We Have This Ministry 5/18

We have this ministry. What kind of ministry? False apostles have come into Corinth preaching, in Paul’s words, a “different gospel” and “another Jesus” from the gospel and Jesus Paul preached. Paul called them “pseudo-apostles” and “super-apostles.” They preached a “prosperity gospel”, a gospel of health, wealth and success. How do you know God is blessing you? Health, wealth and success. Such a gospel is popular in America today. It is the gospel of super-pastors and super-churches. It is also a gospel that worships worldly power: political power, national power (America First) racial power (white supremacy) gender power (patriarchy). The cross is replaced with the flag. Access to political power supersedes access to God. Muscle replaces love.

In stark contrast Paul uses strange phrases like, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, and “strength in weakness”. Weakness?! Let’s look at the text.

I

          Having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have this ministry by the grace of God. It is not based on our personal power, wisdom or goodness. By the mercy of God. And it is God who sustains our ministry. So we do not lose heart.

We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word. It is a temptation to use the Word of God to serve our egoistic ways, to twist it to serve our prejudices and baser desires, but we refuse to do so. We stand under the Word, not over it. We do not grasp it, it grasps us. Today there are preachers who use God’s word to support military invasion of other nations, when Jesus preached non-violence and the love of enemy. Jesus can ruin a lot of sermons.

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

We do not preach ourselves—I’m speaking of the church not just the preacher here. We do not preach our opinions our goodness or wisdom; we point to Christ. The story is told about Leonardo da Vinci painting the Last Supper. When he was painting the table, he took pains to put a wealth of detail into the two cups on the table, a friend came into the room, saw the cups and exclaimed about the beauty of the cups. Whereupon da Vinci seized a brush and painted them out saying: “Not that, that is not what I want you to see. It’s the face. Look at the face.” The treasure is Christ, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Dorothy Day, the famous social reformer and writer set up houses for the poor and founded the Catholic Worker movement. Near the end of her life she was asked to reflect on her life. She said these words:

I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and His visit to us all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have had Him on my mind for so long a time in my life.

We are so lucky to have had Jesus on our minds all these years. Let’s keep the long conversation, old and new, going. It is why we are here.

And ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake, Paul adds. Super-apostles “lord it over” the community. But Christ the Lord calls us to be servants of one another, as Jesus did when he washed disciples’ feet. There was a “downward bent” to Jesus’ ministry.

If we are called to lead we do so as “servant-leaders.” Bishop Bennett Sims wrote about servant leadership. He said one mark of a servant leader is that he or she is as willing to be influenced as to influence.

II

          Now we move to the controlling image of this passage: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. The treasure of the gospel is—can you believe it?—in our crackable and cracked clay pots. God’s divinity shines through our dust.

The treasure of the gospel is not placed in perfect, shiny, silver vessels, but in crackable clay posts. That’s how the light of God shines through. Leonard Cohen wrote this famous lyric:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget you perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

The cracks in our vessels let the light of God in. and they also let it shine forth, shine out. For we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not us.

Gordon Cosby, founding pastor of Church of the Savior, said that every pastor search committee should ask its candidates “Are you weak enough to be our pastor?” Meaning, I think, will you depend upon God? Do you recognize that the transcendent power belongs to God and not us? Are you willing to consecrate your weaknesses as well as your strengths as you minister. Are we?

Then this word of hope, If we have this ministry by the mercy of God we do not lose heart. Paul says:

We are afflicted in every way
but not crushed
Perplexed
but not driven to despair

Persecuted
but not forsaken

Or in another translation:

We are hemmed in
but not finished off

At a loss
but not lost
Hounded
but not abandoned
Down
but not out.

The great Brooklyn preacher, W.A. Jones tells of being in the foyer after the church service. A woman passed by. As he took her hand he asked, “How are you doing?” She replied, “Well, I’m somewhere between ‘Thank you Jesus’ and ‘Lord have mercy!’” Aren’t we all, somedays. But we have the treasure of the gospel in our crackable clay pots, and we do not lose heart.

