“Paul Almighty” Mark 6:1-13; II Corinthians 12:2-10 The Reverend Joanna M. Adams Morningside Presbyterian Church Atlanta, Georgia July 9, 2006

“Paul Almighty”
Mark 6:1-13; II Corinthians 12:2-10
The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia
July 9, 2006

On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast,
except of my weaknesses. II Corinthians 12:5

A couple of years ago, American movie-goers fell in love with a movie entitled “Bruce Almighty,” starring Jim Carey. It was a rather silly movie about a television newsman named Bruce Nolan, who has been given divine powers, including the ability to perform miracles. One of the sappiest scenes has the Carey character standing over a bowl of tomato soup in front of him and parting it a la Moses and the Red Sea. You probably will not want to rent this one from Blockbuster Video.

The character of God, a major character in “Bruce Almighty,” is played by Morgan Freeman. When God wants to communicate with Bruce, he displays his telephone number on Bruce’s pager. Bruce gets out his cell phone and speed dials his way right to the throne of heaven.

I don’t know how many people saw the movie when it came out in 2003, but I do know that the few unlucky people around the country who in real life shared the seven-digit telephone number displayed on the screen were besieged for months with calls from cranks, practical jokers, and a lot of people wanting so desperately to connect with God they would try anything, including dialing the number they saw in the movie.

A lot of other people feel as if they already have a direct line to God, Bruce-Almighty-like. I remember a friend telling me once about her sister-in-law, who had found a strong prayer connection with God in a weekly prayer group, then became very smug about it with other members of the family. “We just can’t be spiritual enough for Evelyn,” my friend sighed. My friend stopped worrying about spiritual inadequacy when she heard that the prayer group had prayed for a set of color-coordinated kitchen appliances for one of the members. Yes, the appliances arrived, but they still had to be paid for on a high-interest credit plan. (1)

These days, an astounding number of people in my line of work claim to have a special connection, a direct-dial relationship with God. As John Blake put it yesterday in a feature story in the Atlanta Constitution, “The phrase ‘God told me’ is for many contemporary pastors their very favorite expression.” (2) In May, for example, a pastor told his Florida congregation that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and told him to tell the congregation whom the next governor of the state was going to be. The candidate allegedly named by Jesus was a member of the pastor’s own political party, of course. Another pastor, this one, a mega-church minister in New Orleans, claimed that God had spoken to him, instructing him to expand his church by building a great, big auxiliary church in Atlanta, Georgia. (We can’t wait to see it!) Unlike the Biblical prophets of old who were awed before the mystery and holiness of the Almighty, many today speak of their conversations with God as if the two of them were chat room buddies. I really admire a different approach, one demonstrated last September by one of the more well-known pastors in the United States. After he had toured New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he was asked by a reporter, “How can a loving God allow such a disaster?” He answered, “I spoke just yesterday with the clergy here in New Orleans. I told them I don’t know why. There is no way I can know.” That pastor’s name was Billy Graham.(3)

Long ago, a group of zealous Christian missionaries, believing that they were very well-connected to God, came to Corinth, Greece, and bragged about their direct line to the Almighty. They were fiercely critical of the apostle Paul, who had founded the Corinthian congregation years before. Paul had preached the gospel with such power that a strong community of believers had emerged. He had stayed with them for a year and a half. Now, newly arrived missionaries were criticizing Paul and claiming that he was spiritually inferior.

Actually, Paul had had one of the most dramatic spiritual experiences imaginable, but he wasn’t about to brag about it. How refreshing! When he writes about it to the Corinthian Church, he uses third person, as if it had happened to someone else. He describes a dramatic event in which “a person” is lifted up to the third heaven. That person was Paul himself. “I know a person in Christ who 14 years ago was drawn up into heaven and given revelations that cannot even be named by mere mortals.” (II Corinthians 12:2-4) This sounds very strange and alien to us, but in the time of Paul, heavenly journeys were all the rage. Everyone wanted to have a dramatic experience such as the one Paul described, but hardly anyone did. Paul could have impressed everyone if he had said that he was the one who had been taken on the trip to paradise and given the revelation of things that no mortals were allowed to speak o, but his lips remained sealed about it for fourteen years, though you know he would have loved to have impressed others with what had happened to him.

Remembering Paul today one wonders what in the world has happened to the perfectly respectable Christian value of humility. Humility is more than a virtue. It is at the very heart of the nature of the gospel. When those who claim to follow Christ spend their energies trying to impress other people about how holy they are and how tuned in they are to the will and purposes of God, as opposed to the rest of us, how efficacious their prayer life is as opposed to your prayer life and mine, the words of Paul to the Corinthian church serve as an important reminder that humility has always been at the core of the Christian faith.

