A Thorny Issue

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
What a wonderful proclamation to hear from our Lord!
God’s grace is sufficient.
In this topsy-turvy world, when all things seem to go wrong,
when we discover that we are not in control,
and are powerless to save ourselves,
it is such a miraculous thing to hear the truth:
that despite our weakness,
and even in and through our weakness,
God’s strength reigns supreme,
and we ... we are called to live by God’s Grace.

Would you pray with me?

We have all heard and remember that wonderful fable from our childhood days
about the Lion and the Mouse.
As Aesop tells the story,
Mr. Mouse was, one day, caught by a Lion.
And, after much pleading,
the mouse convinces the lion to let him go.
Sometime later, Mr. Mouse hears that the lion has been trapped by some hunters
Full of charity, the mouse goes and chews the net open,
freeing the lion.
This is a wonderful story,
but it is incomplete without the alternate conclusion:
the lion, as the other fable goes,
gets a thorn caught in his paw
and the mouse,
whom he freed,
comes and pulls the thorn out.

Both are stories of weakness and power,
both are stories which display grace and mercy
and both are relevant to today’s reading
from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.

Thorns are nasty things.
Have you ever stepped on one? I have. Not only do they put a hole in you,
but they can also cause a bad infection.
In the very least, a thorn can so distract you that you’re incapable of attending
to the many things of importance that fill our daily living.
Many Biblical scholars have referred to the church,
which Paul founded at Corinth,
as the thorn in the apostle’s flesh ...
in the very least, it is certain that the Corinthian Christians,
among all his other churches,
gave Paul the most trouble.
So, full of strife and contention,
back blighting and theological heresy,
the Corinthian Church even challenged Paul’s authority as an Apostle.

The charges against Paul were many,
but one of the most devastating was based on the fact that
he had once been a persecutor of the church.
Now, Paul tells us,
many times
That he had been a persecutor of the church prior
to his calling on the Damascus road.
Of this, there is no doubt.
Throughout his ministry Paul was forced,
time and time again,
to rehash his history in response to the accusations of those who opposed him
in Jerusalem
in Galatia
and especially in Corinth
He was never allowed to forget
he was never allowed to go beyond his past and accept
the forgiveness which was offered in Christ Jesus.
His opponents wouldn’t let him.
They looked at Paul’s life and ministry and found there a weakness to exploit.

The whole question as to the nature of Paul’s thorn is,
if you’ll pardon the pun,
a thorny issue among critical scholars.

Many theories have been put forward:
one theory is that Paul had epilepsy,
while another claims that he had eye trouble
dating from the Damascus road experience.
A third theory is that Paul was beset by malaria,
while a fourth claims that Paul had a speech defect.
Among the more ancient theories is that Paul had a guilt complex,
while one of the most recent has been that Paul was a homosexual.
No matter which hypothesis the critical scholars have put forward --
and they do love to debate and argue these theories --
the end-result is, basically, the same.

It seems rather clear that Paul was tortured, by others and by himself,
over his past history.
Paul’s weakness, his thorn, was not a physical ailment --
the apostle didn’t have pussy eyes, nor was he a homosexual.
In my opinion, the thorn was precisely what Paul indicated it was:
A messenger of Satan,
an accuser,
both spiritual and human,
which stayed with him and, periodically, harassed him as to his calling
his ministry,
his mission
his salvation.

Paul tells us, through a monologue in the third person,
that he had seen many great and wondrous things
fourteen years earlier when he had been transported to the third heaven....
to Paradise.
But, he was never allowed to fully enjoy this experience.
Satan’s messenger,
a “thorn,”
Was given to him to torment and harass him.
These experiences,
These revelations
which Paul received,
were not something for him to revel in anyway.
The visions of paradise came not from his own power
but were a gift from God.
They were not given to Paul so that he could preach about them;
rather, they were given in secret, by the grace of God.