Civil Rights activist Pauli Murray wrote these words in a poem called “Prophecy”:

I have been enslaved, yet my spirit is unbound.
I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the rivers of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge;
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.

III

          Which leads to the second passage from II Corinthians.

Paul had what he called his “thorn in the flesh.” It was no splinter; he was impaled upon it. We do not know what it was. The history of the interpretation of this text reads like a medical text book: everything from foot problems to eye disease, to epilepsy to manic depression. Whatever it was it was not some private, mild irritation. It was a public, agonizing and humiliating affliction. It was as Luccock has put it, “a thorn lodged in the very sinews of his apostleship” because it hindered his plans and became an issue to his opponents in Corinth. They made fun of his weakness: “His bodily appearance is weak and his speech is of no account”, they said. The super-apostles said, in effect: if he is so afflicted, how can he be an apostle? Remember, they preached a gospel of health, wealth and success, they themselves Exhibit A, like some T.V. preachers today. If you’re so hobbled, how can you presume to be an apostle? they said.

The text says that Paul prayed and prayed for this thorn to be removed, but God did not remove it. God did not answer the prayer in the way Paul prayed it. This is a brave verse. Paul praying for what certainly would be a good thing for his life and his ministry. But God did not answer it.

Instead what God said were these words: My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

No healing but God’s “sufficient grace.” Remember the old hymn: “My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply, shall be thy supply.”

We may not be given healing grace, but we are given God’s sufficient grace, grace to help us carry what we must carry.

And now the phrase which plumbs the mystery of the gospel: God’s strength made perfect in our weakness. It happens in our lives, and it is the basis of our ministry as “wounded healers” to use Henri Nouwen’s famous phrase. Until we come to terms with our weakness we cannot come close to others’ weaknesses to help and to heal.

The image comes from an old rabbinic story. A man goes to Elijah and asks, “When is the Messiah coming?” Elijah answers, “Ask him for yourself. He is sitting at the city gate wrapping and unwrapping his wounds one at a time so he can also minister to the sick and wounded around him.” So we minister to others as “wounded healers.”

Thorton Wilder the famous playwright who wrote Our Town wrote a play on the pool of Bethesda, based on the story in John where people would come to be healed. When the pool’s waters would be stirred they believed an angel was present to heal them if they got in the pool. In Thorton Wilder’s play a disabled physician came to be healed. The waters were stirred, and as he was about to step into the water the angel stopped him and said:

Draw back physician, this moment is not for you…without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble in the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve.

I remember a T.V. segment on May Cleland the head of the V.A. under President Carter. He was a triple amputee from the Vietnam War. At one point in his speech he quoted a poem attributed to an injured Civil War soldier:

I asked God for strength that I might achieve
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey
I asked for help that I might do greater things
I was given infirmity that I might do better things
I asked for riches that I might be happy
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life
I was given life that I might enjoy all things
I got nothing I asked for, but everything I hoped for
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered
I among all men am most richly blessed.

Max Cleland, like Paul had been given the mystery of the gospel: Strength made perfect in weakness.

This is getting close to the meaning of the gospel of God in Jesus, who lived a humble life, washed feet, healed the sick, touched the untouchables, preached God’s unconditional love of us and was broken on a Roman cross by the powers-that-be.

God uses our strengths, but God also uses our weakness, which is good news given our plenteous weaknesses. But perhaps God can especially use our weakness, for in our weakness we trust in God and depend on God. When I was young I prayed, God use my strengths. As I’ve gone along in life I’ve learned to pray, God use my weakness.

Martin Luther came up with paradoxical images of how God’s is made perfect in weakness: God writes straight with a crooked stick; God rides the lame horse; God carves the rotten wood. And glory, Grace is Enough.

We have this ministry by the mercy of God, God’s treasure in our clay pots; God’s strength made perfect in our weakness.

It seems strange in a world of super apostles, super pastors, super churches, churches that exalt their strength, ministers who cozy up to power. But it is the wisdom of God, the wisdom of the cross, which is saving the world.