My Power is Made Perfect in Weakness - July 4, 2009 at Trinity Church, Reno

2 Cor 12: 2-10 and Mark 6:1-13

Today’s readings are timely for us as we celebrate our nation’s independence. As a former colony of the British Empire we were once weak and with our postcolonial independence we became strong and powerful as a nation. It is right that we celebrate our independence.

We just heard, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” These words are not likely mottos of colonizers or even proud independent nations like America.

The question then that we must address this morning is what is the difference between human power and divine power?

If as former colonies we rightfully and proudly have rejected our colonized form of weakness, then what do we make of these words – Power is made perfect in weakness?

Frankly, these words are very easy to gloss over as ancient and irrelevant to us today. However, if do gloss over these words we do so at our peril. To find the gem hidden for us in these texts we have to work through our instinctive biases against weakness.

In both the Corinthians reading and the Gospel of Mark we see that our personal power can be haughty and boastful pointing to the strength of our own resources. The texts are challenging us to turn towards the power we receive through our complete dependence on God.

The thorn in the Corinthians reading can be interpreted as divine punishment for being too boastful. We can also take the text literally and God gave the thorn to make the man humble. The second interpretation if we are not careful quickly leads to divine punishment or a form of sacrificial love that at least for me makes God’s motives with us questionable.

I think it is an unhelpful image to see God as zapping us when we are too elated -- to use the words of this morning’s text. Let’s not get stuck there though. Our texts today help us interpret Jesus’ power in a different way than the power exercised by leaders of contemporary empires. Some speak of the power of the cross, but we must be careful how we approach the cross or we quickly fall back into an interpretation of divine punishment and that suffering will make us perfect.

Indeed, many empires have used similar texts to justify slavery and other forms of oppression in the name of God. It is so easy to blur these lines between God’s power and human weakness when we read these texts.

Let’s face it -- the words – “Power is made perfect in weakness” is a prophetic statement and as the Gospel instructs us, if we live in this way we are not likely to be recognized by friends and family in our hometowns.

In many corporate settings it is common to find high energy messages posted on the walls of the company to encourage people to perform at increasing levels of excellence. Business scholars have reported that these high-energy statements encourage employees to make money for the organization by increasing their sense of pride for their efficiency and profitability. That said, in my 15 years of working as a businessman I never saw signs that said, “Power is made perfect in weakness”. To the contrary weakness is associated with mediocrity and typically weak employees are quickly terminated.

The weakness of the second reading and Gospel is not about mediocrity or unjust colonization as we once suffered as a nation or that others face today.

As I hear today’s text and attempt a fresh interpretation I recall the Philippians passage “He emptied himself and became human.” In emptying I don’t hear sacrifice but rather opening ourselves up to love and to be loved.

The weakness is a place of opening such that our focus is not on our own strength but on recognizing and receiving God’s grace. When we recognize that our power is based on God’s grace and not on our inner strength we are less likely to boast of the possessions and power we may have accumulated, but rather point to God.

And people who are truly weak in a Godly manner know this and they point to the goodness of God’s grace when they feel this kind of power within themselves.

The biographer of Jean Vanier, Michael Downey called the thorn in today’s second reading, “A blessed weakness”. Jean Vanier is the founder of the worldwide movement of L’Arche, meaning the ark. L’Arche is a very special home for people who are developmentally disabled.

Downey wrote, “It is in our own weakness and limitation that God comes to us, not in our strength, security, and certitude. God is powerful compassion and mercy who meets us in our weakness, our blessed weakness.” As compassion, God offers us an example through Jesus of how we are to serve each other.

Vanier found L’Arche at a time in his life when he was searching for God. Vanier had spent three years in an extended retreat working with his spiritual director hoping to find God’s purpose for his life. Finally, his spiritual director exasperated by Jean Vanier’s lengthy process encouraged him to go home and pay attention to the weak and the poor in his town.

Each morning in his little countryside town outside of Paris Jean Vanier would walk to the bakery for some fresh bread. One morning he saw two homeless men who were clearly disabled. Jean Vanier invited these men into his home and soon others sought him out to care for their loved ones. Vanier says of his work that he does it out of his own struggles, confusion, uncertainty and rejection giving him that privileged space to be in solidarity with the most vulnerable.

This sounds counter-cultural to what most of us have been taught. Twenty-five years ago, upon announcing to my parents of my interest in living and working in a L’Arche community they frowned upon his work as misguided and said to me, “Joe, you can do so much better”. Vanier’s work was unknown and did not carry with it the same cache as being a member of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit I later became or as an ordained priest. It was risky and it was scary.

My parents are not alone in mistaking blessed weakness for mediocrity. Yet Jean Vanier’s blessed weakness is not the mediocrity or weakness that corporations eradicate by terminating their incompetent employees or even the same as the over scrupulous religious who seeks to be perfect by eliminating their very humanity.

Blessed weakness is a way of loving ourselves so that we may love the incorrigible other within us and in others. Vanier did this by loving the developmentally disabled who were disposed of in the streets of France and or forgotten in state asylums around the world. His first act of love has inspired over two hundred small communities around the world.

Not all of us are called to become members of L’Arche, but we are called to cherish the paradoxical blessed weakness of God’s power made perfect in weakness.

Vanier has taught that every person, no matter how small or even incorrigible has a gift to give that we are invited to cherish. However, his emphasis is not just that we cherish weakness out of mere charity, but that we recognize that our communities are incomplete when we purify them of the weakness that offends us. Purification is the purpose of empires. Genocide is about purifying weakness from nations. Yet it is not just nations who do this.

Vanier and today’s texts calls us to gather up what we may once have disposed of in ourselves or in others and cherish ours and their blessed weaknesses. And if we love in this way then we will quickly see the prophetic cost of being different.

With now some sense of irony due to my parents’ rejection of Vanier’s way of living, when my mother was sick with end stage Alzheimer’s I turned to Jean Vanier’s books to find strength to learn how to be a compassionate son. It was not easy. I had had a turbulent relationship with my mom and much needed to be healed in both of us. In her end stage Alzheimer’s my mom was no longer available for the necessary healing conversation that often makes a difference for families at the end of life.

Inspired by Jean Vanier’s witness, I developed a prayer mantra to say when I visited my mom at the nursing home. I love you as you are this day, not as I remember you or as I wish you to be, but as you are this day.

By saying this mantra aloud for a year, several times a week during my visits at the nursing home in time what emerged for me was a tiny glimpse of God’s unconditional love. The mantra was an occasion of healing – God’s power made perfect in weakness. This is my story. I am confident you have your own stories of God’s power made perfect in weakness. So let us gather our stories together and if we must boast, let us boast to all that Trinity Church’s power, as a community of faith, is made perfect in blessed weakness.