Imagine you are being stung by a bee. That first initial burning pain that then radiates outward. Then imagine that you are being stung by a swarm. That is how my incision feels. Add unbelievable itching and you understand my misery. For the record, it feel exactly like it did the first time when I knew that something was wrong and ended up with a gaping hole. However, I am working very hard to ignore my fears until at least a week has passed.

Yes, you know me. You know how well that is going.

Below is Pastor D's sermon for today. In brief, it is on how God's power is made strong in our weakness. Now, he preaches from a 3-year lectionary. He does not scheme and plan, plot to assail his congregation with the words he feels they need to hear, but rather the Truth from the three Scripture readings for the week, the same readings his brother pastors are using across many Lutheran churches. Still, I could almost think he was doing just this to speak that which I have been too deaf to hear. Week after week after week. The part that gave me the greatest pause was this:

Because while power and weakness do not go together for the children of men, they do for the Son of God. The Son of God who is rich, yet for your sake became poor. The Son of God who is strong, yet for your sake became weak. The Son of God who is the Lord of life, yet for your sake died your death, that You might have a share in His resurrection. That your sins be forgiven, your death overcome, and your enemy, the devil, be vanquished. That as in Christ, so in you - that God’s power be perfect in weakness.

For the truth is that when Jesus was the weakest, He was also the strongest. For while on the cross, weak and dying, He was bearing all the sin of the world, battling the forces of evil, and feeling the crushing weight of death. He was enduring all the wrath of God against sin and making atonement for sin as THE Lamb of God. He was both priest and sacrifice as He offered Himself as a sin offering for us. And on the cross He was loving, caring, and forgiving, showing the power of His mercy and compassion for you and me and all people. No mightier work was done by His hands than this, even while they were attached to the cross by nails made by His own creatures, and hammered home by fallen hearts. Like Paul, Jesus prayed three times in Gethsemane that His Father take this cup from Him. And like with Paul, the answer was no. The cup and the thorn would remain, that in that weakness, God might unleash His power against sin and death and devil, that you and me and all people might be saved.

Really, I should not put a part ahead of the whole, lest you miss his message, but I did want to give you just a taste of how God works so in our weakness.

Before I add the rest, I wanted to share a bit of teaching that occurred after the sermon (when the two of us were talking in the pews) about the "East-West" thing. Remember what he said when he ripped my post-it note of sins into tiny pieces? He was quoting Psalm 103:12. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

Well, today, he told me that he had wondered why God wrote East-West instead of North-South. What he learned is this: If you travel North round the world, at some point you will begin traveling South. The poles make it so, as does our equator. However, if you begin traveling East, no matter where you stop, you will still be traveling East. So, East will never, ever meet West. Is that not a marvelous description of His absolute forgiveness of our sins?

Lest I not have fully understood that particular message, God gave me another one just a short while later when I was talking to his wife on a separate matter. She told me how she taught the young children at VBS this week about forgiveness. After drawing a large heart on a dry erase board, she told them to mark it up. The children filled it with many, many black marks. She then erased it to show how God washes us clean. The forgiveness part is that while she knew that the marks were there, she no longer could say where each one was, what each one looked like. They had been forgiven.

I am forgiven despite my many, many, many black marks!

I admit that I missed bits of the sermon in part because JW gave me her daughter to hold and in part because I sat in the back with all the noisy children so that I could be on hand to hold her should she wish me to do so. [I even got to change a diaper today!]

I am very thankful Pastor is such a technology-embracing undershepherd. He emails both the text and the audio each week, as well as posts them on the church's website. This Living Word today is most particularly apt for me....

Should you wish a copy, let me know!


Jesu Juva

“Powerful Weakness”
Text: Mark 6:1-13; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Ezekiel 2:1-5

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

St. Paul tells us today: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this.” But he never tells us what the “this” is. He calls it “a thorn in the flesh;” a “messenger of satan.” It is clearly something quite difficult in his life; something that he struggled with and which tormented him. But he never identifies it, which I think is a good thing. For although there has been much speculation about what it might be that Paul was talking about here, if we knew what it was I think we’d immediately begin to analyze it, try to calculate it and its impact, and then compare it with what we ourselves are going through in life and try to measure whose affliction is greater. In short, we’d put the focus on Paul and on ourselves, which is not where the focus belongs. That’s not why Paul wrote that here. He did so to put the focus on Christ.

And so that we might keep that focus on Christ and not put it on ourselves, Paul not only does not tell us what the “this” is - what he struggles with, what torments him - he then says this astonishing thing: God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

Now that’s a phrase that’s tossed around quite a lot - perhaps sometimes a bit too carelessly and thoughtlessly. It is what we call an oxymoron - two words, side-by-side (or nearly so), that are opposites. Which is the case with power and weakness. In our world, they don’t go together. You are either one or the other. You can’t be both. So when Paul here puts power and weakness together, he is doing so to draw our eyes away from the things of this world, away from the realm of what we know, away from what we think is possible or impossible, and fixing our eyes on Jesus. On Jesus, the one in whom power and weakness do, in fact, go together. The one who was both. For He is in one person both God and man.

