St. John United Church of Christ, Arlington Hts., Illinois
May 9, 2010 – Mother’s Day
2 Corinthians 11:21b-33
Rev. Jeffrey L. Phillips, pastor 

Paul is in trouble with the Corinthians.

Intruders have come among the Corinthians, saying that Paul is not fit to be their leader, even though he founded their church and has cared for them with the love of a father.

They don’t like the way he dresses or looks.  They don’t like the fact that he engages in menial labor to support himself.  They challenge his leadership.  They challenge him.

This is an old-fashioned power struggle.  They’re not arguing over doctrine or liturgy or ethics, but who’s in charge.  (Aren’t most conflicts about power, even when they seem to be about something else?)

Paul is hurt.  He loves them more than they love him.

At first he ignores them.  Now he can’t take it anymore.  The intruders successfully draw Paul onto their ground in this fight.  He blows up:

            “Don’t you know who I am?” 

“I am as Jewish as any other Jew.”

“Don’t you remember that Jesus himself appointed me an apostle, and that I gave up everything I had as a respected Pharisee to become what I am today – a despised minister of the Lord Jesus?” 

“Don’t you know all I’ve done for you, you ungrateful Corinthians?” 

Then he lists his hardships: 

            Far greater labors than those other guys

            Far more imprisonments

            Countless floggings – sometimes unto death!

Five times I willingly gave my body to be whipped with the 39 lashes (a Jewish punishment Paul endured for preaching Jesus as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God)

Three times I was beaten by rods (a roman punishment)

Once I was stoned

Three times I was shipwrecked – once in the open sea for 36 hours, not knowing if I’d reach land or be rescued.

Always on the go

Danger from rivers, from bandits, from my own people the Jews, from Gentiles, in cities, in the country, at sea, from false brothers and sisters (like these intruders)

In toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, hungry and thirsty, without food, cold, and naked, and the pressure of caring for all these churches!

And this is how you treat me?  This is what I get in return?

Paul is not at his most mature here.  In fact, he sounds like a cry baby trying to get sympathy, or – worse – someone who knows how to manipulate people and get what he wants by laying on the guilt. 

Paul was hurt.  He was under attack, and got defensive.  He fought back.  He acted like a child:

“Look at all I’ve done for you, and this is the thanks I get!”     He’s not getting the respect he thinks he’s due.  Nobody’s paying attention to him, and he throws a tantrum.  Nobody appreciates him.  In fact, they want to throw him under the bus in favor of these johnny-come-lately upstarts think they know more about the Gospel than Paul, senior missionary to the Gentiles.

This is not right!  Everybody deserves some thanks once in awhile!  Everybody deserves respect.  Leadership deserves its due honor.  Paul has paid his dues, and does not deserve to be treated as a worn out pastor.  And so he let’s them have it.    

Today is Mother’s Day, and somewhere in America there’s a mother or two who are feeling like Paul - unappreciated.  We all feel that way sometimes, don’t we?

Don’t my children know what I do for them? 

Why doesn’t my spouse appreciate the sacrifices I make around here? 

Why does my boss treat me like this when I’m the only one around here who does anything?

It’s easy to join the whiner’s club, and just grumble, complain, and be a martyr. “Woe is me!” “I’m just a victim.”  It’s tiring, isn’t?  “Everybody hates me!  Nobody likes me!”

Well, it is a terrible thing to be ignored and unappreciated all the time – to love more than you’re loved back.  But I’m not sure that lashing out is the right response, either.

Flares of red hot anger is what we see in 2 Corinthians 11 – Paul being a real human being who is enraged by the fact that these Corinthians, who would not be Christians without him, are going after others whose only agenda is to put Paul out of the preaching business.

But the problem with anger is that, when we’re feeling it, we don’t think, and when we don’t think, we say and do dumb things.

I’d like to think that Paul woke up and realized that what he was doing was dumb.

He was boasting, essentially – crying for sympathy and attention by blowing his own horn and singing his own praises.  He was bragging, using his wounds as a weapon against his friends in Corinth,

He knew it wasn’t right to brag about his hardships and sufferings.  Why?  Because he knew it was God’s will for him to undergo all the things he had undergone for his Corinthian friends.  He knew that God had called him to a life of hardship for the sake of the Gospel.

And he knew that, despite his moaning and groaning, he would say Yes to God’s call – and the hardships that come with it – all over again.  He knew he had nothing to boast of in himself – that the only thing he could boast of is God’s work within him.

Paul, the first to preach salvation by grace not works, knew that all the hardships and trials in the world would not save him.  Therefore, he had nothing to boast in except the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

So he turns his ranting on its head, and gives credit where credit is due – to God, not to himself.  He calms down and speaks like a Christian leader once again rather than a wounded soul (which he was).  He decides to use his hardships as a way to proclaim the Gospel, using tow of his favorite words - foolishness and weakness.

Foolishness and weakness.

Still trying to convince the Corinthians that he’s qualified to lead them, despite the doubts planted in their minds by the intruders, Paul says (calmly) that God often works through people like him

–    People who may not be fancy dressers or who speak wise words

-         People who endure all kinds of trouble for the sake of others

-         People who receive more put downs than rewards

-         People who work hard but get no credit

Paul takes the way he’s being treated by the Corinthians and turns it into an opportunity to once again proclaim the Gospel to them, showing them that this is how God works.

God takes what is low and despised and humble and simple and discarded by the world, and turns it into something of worth and value.

