Audio Recording
I have often thought of writing a book
about what to do while laid up in the hospital.
We are hardly more weak and vulnerable than when we’re in the
hospital. In the hospital bed things
like control of one’s own life and dignity suddenly disappear. At all hours of the day and night people come
into your room to “do things” to you.
Often times, you need help with the most basic bodily functions. And, there are the hours after hours after
hours of simply having nothing to do.
It’s humiliating and you feel useless.
The weakness of being a hospital
patient is very difficult to cope with. We
deal with it in ways much like the names of the Seven Dwarfs of Snow White
fame. There’s Doc, the person who self-diagnoses
rather than listens to the doctors. There’s
Happy. Happy is weirdly optimistic about
the prognosis believing a positive outlook is best for healing. There’s also Grumpy, who barks and orders everybody
around and is never satisfied with the treatment. Who can forget Sleepy? Sleepy possesses the unusual ability to sleep
24/7. Then there’s Bashful, the meek
little mouse of a person who doesn’t want to be a bother to anyone and so he
never asks for anything even when they forget to bring his lunch. Sneezy…well, sneezy likes to share his
symptoms in very tangible ways (“Look at this pus in my abscess.”). Finally, the lovable, mute, and clumsy Dopey…Dopey
likes maxing out the morphine drip, need I say more.
I know I make light of a situation in
life that none of us wants to go through.
We do not like being in situations of weakness. But, let me add insult to injury, being laid
up in the hospital is not necessarily what Paul means by weakness here in 2
Corinthians though I and he wouldn’t exclude it. Paul’s “weakness” was the result of suffering
for Christ. He describes it just a few
verses before in chapter 11. “Five times I
have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods;
once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I
have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger
from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the
city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in
toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often
without food, in cold and exposure. And,
apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for
all the churches.”
It appears that Jesus did not step into Paul’s life
and suddenly solve all of Paul’s problems like some preachers promise in order to
work a conversion and/or even a
donation out of hurting people. Being quite
honest, if we were to evaluate Paul’s life according to the Western values of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Jesus messed things up for Paul
quite severely. Looking at Paul –
and not just Paul, but also all the Apostles, the prophets, Jesus, the nation
of Israel – I think a convincing argument can be made that the closer we draw to
God, the worse things get for us in the world.
But I would be totally remiss to leave it at that. When we suffer, whether it be the trials of
life or actually suffering for Christ, we who are “in Christ” have the
all-sufficiency of his grace to draw on.
Let’s dig a little deeper on this and
look at what Paul has to say about this man he knows who was called up into
Paradise. The man is actually Paul and in
a way odd to our modern ears, Paul here describes the experience that he had on
the road to Damascus where Jesus resurrected and glorified calls Paul out for
persecuting him by persecuting his disciples and yet instead of striking Paul
down like a Roman Emperor would, Jesus rather calls Paul to be his disciple and
indeed the apostle to the Gentiles. God’s justice is restorative, indeed
transformative rather than simply retributive.
According to our translation (NIV),
Paul says he was caught up into the third heaven or, rather, into
Paradise. The Greek word for “caught up”
is actually a violent word if I may say that.
It rather says that he was seized, taken by force into Paradise - a
reality that is open to and opened by God.
Normally, the way one gets to this Paradise is by means of death. Paul got off easy. In the Book of Acts chapter nine Paul says he
was seized up into it in a bright light and those around him could actually see
it. So, he wasn’t just having a mental
break.
This experience that Paul describes here
sounds pretty freaky to us Western Protestants since we have been steeped in the
anti-mysticism and the reduction of faith to moral obedience that resulted from
the Enlightenment or Age of Reason or he Age of Scepticism, the philosophical
movement that began in the 1600’s. But
you know, in Eastern Orthodoxy, which is still deeply rooted in the ways and
experiences of the Early Church, Paul’s experience is not strange at all. Their tradition is full of stories of devout
people who glowed with light.
The point to carry away here is that because
of our fallen reality, God has to take us by force to get us into his reality
so that we can be part of his work in his creation. This means that the life of faithfulness is
not going to be a waltz down easy street where everything goes my way, so be it, amen, call me blessed. Rather, the life of faithfulness is exactly
what it is – living life according to God’s purposes rather than our own and
this brings us into conflict with the ways of the world in every way – morally,
spiritually, even bodily. Faith requires
that we be weak by this world’s standards.
Faith requires that we relinquish our illusionary state of believing we
have power to control our lives and the people around us and to be who and what
we want to be. Faith requires we simply
trust God. Let go and let God and follow
along. Faith is the way of the cross in
which we learn to love and to hope.
Michael Gorman a Roman Catholic scholar calls faith cruciformity, life formed by the way of the cross.