The messenger of Satan came in an attempt to block this grace;
Paul’s accusers, too, had set out to nullify the gift of Paul’s ministry;
but God used even this evil messenger,
God used even Paul’s opponents,
to work for the good.

When I was young ... or, rather, younger ...
I was especially susceptible to nightmares.
I would get up and wander around the house,
and my mother -- small and weak though she was --
would do her best to keep me from going outside.
Over time, I grew out of those night-terrors,
but I am periodically reminded of them, late at night,
when I am awakened in a cold sweat.
Indeed, all of us, at one time or another, can remember the torment a nightmare
can bring.

I can imagine Paul awakening, late at night, in a cold sweat.
In his mind’s eye, he could see Stephen,
being stoned by the crowd of Jewish agitators,
as well as many faces of all the other Christians,
which he had helped to haul before the Jewish authorities.
I can imagine that their faces trooped across his mind periodically,
but especially so following the taunts of his accusers.
In the back of his mind, parallel to the images of Stephen
and of all the other Christians whom he had oppressed,
rang the accusations of his accusers, and of THE accuser,
the one Paul called the messenger of Satan,
telling him that he would NEVER be forgiven this offense.

And, so, I can see Paul
getting down on his knees and praying
“Lord, remove this burden from me! Forgive me of my transgressions!”
Three times he besought the Lord’s intercession,
time and time again he called for delivery --
and the Lord’s response brought deliverance.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”

Now, traditional interpretation claims that Paul was not healed of the thorn
but, rather
that he was given the “grace” to continue with it.
And, even if the thorn is understood as the accuser,
the angel of Satan and Paul’s opponents, who came to remind Paul of his past,
then the answer is still yes:
for Paul did, indeed, face opposition,
Paul did, indeed, face oppression until his dying day, in Rome.

And, yet, Paul was delivered.
Paul was delivered from having to forgive himself.
He was delivered from the torture of self-recrimination.
He was given the eyes to see that the evil in his past could be made to further
Christ’s cause ... the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because Christ worked through it,
Paul’s physical and emotional weakness
was not a weakness for God or the Gospel.
Paul’s accusers attempted to destroy Paul with his weakness,
but God’s grace was sufficient for him.
Paul learned to say:

“I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

The grace of God’s power was best displayed in and through Paul’s weakness.
If God could deliver Paul from the evil of his past;
If God’s grace was sufficient for the life of this persecutor of the Church,
then God’s grace is sufficient for everybody.

The thorn remained, but Paul learned to understand it.
He learned to boast of his weaknesses,
to point out the deliverance possible in Christ
Jesus, “so that,” as he put it, “the power of Christ may dwell in me.”
The grace of God, the power of Jesus Christ,
not only saves us from our sinful lives,
but it also sustained us,
here,
for the living of these days,
even through our weaknesses.

Aesop’s fable about the Lion and the Mouse
displays the power to be found in weakness.
Though small and weak,
the mouse has powerful through to release the Lion from captivity;
though unimpressive,
the mouse could pull out the thorn
and relive the pain.
In other words:
that which appears to be a weakness, may, indeed,
turn out to be a strength.
God’s grace may surprise us.

After all, who would have thought that redemption could come via the cross?
Who would have guessed that the weakness of God in Christ,
crucified on another thorn,
could break the shackles of sin and death
and remove the thorn of evil from us?
As Paul told the Corinthians in the earlier letter:
“The weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
The cross is a folly to the Greek, and a stumbling block for the Jew --
for the cross is weakness,
not strength,
it is humiliation, not victory ...
but not in the eyes of God.
For Christ’s thorn -- His Cross -- is the strength which delivers us all.
In this topsy-turvey world,
when all things seem to go wrong,
when we discover that we are not in control,
and are powerless to save yourselves,
it is, indeed, a miraculous thing to hear the truth:
that despite our weakness and even in and through our weakness,
God’s strength reigns supreme.
And we ... just like Paul ... we are called to find God’s Grace sufficient for us.
We are called ... like Paul ... to live by Grace.