2
Corinthians 4:5-12.
According to an
old church legend, after Jesus ascended into heaven, the first one to greet him
was the great Archangel Michael, a glorious prince among angels and captain of
the heavenly host. He said, “Lord, you have accomplished marvelous things. What
will you do now? What will happen next?” Jesus replied, “I have entrusted my
mission to my friends and followers. They will be my Body in the world and
carry on my work of salvation.” But when he said this, a shadow passed over
Michael’s face and he looked troubled. He thought of Judas betraying Jesus, and
Peter denying him. He thought of that fragile community of weak and fallible
human beings. And he asked, “But, Lord, what if they fail?” And Jesus said, “I
have no other plan.”
I don’t mean to
sound insulting or anything, but you might think that the Lord of the Universe
could come up with a better plan than us. I mean, seriously. For centuries
before the birth of Jesus, the ancient Israelites failed over and over again to
live as God called them to live, and for the past two thousand years, the
Christian Church hasn’t done much better. All too often in our history, the
Church has supported slavery, violence, and discrimination. All too often, the
Church has favored the wealthy over the poor, and made peace with oppression.
Christian voices are all too often associated with judgment, condemnation and
exclusion, rather than love, mercy, and inclusiveness. And even apart from the
big issues, individual churches are composed of very imperfect people who can be
difficult and uninspired. So we could be pardoned for thinking that maybe this
is not the best plan to save the world.
Except,
apparently, it is — at least in God’s eyes. Jesus actually demands that we
rethink all of our notions of success and failure. He himself was born poor,
spent lots of time with the outcasts and losers of his society, was hated by
the establishment, and eventually executed as a criminal, dying a horrible and
humiliating death on the cross. This is not the way we define success, and yet
every week we gather under that cross and celebrate the fact that Jesus’
failure saves the world. And although it takes a different form, his Body the
Church constantly lives with failure as well. No one understands this better
than the Apostle Paul, the one who aided and abetted the murder of Christians
before he literally saw the light. Paul is a flawed man, and the Corinthians he
writes to are flawed people, and God uses them anyway. In his first letter to
them, he teaches them that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. And in
his second letter to them, which we read from today, a letter which wrestles
painfully with Paul’s limitations and their limitations and all the ways they
exasperate each other, Paul reminds them that we have this treasure in clay jars. We are imperfect vessels of
grace. But that is not because we have failed to follow the plan: failure is
part of the plan. And until we really know that, we cannot fully experience the
Good News of Jesus Christ.
The life and
death of Jesus, the letters of Paul, the witness of the saints all point us to
the same shocking conclusion: we only experience God’s love in the midst of our
flaws and failures, not in spite of them. And that is the way God wants it to
be! Too many religious people think the opposite: they think if they can just
get everything right, then they’ll get God. If we are successful in our
careers, have our 2.3 above average children, live in our beautifully kept
homes, give money to worthy charities, attend church every week, and don’t
commit any serious sins, THEN the heavens will open and God will smile and rain
down blessings upon us. Not so, says the Crucified Lord. Not so, says the
sinner Paul. Grace is only amazing because it comes to us when we are limited
and imperfect, because the only perfection that matters is the love of God at
work in our world, embracing all of us as we are: But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear
that this extraordinary power comes from God and does not come from us. As
flawed as Paul and those Corinthian Christians were, God did amazing things
with them and through them. So rather than make futile attempts to be perfect
and thus earn God’s love, we are encouraged to receive God’s love as we are —
and then let that love do whatever it’s going to do in our lives, trusting that
it will do marvelous things.
Thomas Keating, a
Trappist monk and teacher of prayer, puts it this way: “God seems to want to
find out what it is like to live human life in us, and each of us is the only
person who can ever give him that joy. Hence our dignity is incomparable. We
are invited to give God the chance to experience God in our humanity, in our
difficulties, in our weaknesses, in our addictions, in our sins. Jesus chose to
be part of everyone’s life experience, whatever that is, and to raise everyone
up to divine union.”
So we can’t hide
behind our unworthiness. Yeah, we may have fought with our spouse, yelled at
our kids, or treated our co-workers poorly. We neglected people who were hurting
and we overlooked injustice. Each one of us has messed up this week in one way
or another, probably many ways, maybe badly. And yet the love of God is still
seeking to be incarnate in each one of us, still seeking to bless us and bless
others through us. Forgiveness is the heart of the Gospel, and transforming
love is the power of the Gospel. If that were not the case, I couldn’t get up
and preach today or any Sunday. So the question is not “Am I worthy?” or “How
can I earn this?” The question is rather “Will I accept this? Will I say yes?”
Will we say yes to the love of God moving within each one of us right now? The
only real failure would be to say no, because if we say yes, we cannot
ultimately fail, no matter how many times we stumble and fall. The love of God
that Jesus reveals will be made manifest in this world through us because God
wills it. It may be crazy, it may take forever, but that is the plan. And there
is no other plan.
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