Two weeks ago some of us were in Birmingham for the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church US. Often, debates last throughout the afternoon about issues of great importance. What stuck me was I never heard a single speaker give the slightest indication that he or she just might be wrong. All of them sounded utterly convinced that they and God were on the same page. No doubt about it. The winners sounded that way, as did the losers. When I came home, I looked up Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered in 1865. I read it again. President Lincoln spoke of the two sides of the war that had torn apart the nation: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”

Since when have you heard that kind of rhetoric from anyone in ecclesiastical life or public life? The Almighty has his own purposes, and they just might be different from our own. Surely a little humility is in order. There has always been a hurrah, triumphant crowd, but you cannot
find a single instance in the New Testament when Jesus was a part of one. Yes, he believed to the core of his being that God could be trusted. Yes, he prayed every day. Yes, he sought God’s will and preached what he understood to be God’s will with passion and confidence, but he lived out his life and pursued his ministry, his calling, in a different posture from that of triumphalism. He was the one who, “though in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death on the cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

A few weeks ago I asked Daisy Ottmann if she would mind putting a little poem by Maya Angelou in the Morningside newsletter. I hope you read it. I want to read it to you again. The poet writes:
When I say “I am a Christian”
I don’t speak of this with pride.
I’m confessing that I stumble
And need CHRIST to be my guide.
When I say “I am a Christian”
I’m not trying to be strong.
I’m professing that I’m weak
And need HIS strength to carry on.
When I say “I am a Christian”
I’m not bragging of success.
I’m admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.
When I say “I am a Christian”
I’m not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.
When I say “I am a Christian”
I still feel the sting of pain,
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.
When I say “I am a Christian”
I’m not holier than thou,
I’m just a simple sinner
Who received God’s good grace, somehow.

Humility: It is not having a false low opinion of yourself. It’s not self-loathing. It is about giving God the glory. And getting over whatever it is you need to get over about yourself – your sense of spiritual superiority, or inferiority, the special quality of your prayer life or lack of a prayer life. Get over all that, because it’s not about you. It is about God, and the sufficiency of God’s everlasting grace and mercy.

After Paul’s ecstatic, unusual experience, something else happened to him, something he had neither expected nor prayed for. It was not a good thing. “A thorn was put in my flesh,” he said. He called it a “messenger of Satan to torment him.” Why? Twice in one verse, he offers what is to him the obvious explanation – buy it or don’t buy it – it’s up to you, but here’s what he said, “God gave me the thorn in my flesh to keep me from being too elated.” If you get too carried away with yourself, if you want to impress others, you are likely to become confused about who you are and what the source of everything good in the world actually is. According to Scripture, spiritual power, saving power, are demonstrated, released, in our lives, in human society, rarely in glorious spectacle, but mostly in suffering, in what can appear to be foolishness, brokenness, before the world.

In late May, I went to Washington and met with pastors of urban churches around the country. Do you know what they talked about? They talked about the sheer joy of feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. They talked about how hard it was and how they wouldn’t trade the mission for anything in the world. They talked about how humbling it was to face such formidable odds, and how hard it is to follow Christ in an American culture that seems to have forgotten the lost, and the least, and the words of Christ, who said as clearly as can be, “When you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.” God still speaks today but not through arrogant preachers and spiritually conceited individuals. God speaks through Scripture. Christ’s words and voice still ring out to and through the community of faith that follows his way of vulnerable love.
So what was the thorn? Oceans of ink have flowed about it over the centuries. Was it a physical disability? A mental illness? A chronic temptation? Presumably, the Corinthians knew what it was. That is why he had no need to name it. Presumably, every single member of the Corinthian church knew what it was to have a thorn, too. For to be human is to have pain and have things we cannot conquer, if our lives depended on it.

What does the old Joe South song say, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden…” Thorns, we get. They are chronic; so what else is new? Three times Paul asked that his be removed. God did not answer Paul’s prayer in the way Paul wanted and hoped it would be answered. It turns out that God is not much like the pizza man who delivers exactly what you want in 30 minutes or less. The answer to Paul’s prayer request for thorn removal was succinct. “Paul, my grace is sufficient for you.” Power is made perfect in weakness. Goodbye Paul Almighty. Hello, servant of Jesus Christ, through whom God’s power can shine.

I believe there is a message for us here. Don’t worry about the problems and limitations that we carry around. If we are called to serve, God will give us sufficient grace to endure and do what God would have us do.

During the Civil War, a hastily written prayer was found in the pocket of a fatally wounded soldier. This was loath to believe in him and his power. In the end, he wore a crown of thorns; all along, he stayed in close touch with his Creator, never trying to show how important he was, but to show the power of God at work even in weakness. He said to those that would follow him, “Here’s my mission. You do it. I have no need to control it all myself. You be my ambassadors, my miracle workers.” Not much ego need there, do you think?

During the Civil War, a hastily written note was found in the pocket of a fatally wounded soldier. It read, “I have received nothing I asked for, but all that I had hoped. My prayers have been answered.”

When our time comes, I hope that we will brag not about what we have accomplished, but be humbly grateful that we have been alive and able to serve and live and offer love in Christ’s name. The glory always belongs to God Almighty. Amen.

(1) A portion of this sermon, as well as its title, comes from my chapter in the book, Living By the Word, Debra Bendis, ED. Chalice Press, 2005, p.97-99.
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(2) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 8, 2006.