The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE
FROM GOD OUR FATHER
AND THE LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, AMEN.

Max Cleland was in his early twenties when he volunteered for duty in Viet Nam. One month from the end of his tour, he found himself in the battle of Khe Sanh. Once he had to jump out of a helicopter and saw a grenade at his feet. Thinking it had fallen off his own gear, he reached to pick it up. There was a blinding explosion. He was taken by chopper to a surgical hospital forty miles away. He should have been dead. His right arm and both legs were gone. He had shrapnel wound in his windpipe. He clung to life by sheer will power. For the next eighteen months he was in and out of hospitals. He was assured that he would never walk again. He was glad to alive but glad of little else.

Max Cleland recalls the worst moment for him. It was when a former girlfriend had come to see him and have lunch. Approaching a crossing, Max pitched forward out of his wheelchair and into the gutter:

I flailed helplessly like a fish out of water, lying in the dirt and cigarette
butts. Two men rushed up and lifted me back into the wheelchair. My
companion was almost hysterical, crying over and over, “I’m sorry, Max!
I’m sorry!” The shame and embarrassment of the spill seared me like a
burn that continued to throb. I couldn’t forget the first time I met her. I
was twenty-four, and I stood six-feet two inches tall. Now I was in a
wheelchair. I thought, “Is this all that’s left for me—to be hauled around
like a sack of potatoes for the rest of my life? No! I’m not always going to
be helpless. I will need a lot of help from God, family and friends, but I’m
going to make a difference in this world.

Max Cleland returned to his hometown of Lithonia, Georgia, learned to walk with artificial limbs, learned to drive by adapting his car and set up his own apartment to live independently. In 1970 he ran successfully for the Georgia state senate, in 1977 he was named head of the Veterans’ Administration and in 1996 became a United States senator from Georgia.

It has been said that each one of us is handicapped. For some of us the handicaps are obvious—Max Cleland without legs, arm, in a wheelchair. We can readily see those handicapped with blindness, with deformities, with debilitating illnesses, with mental and emotional deficits. We cannot so readily see those who are wracked by worry, who cover their pain, who look good on the outside but are nevertheless disabled within. Many of us have disabilities that others can not see. I clipped a letter to the editor a few years ago:

My mom and I had a shocking experience, stunning because of the total disregard and rudeness we were shown. She and I had fun talking and laughing over dinner, and afterwards we decided to stop at the mall. We parked in a handicapped spot and as we turned to walk in the entrance, a passing man shot me a piercing look of malice and sneered, “Handicapped, huh? Where’s your cane and wheelchair?”

The physiology of my mother’s diseases is extraneous to the story, but our family is lucky that she is healthy enough not to need a cane or wheelchair, but we had done nothing illegal or improper parking in the reserved spot.

To the self-satisfied man we had the misfortune to pass—all this will likely be lost on you, but we hope the story of your misplaced vigilance and the embarrassment it caused will demonstrate to others the ignorance

that still pervades regarding the disabled. Whatever the degree of disability such human beings must deal with an array of issues, emotional and physical, and your barbed tongue did nothing to help anyone. Adam Pawluk

I thought it was a well-written letter, a convicting letter. We do not know what burdens other people are carrying and others do not always know what we face. We have been warned by advice columnists that when people say to us, “How are you?” We should just say, “Fine, thanks.” We may be feeling awful, but people really don’t want to hear that. Truly, if we were honest, most of us are the walking wounded. Being a Christian does not mean that we will escape the hardships and disabilities of life.

Even St. Paul admitted to a disability, to what he called a “thorn in the flesh.” We do not know just what this was although many scholars have advanced theories. Some think it may have been an illness, perhaps malaria, although Paul was fit enough to travel the known world from Palestine to Greece back and forth, to Rome, and perhaps even to Spain. Some wonder whether there may have been something wrong with his eyes. Paul may have had some inner longing and desire which he could not fully understand. Martin Luther was wracked by anxiety and doubt, his Anfechtungen. Perhaps Paul was troubled in a similar way. We do not know. What we do know from today’s text is that Paul prayed three times to the Lord that his thorn in the flesh be removed. It was not. Even St. Paul got the answer “no” to his prayers.

