examples of the very same issue that Paul faced in Corinth. In all such instances, a spiritual power is offered apart from the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and given to us in Word and Sacrament. Ultimately, it is a supposed promise of God apart from His Word. That sort of promise, says the Apostle, is a satanic deception (11:3).

The true apostle and bearer of God’s word is often humbled by God, that he might learn not to boast in his own strength, but to find that the power of God is found in weakness and not in strength. Through this mysterious thorn in his flesh, Paul learned that very lesson. He learned to trust, not in his own superior understanding, or in his own ecstatic experiences, but in his weakness, because the power of God is made perfect in weakness.

What Paul learned through the thorn that he wrestled with, is actually a settled principle of the Scriptures and of faith in Christ Jesus. God humbles the proud and He exalts the humble. So it is that He uses thorns in our lives as well. Those thorns, whatever they may be, are sometimes exceedingly painful and all consuming. Sometimes they fester to the point that we join Paul in pleading with the Lord to take it away. All the while, God says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” In other words, “Lean on Me, and on My goodness. My grace is enough, it is enough for you.”

It is in our weakness that we conclude that suffering, even our own suffering, doesn’t come by happenstance, rather, it is necessary to conform us to God’s image. God, after all, doesn’t come to us in strength and in power. He doesn’t come to us by drawing us up to the third heaven, but in a cold, filthy manger, surrounded by unbelievers and violent enemies, and thirsty and bloody, dying on a cross. The God whose power is made perfect in our weakness is the God who, in weakness, saved you and me from sin, death, and the Devil. To be sure, He is risen from the tomb, from the grave, where His corpse was laid, but such a resurrection comes only through the cross.

In speaking of the power of God made known in weakness, Luther recounted an incident from his own life. “On Good Friday last (he said), I being in my chamber in fervent prayer, contemplating with myself, how Christ my Savior on the cross suffered and died for our sins, there suddenly appeared upon the wall a bright vision of our Savior Christ, with the five wounds, steadfastly looking upon me, as if it had been Christ Himself in body. At first sight, I thought it some celestial revelation, but I reflected that it must be an illusion and a juggling of the Devil, for Christ appeared to us in his Word, and in a more humble form; therefore, I spake to the vision thus: Avoid thee, confounded devil. I know no other Christ than he who was crucified and who in His Word is pictured and presented to me. Whereupon the image vanished, clearly showing of whom it came.”

God comes to us in such simple and ordinary ways, through bread and wine, through the water of baptism, through His Word, read or preached. He comes to us too through other Christians, what Luther called the “mutual consolation of the brethren.” And yes, He alters the way we see strength and weakness through the thorns that we bear in our lives.  

Ultimately, our lives and the vocations we fill in our lives, are marked by the cross of Jesus, that all praise, glory and honor would go to Him and not to us. As the apostle said earlier on, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” 
God grant it in each of your lives as well, as you learn that God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +