Community Church Sermons

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C – September 23, 2001

"The One And Only Jesus:

There Are Some Things Only God Can Do”

2 Corinthians 11:21b-30;7b-10

I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for St. Paul to live his life as a follower of Jesus. He faced some pretty hard times. Given 39 lashes with the whip not once or twice, but five times – beaten with rods on three occasions – once, they tried to stone him. He was shipwrecked three times as he journeyed to bring the Gospel to others – and for a night and a day, he was adrift at sea. He was falsely imprisoned, and in danger from rivers, and from robbers. Paul says he spent many a sleepless night. Often, he was without food, and cold, and naked.

From our perspective as twenty-first century Christians, Paul’s experience seems so unlike our own. We do not suffer so much from long, arduous missionary journeys as we do from long, arduous sermons. We experience the cold, but mostly when the air conditioning is turned too high, or the heat is turned too low. Our version of a shipwreck is when the jet ski turns over on Tellico Lake. And being without food – well - just look at us!

Shipwrecks, imprisonments, floggings, persecution – these seem so far removed from people like us who live in a time and place very different from the world of St. Paul.

And yet, sufferings are closer than we think. Ours may be different from St. Paul’s, but they are sufferings nonetheless. All human beings experience weakness and difficulty and challenge. That’s why Paul is so up front in telling us about his own struggles. Imagine that! An apostle – a saint – struggling through life just like you and me!

You see, in the Corinthian church there were those who saw weakness as a sign of spiritual deficiency. If you are faithful, they taught, only good things will come your way. Why do good things happen to people? Because they are good people! Why do bad things happen to people? Because they are bad people! God, to them, operates on the principle of quid pro quo.

And you can well understand how this teaching served to undermine the lives of people in the Corinthian church. Mothers who’d lost babies. Fathers who became disabled. Families that met misfortune. People who got sick. These were people left not only to bear the pain of their tragedies, but to bear them alone, and without hope, and without God.

So Paul writes this fantastic letter in which he rejects such heartless claims. And he reveals to the Corinthians the misfortunes that he himself has suffered. And then Paul tells us about a revelation he received from God about the weaknesses he experienced in his life. God told him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

In other words, God is so good, he can even incorporate our weaknesses into his plan to save the world! And Paul responds to this revelation by telling the Corinthians that he will boast all the more gladly about his weaknesses, so the power of God may dwell in him. And, he says, he is content with life’s weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. “For whenever I am weak,” Paul writes, “then I am strong.”

We’ve been talking these past few weeks about the one and only Jesus. That’s where our faith centers itself, and the only way you can really find your way to the power of the Christian faith is when you cut through all the peripheral, superficial, and trivial things that so often occupy us, and get to the core of Christianity. The one and only Jesus.

This is what made Paul such a great apostle. His focus was on Christ, and Christ crucified. And with that image firmly planted in his heart, Paul was able to understand what its like to go through hard times, and to provide real help and hope to people facing such difficult moments.

So what did Paul see in Christ crucified that we need to see – that will help us deal with the hardships we face in life?

Well first of all, in Christ crucified, we see acknowledged the reality of human pain. And on the cross, God embraces it with grace. And so must we.

I don’t know about you, but I was floored last week to read the comments of Jerry Falwell regarding the terrorist attack on September 11^th. He essentially laid the blame for it on the gay community, on the ACLU, on the People For The American Way, on feminism, and on any other number of groups or movements Falwell considers morally deficient and whose lifestyles cause God to send judgment upon us..

But the statement blew up in his face. People were outraged. Religious leaders denounced it. And Rev. Falwell found himself scrambling to apologize – not that he is truly apologetic for anything other than the fact that people are very angry with him.

Now what this man said is not simply a matter of bad theology. It is certainly that, but there is something deeper here. For me, the real question is not good theology vs. bad theology, but rather, “What was it that made people so enraged?” And I think the answer is simple and plain.

Rev. Falwell’s words dishonored the tragedy we’d all just experienced. The suffering of its thousands of victims, the pain of tens of thousands of family members who lost loved ones, the injury suffered by you and by me and by all Americans and people of goodwill all around the globe. His statement simply explained it away – God’s response to human sin - as if it had no meaning at all.

But the cross tells us something different. In Christ crucified, God does not minimize or rationalize or justify the suffering of the world embodied in Jesus on the cross. No, God does not just pass it off as “that’s what you get for doing what you did.” Rather, in Jesus, God embraces human pain and suffering as his own.

You need to know that if you’re going through such a time right now. God does not pass off your hurt as the legitimized result of your weak humanity. God loves you. God cares about you and what you’re going through. God embraces you. And that is what we must do as Christians for others. We are to simply embrace them. Love them. Support them. Weep with them.

You see, Christianity, among other things, is about dealing redemptively with human suffering. And we see it so clearly in Christ crucified.

