Trinity, Bonners Ferry

2 Cor. 4:5-12

These verses from 2^nd Corinthians are, to my mind, among the most encouraging in all of scripture. They speak of the consistency of God’s loving care from the first day of creation to this present moment. “The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ is the same God who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Imagine that the exact same power that brought light to the cosmos at the beginning of time is now offering light to illumine you, is in fact, shining through you as sunlight streams through a window. It is very hard to hold on to dark notions in the face of such a shining thought.

The subject that Paul is addressing in this letter is his own experience in the ministry. He wants to make clear to his friends in Corinth that he believes that the source of his ability to articulate the gospel is not found in himself. The credit belongs to God and to God alone. “We have this treasure, in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”  The point he makes is a universal one, isn’t it? Face it. You and I are all clay jars.

This is not bad news, it is simply the truth, and only the truth will allow us to be free and human in the way God intended. Here is the truth: from dust we came, to dust we will return, and for the time we are on this earth, what we are is somewhat analogous to clay jars. Useful to be sure, but also subject to chipping and cracking and likely to contain imperfections. Earthen vessels have little reason to boast. The most appropriate attitude for them is humble gratitude for the privilege of serving a function in the eternal scheme of things.

I am not saying that is an easy thing to accept the “clay jarness” of human existence. I am certainly not saying that you will be ushered into the easy life when and if you do. In fact, the opposite is likely to happen. The constant challenges Paul faced in his ministry, teach us not to hope for ease. “We are afflicted in every way,” he wrote, “but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed.”

What all of this says to me is that we are going to make it. There is a big difference between being beleaguered, which you will be, and being done in, which you will not be, thanks to the grace of God. According to Paul, this resilient strength is made available to us by the mysterious power unleashed on the world by Jesus’ death and resurrection. “His risen life is being made visible in our mortal flesh.”

This is the mystery at the heart of the Christian religion, and it is the heart of the matter. Our conviction is that God is at work repairing the world through these means. It is the spiritual reality on which we stake our lives.

Let me pause here to catch us up on this letter we will be hearing from for half of this summer. Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian congregation has deteriorated. In 2 Corinthians, the apostle seeks to rebuild his relationship with the Corinthians. He seeks to defend his own integrity as a trustworthy and competent servant of Christ. Paul will also refute what he perceives as the claims by other evangelists with backgrounds and gifts that are superior to his own.

Second Corinthians offers a real-life window on a strained relationship between a church leader and the people whom he loves. In this letter, we see an anxious apostle hoping to restore the relationship he had with churches he founded, even as he tries to avoid being drawn into a contest with other teachers over who has the most impressive skills and credentials. To do this, he discloses much about his own devotion to the Corinthians, his hardships in ministry, and the reconciliation God has accomplished for them all in Jesus.

In our passage today, Paul marvels that his own frail human body and afflicted life are the means by which God shares the news of God’s glorious self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

More than in any other correspondence we have from Paul, in 2 Corinthians we receive details of Paul’s persecutions and troubles. Here Paul speaks eloquently of the trouble he experiences. He concludes that these troubles are a participation in the death of Jesus, “so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:10). 

Paul is drawing a contrast between the glory of God present in Jesus Christ and the medium through which God has chosen to spread that experience of glory. Christ is the human face of God, glorious and yet accessible to our unveiled faces. Ironically, God is making this news known through a life like Paul’s. 

In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). The point here is similar. In a cultural context where strength, beauty, prosperity, and wisdom were thought to be evidence of God’s presence and blessing, Paul proclaims that God is working in precisely the opposite way. This theme of God’s power made perfect in weakness runs throughout 2 Corinthians as Paul tries to defend his ministry against that of the apparently more vibrant super-apostles. 

I love 2 Corinthians because I love this theme. It reminds me of Dan Erlander’s words in his book Baptized We Live.  He says that when we are united to Christ through baptism, we are united to both Jesus’ No and Jesus’ Yes. Erlander writes, “Jesus said no to the way of glory-the way of establishing the kingdom of God by any other way than dying on a cross. He rejected using personal charisma, the sword, miracles, rewards, reason—all normal ways of promoting even a righteous cause…. Jesus said Yes to the way of the cross—the way of submission to the will of the Father, absolute trust in the Father, dedication to human liberation, solidarity with human pain, and freedom to be human, weak, and vulnerable.”

Christianity is a big tent. It is a big tent even in North Idaho. There is plenty of religion, some of which calls itself Christianity, which says that religion proves itself by miracles, answered prayer, worldly blessings, fulfilled prophecy. There is plenty of religion which fulfills our human need to have higher status than others, to be better than others, to have ‘outsiders’ or ‘unbelievers’ to despise. There is also plenty of religion which teaches “going to heaven when I die” as the main reason to believe in God. Finally, circling back to Paul, there is plenty of religion which avoids teaching that the crucifixion is both the sacrificial act of Christ and the example of the way of life we are to follow.

The discipleship that I have been describing with Erlander and Paul’s help, may very well not be the norm. Living a discipleship that says yes to trusting God, yes to dedication to human liberation, yes to solidarity with human pain, and yes to freedom to be weak and vulnerable may get grimaces and lead to disagreements. It may even lead you, in Paul’s words, to being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down.  

Please hear that I am not condoning suffering for suffering sake. Ancient and contemporary “ministers of righteousness” and “apostles of the Messiah” have often manipulated the starkness of this language to get others to submit to their own agendas (see 2 Corinthians 10-13). Dying and living in Jesus is not about submitting to a human will, whether it be that of one’s own or another’s ego. And it is not about conforming to an ideal of suffering at the expense of one’s own or anyone else’s humanity.

A favorite scholar (Lois Malcom) writes, “As all that distorts and spoils our created goodness dies in Jesus, Jesus’ life is manifest as the flourishing of new creation in our lives. But that flourishing and renewal also involves sharing in the sufferings of Jesus — continually being put to death by all that goes against what this crucified Messiah embodied. In fact, it is precisely as [you] share in Jesus’ life and sufferings that the light of God’s glory shines — amid [your] fragile human existence — in the “face” of this crucified Messiah. This is how death in [you] becomes life-giving for others.”