This oxymoron is why Jesus was rejected in His hometown, as Mark told us today. It wasn’t the first time. When He had gone home before, His family thought He was out of His mind (Mark 3:21). Because they knew Him! (Or so they thought.) They knew Him when He was young, and growing up, going to the synagogue and working with His father. And so they could not believe what they were seeing and hearing.

For, they thought, the hands of Jesus were carpenter’s hands, not God’s hands - and carpenter’s hands shape wood, they don’t heal people. And, they thought, the mouth of Jesus was a carpenter’s mouth, not God’s mouth - and carpenter’s mouths don’t utter the wisdom that He did. And, they thought, Jesus was an ordinary man from an ordinary family - and their weakness of faith and strength of unbelief would not let them even believe that a prophet was among them, let alone that God was standing before them. The God who was so strong that He became weak. That He became a man.

This weakness is also why you are sometimes rejected - rejected by the world, and perhaps even by yourself. For what you and others see and feel may belie the reality of God and His Word. And so maybe you have been told and maybe you feel that if you were really a Christian then you would not be the kind of person you are - you’d be better. Or, that if you really believed you would not despair and have doubts - your faith would be stronger. Or, that if you really belonged to Christ, the problems and difficulties you now face would not be so.

But is that not putting the focus on us and not on Christ? Turning us in on ourselves, and thinking that the evidence says that God is not working . . . or will not work . . . or cannot work. This is reading ourselves and determining truth based upon our own thoughts and feelings and experiences, instead of upon God what God has told us is true in His Word. That’s why the folks in Jesus’ hometown would not believe and took offense. It is why we sometimes doubt and disbelieve and take offense. And of that they needed to repent. And so do you and I.

Because while power and weakness do not go together for the children of men, they do for the Son of God. The Son of God who is rich, yet for your sake became poor. The Son of God who is strong, yet for your sake became weak. The Son of God who is the Lord of life, yet for your sake died your death, that You might have a share in His resurrection. That your sins be forgiven, your death overcome, and your enemy, the devil, be vanquished. That as in Christ, so in you - that God’s power be perfect in weakness.

For the truth is that when Jesus was the weakest, He was also the strongest. For while on the cross, weak and dying, He was bearing all the sin of the world, battling the forces of evil, and feeling the crushing weight of death. He was enduring all the wrath of God against sin and making atonement for sin as THE Lamb of God. He was both priest and sacrifice as He offered Himself as a sin offering for us. And on the cross He was loving, caring, and forgiving, showing the power of His mercy and compassion for you and me and all people. No mightier work was done by His hands than this, even while they were attached to the cross by nails made by His own creatures, and hammered home by fallen hearts. Like Paul, Jesus prayed three times in Gethsemane that His Father take this cup from Him. And like with Paul, the answer was no. The cup and the thorn would remain, that in that weakness, God might unleash His power against sin and death and devil, that you and me and all people might be saved.

And as God sent His Son, so also (we heard) did He send His prophets and apostles - in weakness. Taking with them nothing but the Word of God. Yet see how powerful they are in that weakness. The apostles proclaimed repentance, and that Word cut through hardened, sinful hearts, producing repentance and giving forgiveness. They healed many who were sick and cast out many demons with the authority Jesus had given them. Because with God, weakness and power DO go together.

And so it is also with you. For you too are sent out into this world - not as prophets and apostles - but in all of your vocations. And you are sent out weak - armed with only the Word and forgiveness of our Lord. To forgive, to love, to care, to be weak and humble in service to others. Which is often times very hard, isn’t it? Cross hard. And maybe when it is so hard, we think of these words that we’re considering today, and think: But yes, when I am weak, then God will make me strong! Because we want to be strong, not weak.

But be careful! That’s not what the Word says.

St. Paul tells us today that God’s power is made perfect IN weakness. That exactly WHEN I am weak, then I am strong. And so you will not stop being weak in order to be strong. Rather, remember - that with God, power and weakness are not opposites. Your weakness will BE His strength.

Your weakness which drives you to pray prayers that have a power you cannot even begin to image.

Your weakness which drives you to repent and receive a forgiveness that takes away all your sin.

Your weakness which drives you to the Word of God to read and hear not an empty word, but a Word filled with power for it is filled with the Spirit. The same Spirit that created all things in the beginning, and who re-created you in Holy Baptism.

Your weakness which drives you to the altar, to open your weak and dying mouth to eat the Bread of Life and to drink the blood that was poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

Your weakness which drives you to cling to His life - the life of Jesus, which He has come to give to you and me. Life to the dead; life to the sinful; life to the despairing; life to the hopeless; life to the outcast; life to the struggling and doubting; life to all.

When face-to-face with this life, the people in Jesus’ hometown that day were amazed! How could Jesus do such great things? Many today ask the same question - even us, when our weaknesses seem to keep getting the better of us. Yet Jesus has shown us - once and for all - that in weakness He does His greatest work, His saving work, in helpless and weak babies, in children, and in men and women of all ages. For in Jesus, power and weakness do go together. That living we die, and dying we live. This - not riches, fame, health, or ease - this is our Saviour’s glorious work. His work, for you, for ever.

In the Name of the Father and of the (+) Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.