Title: “Flirting with Failure”
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Day: Proper 9B (The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost)
Date: July 5, 2009
Each week we are presented with four readings from the Bible. They are assigned for each week of the year, and they are chosen based on a common theme. In other words, there is some thread that ties all of the texts together for any given week. Sometimes it is a very loose connection, and you have to really struggle to figure it out. But sometimes that thread is easy to discern. An image or a phrase is prominently found in all of the texts.
Well, I’m happy to say that this week’s theme was the latter. It sticks out to me like a sore thumb. The bad news is that the theme of this week’s texts seems to be weakness, vulnerability, and failure. The good news is that I’m very familiar with this theme.
Right now, you’re looking at a person who has had intimate experience with failure. I failed not one, not two, not three, but five classes in college. When I was twenty years old, I experienced the failure of managing my personal finances – to the point that I’ve had creditors calling me demanding their money and threatening to take legal action. I have had to wear braces two times, and I failed both times at actually wearing my retainer through its course. And I fail daily at maintaining relationships with my family and friends.
Yes, failure and I are good friends. Where you find one of us, the other is never far away.
Now, it is rare when I get to talk about my failures in a positive way, but today seems to be such a day because these experiences of mine, though painful, help me to relate to the apostle Paul in a new way. He, too, was intimate friends with failure, weakness, and vulnerability. And unfortunately for him, there were people who were eager to point those faults out.
This is perhaps the most profound reason for Paul to write this second letter to the Corinthians. You see, Paul had spent a good amount of time in Corinth. He knew it very well. He knew that it was a very wealthy city. He knew its reputation for immorality. He knew that it was an extremely pagan place. Kinda like an ancient Las Vegas.
And yet he started a church there. He poured himself into it. He helped them to overcome the obstacles of being a Christian in such a difficult place. He opened their eyes to see God at work in their midst. He did everything he could for this church, but eventually he had to leave.
That’s when the trouble started. It didn’t take long for the church to start breaking down. Factions developed. Cliques formed. Fights broke out between members. And in the midst of these difficult times, Paul was nowhere to be found. He was hundreds of miles away, locked away in a prison cell. So, the church naturally turned toward some people who offered their help, who were available right then and there. These were the people who preyed on Paul’s failures and weaknesses.
Paul called these newcomers “super-apostles,” and there’s little wonder why. They spoke eloquently. They flaunted their talents. They performed miracles. Everything they did was very polished and beautiful. It must have been like a well-staged production when they came into the church to preach. And all the while, while they were dazzling this budding church with their performance, they were cutting Paul down to size.
“He can’t speak very well,” they would say, “Have you read any of his letters? Have you noticed how rudimentary his rhetoric is? Ha!”
“He can’t be trustworthy,” they mocked, “Have you noticed how much time he spends in prison?”
“He can’t be a very important person,” they laughed, “if he has to earn his money by working with leather!”
“He can’t be a real apostle if he can’t do any miracles,” they chided.
And on and on they went. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. Paul’s failings and weaknesses are hung out there like dirty laundry for all to see.
Now, let me just pause here and acknowledge that one possibility for this sermon would be to take some time here to talk about how Messiah Lutheran Church has experienced failure, weakness and vulnerability in its past and present. And – to tell the truth – I began writing this sermon in just that way. But after a while I began to realize that I was evading the real issue. I was allowing us to be more comfortable by talking about other peoples’ failures, or the failures of this congregation. I felt like I was cheating. So, let’s simply acknowledge the possibility that a different sermon could work here, and – instead – let’s talk about something more real. Let’s talk about me and you and OUR personal, ugly, uncomfortable failures. Because today’s texts seem to force us to lift the veil for a while and take a good, hard look at the stuff we would rather not deal with.
Now, I don’t presume to know you all well enough to know where or how you have experience failure or weakness or vulnerability in your life, but I know that all of you have experienced it. So, in some ways, this sermon is something that you will have to fill in for yourselves. But I can mention a few failures that are common among us. Perhaps your failure is felt now in a shattered relationship in which you used to find love. Perhaps your weaknesses are shown in an addiction that has taken control of your life. Perhaps your vulnerabilities are evidenced by a sheltered, secretive life that no one else is allowed to join.
Does any of this sound familiar? What would you do if this broken, vulnerable, ugly truth about you were leaked out? What if others knew about the real you? Do you think that this would affect others’ impressions of you? Well, that’s the fear, isn’t it? That’s why we keep these things hidden away. That’s why we would rather just forget about them. That’s why we don’t like to hear sermons preached about them!
Indeed, it is tempting to just sidestep the whole issue and avoid the painful memories. But Paul’s witness in his second letter to the Corinthian church gives us another way to look at these embarrassing, ugly moments of our lives: he tells us that he will BOAST in them. “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ” he vows. And he explains that when these failings, these weaknesses, these vulnerabilities come to the fore, it is then that the power of God is most clearly visible.
In other words, by owning up to his shortcomings, he became a living witness to God’s greatest work: the resurrection – a theme to which he returns again and again. In the resurrection, God reached into the depths of human despair and created new life. In the resurrection, God entered the sticky, ugly realities of life and enabled redemption. In the resurrection, God turned failure, weakness and vulnerability into strength and compassion. Paul’s experience of the Risen Christ and the power of the resurrection allowed him to see himself anew, as if for the first time.
And so it is with us. We experience the power of the resurrection today when we find God reaching into the deepest, most secluded parts of our lives and still finding us worthy of love. We experience the power of the resurrection today when God molds the most undesirable parts of ourselves into something new and life-giving. We experience the power of the resurrection today when God breaks apart our feelings of failure and weakness and vulnerability and lavishes us with grace upon grace. We experience the power of the resurrection today when God brings us together into one place such as this, where we can find comfort in the fact that the people around us are just as broken as we are. We experience the power of the resurrection today when God gathers us around this table – a bunch of hopeless misfits – longing to receive a morsel of bread and a sip of wine as a visible, tangible sign of God’s acceptance and love…
Failure? Yeah, we know it. We know it all too well. But to the us to those of us living in light of the resurrection – it is not a weakness; it is a WITNESS. It is our witness to God and God’s strength, which is made perfect in our failure. It is not a weakness, but it is our witness to Christ and his love for all people – even those of us who fall short of the goal. It is not a weakness, but it is our witness to the Spirit and her sustaining power, which gives us the courage to stay the course even when our weaknesses threaten to overwhelm us.
Praise the Lord! Amen.
