Looking Weak

2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

You don’t want to look weak, do you?

 

You wouldn’t want to look like a loser. Like you can’t go head-to-head with the other guys, with anyone else.

Don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of everyone, by looking weak, do you?

 

That’s the sort of theoretically “yes or no” question that only has one right answer.

If I’m asking you that, it’s because I want you to say “no.”
No, I’m strong! I’ve got this!

 

It’s true in workplaces and personal relationships and sports and entertainment and academics and – in a very noticeable way this week – in media and national politics. 

We are not supposed to look weak.  Supposed to hide our uncertainties and limits and frailties, supposed to project fitness, success, power and strength.

 

At least, we’re supposed to do that if we want to win. Occasionally you can build a franchise of “lovable losers”, or bumble your way to the comedic top, but that’s usually expensive and doesn’t work for most of us.

 

You and I, as ordinary people, are expected to want to win.

Expected to want to look strong, competent, healthy, and successful.

It’s fine to get your trophy for participating, but at work, at school, at sports, on the internet, well, you wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself by looking weak.

 

Unless you’re Paul.

Paul the apostle (who pretty much never shuts up about his qualifications) stands up today in front of his friends in Corinth – the friends he’s about to lose because there’ve been other apostles visiting who look smarter and stronger and cooler and more visionary and powerful than Paul. Paul stands up today and says, “yeah, I want to look weak. I want to be weak. (You wanna make somethin’ of it?)”

 

Paul does not do an incredibly good job of letting go of the need to look strong (“I don’t want to boast about my spiritual power and visions, but I totally could boast if I wanted to,” he keeps telling us.) But I think he is actually sincere when he says “I am content with weaknesses for the sake of Christ”. And that he’s deeply honest when he says “I will boast more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

 

I believe that at the end of the day, Paul actually does want people – his friends in Corinth, you and me – to see where he falls short, where he can’t do it all (in spite of being just as good and really better than those johnny-come-lately “super apostles” visiting Corinth thank you very much). Because he wants us to see that where he fails, Christ makes whole. That the healing and salvation he can’t win for himself or for us are set free by his defeats and our broken promises; that the joy and love we can’t earn or hoard or buy with our own power bubble up out of our dead ends and failed efforts.

 

Paul doesn’t like being weakened – having this “thorn in his flesh” he talks about. He doesn’t like being broken – who among us does? But he is, I think, in love with the revelation he receives while complaining about his weakness. That Christ tells him “my grace is sufficient for you; power is made perfect – is completed – in weakness.” That where he, Paul, fails, where he is weak, God is strong – stronger than ever, stronger than all our weakness needs.

 

So he tells his friends in Corinth, tells us, the great revelation that where we fall short, we make more room for God. Our weakness is the space that is filled with the strength of God’s power and glory and love.

 

Which is GREAT.

But also hard.

 

Because while God’s power and love and glory and strength is always there, the part where we – you and I and Paul himself – actually make space to receive it is…challenging.

 

I think that’s a bit of what’s going on in Nazareth in Mark’s story today – how when Jesus comes home to Nazareth he can’t do any “deeds of power there” – because his neighbors don’t have any space for divine displays and miracles.
They’re not able to embrace the shortfall in their knowledge of this Jesus – what they knew about him as a kid should be enough, they think.  We already know all about this guy, they seem to say.

And when they think they’re enough – when we think we’re enough – we don’t make room to experience all the more that God has to offer.

We settle for our basic competence, instead of reaching for the extraordinary possibilities of God’s power.

 

So Jesus just heals a few people – a few people whose weakness is unquestionable are filled and made whole with God’s power – and moves on. Moves on to where there’s more room for wonder, more need and more hope – and sends his friends out to do the same. Not forcing God’s glory into people and places that don’t have room for it, but healing and freeing those whose weakness makes room for God’s power.

 

I wonder – this week, as I read these stories – I wonder how often I  haven’t made room for God’s power. How often I’ve neglected my weaknesses, how easily I forget to fail – and how many miracles I might have missed as a result.

 

I wonder how often I’ve assumed, like the neighbors in Nazareth, that I know enough about Jesus already, and blinded myself to the possibility that there’s more love and glory and good news to be revealed.

 

I wonder how often we as a community forget, or miss, or overlook those weaknesses and failures that make space for God to overflow.

 

And I wonder what would happen if I, if you, if we embraced those deficiencies in our community, those defeats in our personal lives, as the places where the love of God comes breaking through our habits and defenses to make us whole.

 

I don’t know.
I haven’t mastered this yet – in fact, I’ve barely started! I’m just as well trained to fail at failure and be bad at weakness as Paul the boasting-about-not-boasting apostle ever was.

Maybe you’re already good at failing into the power of God, or losing your way into a miracle, and I can learn about it from you.

But I’m starting to yearn for the rich glory of weakness that Paul almost manages to describe to us – but has to leave the completion of our understanding to God.

Starting to be glad I can’t do it myself, because there is so much more that God will do.

 

I’m starting to hope – just a little, awkward, floundering hope – for the joys of defeat, of failing our way right into a miracle, together, as the beloved people of a God who loves nothing more than to heal the broken, and give more – so much more – than we could ever win.

 

Starting to want – almost, sometimes – to look weak, after all.

What about you?