Tony Campolo tells a marvelous true story about embracing human pain. One afternoon, Tony’s mother called him at the office to tell him that Mrs. Kirkpatrick had died and that he needed to go to the funeral. He says his mother, who is Italian, was big on funerals and on letting Tony know his obligations. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, after all, had always been a loving friend to the family, and especially to Tony and the other children as they grew up.

He arrived at the funeral home at two o’clock, just as the service was set to begin. Being a tad late, he was rushing, and noticed there were several funerals going on at the same time. So he walked into the room he thought was for Mrs. Kirkpatrick and quickly took a seat. He did it so hurriedly that he failed to notice that, other than one little old lady sitting two seats away from him, there was no one else in the room! Then Tony looked over the edge of the casket, and realized that the man laying there did not look at all like Mrs. Kirkpatrick! He had the wrong funeral! Tony started to get up to leave when the little lady next to him reached over, grabbed his arm, and with tears streaming down her cheeks and desperation in her voice, said, “You WERE his friend – weren’t you?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “There comes a time in every man’s life when he must lie with imagination, with vigor, and with enthusiasm.”

And so Tony lied. He told her he knew her husband. And that her husband was a good man, and loved her, and had always been kind to him. And then they sat there – together – holding hands – through the whole funeral. Afterward, they went out together, and got into the one limousine that would follow the hearse to the cemetery. Hand-in-hand, they stood at the edge of the grave while prayers were said and the casket was lowered. Then they threw some roses into the grave, got back into the car, and returned to the funeral home. As they arrived, Tony took the woman’s hand and said, “Mrs. King, I have to tell you something. I want to be your friend, and I can’t be your friend after today if I don’t tell you the truth. I did not know your husband. I came to the funeral by mistake.”

Tony says he waited a long, long time, wondering how she would respond. Then, at last, the tearful woman said, “You’ll never ever, ever know how much your being with me meant to me today.”

There is power in embracing pain with love. God’s message to Paul was that grace in the midst of weakness and suffering somehow activates God’s power to heal and to make whole. And that gift of grace given to a woman Tony Campolo didn’t even know, brought about a hint of wholeness and healing in her life!

So whenever you or someone you love suffers from the weaknesses of being human, don’t deny it, don’t reject it, don’t push it under the carpet and pretend its not there. Don’t try to explain it, rationalize it, and especially don’t theologize over it. Instead, simply identify it, acknowledge it, sympathize with it, and touch it with God’s grace! That’s part of the message of Christ crucified!

And a second part is that when you do embrace pain with love, you somehow empower God to do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves.

You know, they say that part of what inspires these terrorists to do the things they do is the belief that giving your life in an act of martyrdom will earn you the right to heaven. And that obviously sounds good to some, especially to those who live in hell on earth. But its not true.

No human being can climb their way into heaven. Can’t achieve it. Can’t purchase it. Can’t wheel and deal for it. Can’t get their on their own. Even Jesus couldn’t do that!

Why, there he is, hanging on the cross! Hands and feet bound and nailed. Strength slipping away with every breath. Growing weaker by the moment. Unable to do anything to save himself.

Christ crucified – this image we must bring to the center of our lives - is the picture of a person made completely helpless to shape the future of his life.

But in the midst of Jesus’ weakness, our God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness!” And God steps into Jesus’ weakness, and goes to work!

Only God can bring us from earth to heaven! Only God can bring us from death to life! Only God can bring us from brokenness to wholeness! Only God can set us free from guilt. Only God can transform hatred into love. Only God can bring us peace on earth, and good will toward man!

And the message of Christ crucified is that God is faithful, and will do all these things for us, if we trust in him and not in ourselves.

There are some things only God can do.

That hopelessly broken relationship that you and the person on the other side have not been able to reconcile – that sense of being lost and hopeless that came with a physical disability that has left you feeling like you’ll never really live again – that loneliness that hangs in the air every night as you go to bed alone, without your spouse of fifty-plus years – that terrible feeling of desperation that took over your stomach the afternoon the doctor gave you the diagnosis – that life-sapping addiction – that terrible guilt that you’ve carried like a millstone around your neck since the time you were a kid - that fear that keeps you from sharing intimacy with others – and death – for all of us, there is the fact that death, sooner or later, will come.

There are some things in human life that lie beyond the realm of human ability to change, direct or transform them. There are some things only God can do.

That’s the story of Jesus on the cross. Only God can turn a crucifixion into a resurrection!

So what can you do when you encounter suffering and weakness in yourself and others? First embrace it with grace. And then ask God for help. Ask God to do for you what you can’t do for yourself. For there are some things that only God can do.

As our national future unfolds, we will do what we can to blunt the power of terrorism. But none of our might, none of our wealth, none of our cunning, and none of our creativity will be able to heal and transform the hearts of those who have lost so much, or the hearts of those who are so lost that they carry out such evil deeds.

Only God can change the human heart.

We need God more than ever today!

So join me in giving God the channels he needs to enter the pain of our neighbors, our families, our world, and ourselves.

His grace is enough! For his power is made perfect in weakness!