The context for Paul’s teaching about bearing suffering comes in a discussion of ecstatic visions and revelations. Paul writes that a “certain man” was caught up to the third heaven, to Paradise. There this person in Christ saw and heard things which could not be uttered to mortals. This person could very likely have been Paul himself; he noted that the events had occurred fourteen years before he wrote this letter to the Corinthians.

Paul may have been using a literary device so as not to claim special privilege for himself. This “certain man,” this “person in Christ,” could boast of his special spiritual gifts and knowledge but Paul said he would not boast. God had given him a thorn in the flesh—an angel and messenger of Satan—which would torment him and make him suffer. Paul said he would boast of his sufferings only and not glory in his spiritual gifts. Paul confessed that God had given him the gift of this thorn of suffering to keep him humble and to remind him of the common humanity he shared with all other people. We are like St. Paul and he is like us, sharing weakness, imperfection, sinfulness. Like St. Paul, we believe in Jesus Christ.God said to Paul and God says to us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” As we are weak, God is strong.

I must confess that this does not make a lot of sense to me. We admire the strong, the talented, the wealthy, the obviously successful. We want to be on the winning team. I don’t have to tell you that—we live in Duck Country and when our team wins, our town rejoices.

It was no different in ancient Corinth. They liked winners too. They respected honor, money, credentials, success. They would have liked to hear what this “certain man,” saw and heard fourteen years before when he visited the third heaven. We would like to hear about Paradise from someone who has been there. The Corinthians appreciated signs and wonders and so do we. Those ancient people had a harder time believing in a God who became a man, who suffered and was crucified and died. It did not make much sense to them that to become a Christian meant to follow this man who told his disciples that they should take up a cross and join him in pain and sorrow.

And if the greatest of the apostles could not get God to take away his thorn in the flesh, then who are we to promise believers that they will find earthly blessing. Followers of Jesus Christ are promised God’s presence with them but also persecution and rejection. But Paul says he is thankful even for the thorn because it is only in weakness that Christ is glorified. There is power in weakness because it is only through suffering that God’s grace is made clear. I was talking this week with a man who had a lost his son to cancer. As hard as it has been for him and his family, he told me that he has been made much more aware of God’s grace that he had been. Just making it through the day and night with his grief and loss was a sign of God’s presence, he said to me. As Paul wrote elsewhere in our same epistle:

But we have this treasure from God in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair ; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down and not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

As the familiar song, Jesus loves me, goes : “We are weak but He is strong, Yes, Jesus loves me.” The Bible does not give us answers as to why it was that Max Cleland landed on that grenade or why this man’s son died of cancer; we do not know why St. Paul was given his thorn in the flesh and he did not either. But we can say with him that our troubles are given us as opportunities to come closer to God, to rely upon our family and friends and faith.

The Talmud is a collection of the teachings of the rabbis compiled between 200 BC and 500 AD. It explains tests in this way: If you go into the marketplace, you will see a potter hitting his clay pots with a stick to show how strong and solid they are. But the wise potter hits only the strongest pots, never the flawed ones. So too, the wise God sends such tests and afflictions only to people God knows are capable of handling them, so that they are others can learn the extent of their spiritual strength. Or as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik put it, “Suffering comes to enable us, to purge our thoughts of pride and superficiality, to expand our horizons. In sum the purpose of suffering is to repair that which is faulty in our personality.”

St Paul said that our “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities” are opportunities to show God’s grace and God’s glory. As we are weak, we come to know that Christ is strong. As we suffer, we come to understand the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. As we triumph over our adversities, we are empowered by God working in us. Paul could also say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We do not boast in strength but in our weakness. And we are all disabled, weak, in some way. But we do boast in Christ. We may al be handicapped in some way, but we also have a mighty and powerful and loving God. We are strong in Christ. Amen.

Copyright 2006, James D. Kegel. Used by permission.