V Pentecost, Proper 9, Year B

 

 

It was a hot night, and I was sitting on a concrete bench in Juarez, Mexico a city of well over one million people on the Mexican-US border. I was sitting in the darkness thinking about a shoeless child, a hotdog and the power of God being made perfect in human weakness.

 

Juarez is a city plagued by extreme poverty, gang related drug violence, and crime. As a senior in High School it was one of the last places I was expecting to find the power of God made plain to me—there was too much brokenness, too much that was weak and wrong with this city I thought. I had been in Juarez for a two-week high school mission trip and we had just finished our final day of teaching English-as-a-second-language and leading a Vacation Bible School. We had spent our final day in a neighborhood of 5,000 people called Anapra, a shanty town of homes made of cardboard, tin, and wire nestled in the midst of scorching hot sand. Anapra had no water, a handful of pit toilets, whatever electricity the residents could steal from the nearby power lines using jury-rigged wires, and a one-room school house/health clinic which fit 80 people.

 

Our team had been teaching Vacation Bible School in Anapra for a week and had come to love the hundred or so children who flocked to our VBS to sing, learn Bible passages, put on skits, play games, and color and paint. On that final day, we had a party to celebrate the fact that these students had come, day in and day out, to this small schoolhouse in the midst of 105-degree heat to learn about God and the Bible. We fired up a grill, made what seemed like too few hotdogs, poured small cups of juice, and handed out a few chips to the children of Anapra, and God showed me something I will never forget.

 

Today, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians about the power of God and human weakness. In this letter, Paul talks about the power of God in human life. As such, Paul writes of God’s power being made perfect or being brought to its final goal (teleo in Greek). Paul explains that God’s unbelievable, earth-creating, Red Sea-splitting, death-defying, world- redeeming power is made PERFECT in human weakness. 

 

This was a confusing idea for the Corinthian Christians to grasp since they firmly believed in the Greek world-view of education and prowess being the building blocks for power and empire. Similarly, the idea of power being made perfect in weakness is nonsensical for our culture. Power being perfect in weakness seems counter intuitive. Our culture teaches us that power is made perfect in more strength, in more power. The more a company can corner the market and crush the competition the better, the stronger a player can be the better, the more a student can master a subject the closer to “perfect” they are. Perfection is all about strength and NOT about weakness for our culture and thought. And yet, Paul claims that in humanity’s experience of God’s power and love this is not so. The stronger we are as humans, the more we think we control and fully understand situations, the less we see the power and presence of God working in our midst. 

 

That is the very story of Jesus’ rejection today in his hometown of Nazareth. His friends and neighbors thought they knew Jesus. He was “the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon…are not his sisters here with us”. The people of Nazareth “knew” Jesus, and as such Jesus “could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” That knowledge of Jesus, that “power” that the townspeople had did anything but perfect God’s power on that day.

 

For Paul God’s power was made the most plain, the most powerful, the most real in his life and in the life of the Church when God worked through humans who were frail, who lacked what the world deemed as necessary to get the basic tasks of the Church done. It was through these weak people, empowered by God that God’s power was made perfect—that it was brought to its goal. Because of this Paul boasts about his weakness—the thorn in his flesh which had made his life harder, which has made his vocation as an Apostle to the Mediterranean so difficult that he has begged God three times that this weakness would leave him. So why in the world would Paul boast about his weakness? Because in the midst of it, in the midst of his struggle God had continued to act, God had continued to spread the Gospel through Paul throughout the Roman Empire. God’s strength and power had been made all the more plain by the fact that someone without every advantage, someone without all the proper training and credentials, had done the impossible. It is in this human weakness that the power of God is made all the more plain for the Christian to see. It is in this painful weakness empowered by the spirit of Christ, that the hungry are able to share food, where the poor are able to share their wealth, where the rejected and lonely are able to live in deep and abiding community, where the kingdom of God becomes present even here on a tormented earth where death and sin seem to reign as missiles are tested, terrorists bomb, addiction ravages, and hunger kills. It is here, in the midst of this brokenness, in the midst of this weakness that the power of God can and does break in like the dawn on a deep and dark night. It is here where the power of God can and does change the world through people like you and me, people who are broken, people who are hurting, people who are tired, people who look to God for their strength and power.

 

As the high school mission team from Maine handed out food to the VBS students on that hot summer day in the sandy barrio of Anapra, God’s power was made perfect in the weakness of those hungry children. Many of the children only ate half of their hot dog and chips and then they would run home, their bare feet burning on the hot sand, to give the rest of their food to their family or to their friends. Here were children living in excruciating poverty who were sharing what little they had with others who had even less. I was amazed by what I was seeing. I simply couldn’t imagine doing the same if I were in their position and yet there, right in front of me, were dozens of children demonstrating an amazing sense of selfless love for family and friends. These children knew the weakness that they lived with—they were only too aware of their dire poverty and need for food and other physical goods. And yet, in the midst of that weakness, God had given them grace—grace to share, grace to see abundance in what seemed like too little food for too many kids. God’s power had been made perfect in the weakness of the children of Anapra.

 

Dear people of St. John’s the amazing promise of today’s readings, the amazing promise of Paul’s words is that even now, in the midst of this broken world, even now in the midst of our fragile lives so marked by weakness and pain, God is more than able to act in power and love. God is with us, God is abiding with us through our baptisms, through this community, through the words of Scripture, through the Bread and Wine which we will soon share with each other.  God’s power is working here and now and it is being made perfect even in our weaknesses. God’s power in you and me is beckoning us to live lives of faith, hope, and love. It is this power, God’s power made plain in even us that Paul is boasting about to the Corinthian church. It is this power, made perfect in hungry children in Mexico, clueless teens from Maine, and a fragmented Church which spans the globe—it is this power that God is using to transform the world.  It is this power working in the life of this community of broken and hurting yet loved and accepted people which can and does transform our lives and the lives of our neighbors—both near and far.

 

Dear friends, as we go forth from this place today, fed by the bread of life and nourished by the cup of salvation, strengthened by God’s Word and Spirit I invite you to give your entire being to God. Trust that even your weaknesses, even your failings are parts of you that God can and will use to show his love and perfect power. It is in our weaknesses, in the places where we simply are not able to succeed, that God is the most present in God’s amazing power. It is in that place of trust, it is in that place of accepting the gracious and perfect love of God that we too can say along with Paul “when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

 

Amen