Paul goes on to share that he asked
Jesus three times to take away a form of suffering in his life that was akin to
pointless physical disease. He calls it
his thorn in the flesh, a reminder that he is still human. It was probably the eye affliction that he
alluded to in Galatians. Paul says that
Jesus himself answered him saying, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power
is made perfect in weakness." In
turn, Paul the man who has these great visions says to us, “Therefore, I will
boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest
on me.” That is to say, we should
embrace our times of weakness and cling to faith while in them because when we
are weak, Jesus is strong in us. His
grace is powerfully sufficient for us.
If we examine what Paul is saying in the Greek in
this passage, we find a bit of a paradox.
For us to find ourselves near fully in the presence of God, God has to
seize us out of life as we know it into his own life and this act of seizing is emotionally and physically difficult. Yet, on the other side of that coin is an
amazing assurance in the face of
suffering where Jesus and the power of his grace (which is nothing
short of God’s own creating capacity to act
and make things new) “rests
upon us” in ways that the people around us will see. Other translations say “dwells in
us” or “lives in us”. The Greek word
there for “rests on” creates
a rather idyllic scene of a nomadic herder pitching his tent so that he can
rest. The gracious power of Jesus
through the presence of the Holy Spirit comes to repose in us especially when we are suffering. He makes
us lie down in green pastures. He leads
us beside the still waters. He restores
our souls…and people see it.
So, to put the lid on this cheese box, Paul is
saying is that when we are in our weak times, whether it be suffering because
of life things or suffering on behalf of Jesus as Paul often did, Jesus’ power of grace
through the Holy Spirit is actively present with us working in and through us
in such a way that we are at
peace in the midst of our suffering and as such become a living witness to Jesus
Christ and his power of grace to those around us. We need only step into the tent with him, the
tent of his presence and the power of grace that he has pitched on and in us. In that tent we find the strength to go on, and its his strength not our own; the very strength, the very life-giving power of
Jesus Christ our Lord.
You may ask “How?
How do I step into that tent of repose?” Well, back to where I
began. If I were to write a book on what
to do while in the hospital or worse, wasting away because of an illness or
just plain stuck in a low spot on a perpetual rainy day, this is what I would write,
“Pray! Pray without ceasing!” Add to that, “Meditate on Scripture.” Not much of a book, eh? In my eighteen
plus years of ministry, I have seen trauma, illness, and the indeed the
persecution of many of my parishioners.
Sadly, I have noticed that in our
weak times we don’t actively turn to Christ to find his strength in the midst of our
weakness. We don’t seem even to know
that there is a tent that we can step into and find his rest. Rather, we resign ourselves to live with it
amidst much anxiety. We hear this
passage in 2 Corinthians and say, “That’s Paul, the APOSTLE, experiencing
something that only APOSTLE’S experience.
Not to mention it sounds pretty weird – third heaven, come on,
really. Who are we kidding here? Real life’s not like that.” Well, we may not get seized up into Paradise
in this life like that (though some
people do), but nevertheless we’re no different than Paul when it comes to the
fact that Jesus Christ has pitched his tent on us and in us by the gift of the
Holy Spirit and we do indeed have his strength to lean on.
Entering that tent isn’t such a weird thing. When we are beset by weakness, the best way
to deal with it is not to be one of the Seven Dwarfs. Rather, prayer is our means. Time in the bed of weakness is time in the tent of prayer. You know, the further our lives go on the
more we all have to deal with the fact that we have thorns in the flesh that
debilitate us – emotional thorns, bodily thorns, spiritual thorns, relational
thorns. We can counter the debilitation
with the empowerment of Jesus strength found in prayer. So, when weak, pray. Pray for everybody you know, pray for your
enemies; especially for your
enemies, those with whom you have a
broken relationship. Then, when you’re
done or tired (prayer can be exhausting) rest in repeating to yourself a simple
prayer like “Lord Jesus Christ, Son
of God, have mercy on me.”
Also, the power of Jesus’ presence becomes evident
to us when we read the Bible. Weak time
is not only prayer time. It’s also Bible
time. It is not weird, it’s normal that
when we read a chapter or so of Scripture that a word or verse or image or
feeling will get our attention. That’s
just Jesus saying “here’s your verse for the day. Ponder it.”
Meditating on Scripture is simply memorizing that passage and repeating
it to yourself over and over again. What
Jesus said to Paul here is a perfect Scripture to meditate on when we are at
our weakest. “My grace is sufficient for
thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Fixing our thinking on prayer and pondering
Scripture beats the heck out of worrying.
Jesus has pitched his tent in us and in that tent
is the grace that is sufficient for us in our weakness. Enter the tent and you will find what Paul is
talking about. Moreover, through you Jesus will shine through to those around you. When we are weak, HE is strong. His strength will shine through from us like a
light for all to see. Amen.