God takes an executed preacher from Galilee and turns him into the hope and salvation of the world.

God takes the cross (a symbol of hatred, murder, and injustice) and transforms it into a means of grace.  This is foolishness, but God’s foolishness is wiser than any wisdom of any human being, Paul says.

Likewise, God takes our crosses and transforms them into means by which the world sees God at work, turning death into life, hardship into joy, pain into beauty.  God takes that which is nothing, and makes it something – something wonderful.

Mother’s Day.  Not many of our mothers were famous, rich, highly educated, or beauty contest winners.  Most of our mothers were, well, ordinary.  And many endured a lot of hardships like Paul.  But God used them to do wonderful things for us and for others.  

That is how God works in the world – by using even the bad things that happen to us and the bad things other people do to us as ways in which God’s love is shown.

As the old song (“Jesus Loves Me”) says, “I am weak, but he is strong.”  Only when we list our hardships (like Paul), and admit our failings and our mixed up, messy lives can we appreciate the ways in which God heals and saves our lives.  This is worth boasting about.

This is one of Paul’s most repeated messages – one worthy of our hearing and understanding today as we, too, endure hardships and troubles.

            God’s power is shown in our weaknesses and failures, not our successes.

There was nothing weaker than God’s own Son dying a pitiful death on a cross, but by that weakness – that foolishness – God has redeemed the world.

So it is for us, Paul says, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves – unappreciated, hurt, oppressed, anxious, worried, remember: God can use this crisis to show you and everyone else God’s power.

God really gets going when we’re at our lowest.  When we’re at our lowest, as Paul was with the Corinthians, God comes to us, loves us, and brings us back up again, just as God raised Jesus from the dead.

Therefore, our hurt, our anger, the bruises we receive in life’s daily struggles can be, if we allow God to work with them, not occasions to boast, (“I’m more bruised than you”), but a way to show how God raises us up in the midst of these situations.  The negative therefore becomes, by God’s power, a means of demonstrating God’s love.

Therefore, like Paul, we boast not in the hurt itself or in ourselves as we suffer hurt, but in the power of God through Jesus Christ to heal our hurt and the hurt of the world.

Verse 30: “If I boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.”  Paul is boasting in his failures, not his successes, for in his failures, God shines. 

It does not help to hide our hurts.  It’s better to lay them out as Paul did - not to get sympathy, but to testify to the world, “This is how things were, but God saw me through.” 

In a sense, we’re saying, “I’m proud of my failures.  I’m proud of my hurts.  I’m proud of being a fool in the eyes of the world, for if Jesus was a failure in the eyes of the word and a fool in the eyes of the world, and God saved the world through Jesus, then I am not better than he, and if God wants me to be a stumbling, weak fool, then that’s what I’ll be.”

This attitude is at odds with the values of the world, which teaches that strong, wealthy, healthy, and respected people are “good.”  God’s values, Christ’s values, Paul’s values are the opposite: it’s the despised, the pained, the lowly, the hurt, the foolish, and the weak through whom God works. 

The intruders were probably a classier bunch than Paul.  They probably looked and sounded like what you would expect of people bearing Good News.  But ragtag Paul with his string of trouble and his need to make tents for a living: who needs him?  Paul’s response: that’s fine if you want to discard me because of these things, but I’m telling you – it’s through “no-things” like me that God shows God’s nature.

In 2 Corinthians 12 this theme continues.  Paul speaks of his famous “thorn in the flesh.”  He even says that God gave him this affliction - not to punish him, and not because other people hate him, and not because he’s a bad person, but so that Gods power could be shown through it.  Paul asked God three times to remove this problem, but God did not take it from him, but answered instead, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Only through our hardships can we see God’s mighty hand at work.  So do not boast in them, or use them to manipulate others, but only see how God can take them and give you comfort and peace in the midst of them.

Likewise, Jesus and the man born blind in John 9: People wonder why he was born blind – was it his sins or his parents’ sins that he was being punished for?  Jesus answers, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  Then he healed him, and God’s works were made known through this man’s blindness.

Jericho’s mighty walls were no match for Joshua.  Goliath could not withstand puny David.  The weak Hebrews were delivered from the mighty Egyptians.  The cross could not destroy Jesus.  The Bible’s filled with upsets and come-from-behind victories for the little guys.  That is Paul’s point.  He’s saying to the Corinthians: I’m your little guy, the guy who graduated from the school of hard knocks, and, because of that, I truly know the power of God more than those other guys, and that makes me a pretty good leader. 

Whatever your hardship, whatever your hurt or disappointment, whatever you’re tempted to get angry about, whatever you’re tempted to use to make other people feel bad about, whatever you’re tempted to blame God about, see it another way:

Maybe this “weakness” of yours, this “foolishness,” is a gift, a way in which God’s power, love, grace, and forgiveness can be experiences and seen – by you and by others.

We don’t know how Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians turned out.  It was certainly at a low point when this letter ends. 

But maybe – just maybe – the Corinthians got it: that Paul’s listing of his weaknesses and hardships (imprisonments, beatings, floggings, shipwrecks, etc.) were more than the rantings of a big baby.  Maybe they illustrate how God can use anybody in any circumstance – even the worst situation of life – to convey saving grace. 

And maybe – just maybe – they saw that this is the kind of leader they needed: one acquainted first hand with the worst that life has to throw at you, and that if God can use that nasty stuff for the purpose of redemption for Paul, then maybe god can do the same for everybody.