But he [Jesus] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong. [2 Corinthians 12:9-10, RSV]
The Apostle Paul by Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1657.
Ash Wednesday in 1991 was different and memorable. After the mandatory philosophy year, we were some six months into the first year of theology in Leuven, Belgium. At the American seminary [the North American College], Professor Raymond Collins, our professor of New Testament Studies, was on hand to impose ashes at that early morning liturgy.
As Collins imposed the ashes on our foreheads, he called us by name and intoned softly: “Jeff/Angie, remember you are ashes and to ashes you shall return!” Ash Wednesday assumed a different intensity that morning. Reality check took on a personal urgency as never before. It roused us up from our stupor of religious indifference. It relativised a lot of things, but bolstered a few convictions. It brought to the consciousness a larger perspective, a wider horizon, like watching the sun rise from the mountain top from where the dauntingly immense horizon of God floods over us at the crack of dawn.
Human beings are fragile creatures destined to return to the earth. We are dust, and yet the second creation story in Genesis 2 reminds us that we are dust that is loved and molded by the loving hands of God the Divine Potter.
In his Ash Wednesday sermon last year, Pope Benedict XVI referred to the imposition of ashes as essentially “a gesture of humility”. It means: “I recognize myself for what I am, a fragile creature made of earth and destined to return to the earth, but also made in the image of God and destined to return to him. Dust, yes, but dust that is loved and molded by his love, animated by his life-giving breath, capable of recognizing his voice and responding to him; free and thus also capable of disobeying him, of yielding to the temptation of pride and self-sufficiency.”
Regular Christians East and West are often shocked to see a high-profile Christian, an ordained minister, a rousing speaker, a faith-healer, someone who spoke so confidently of God, someone whose life gave such evidence of Jesus’ presence, come crashing down to a complete breakdown. In daze, admiring Christians ask: “How could this happen?” How can someone who seems to have the answers for everyone else, have no answers for themselves? How can these model-Christians, so confident in one moment, be so weak in the next? Then, we turn to take a good look at ourselves. After all our familiarity with “salvation through baptism”, “new creation,” “new life,” “the power of God,” “wisdom,” “healing,” “miracles,” “the power of prayer,” and all the rest of it, why are we so weak? Why do so many “good Christian people,” turn out to be just like everyone else – divorced, depressed, broken, messed up, shrouded in pain and secrets, addicted, needy and some would allege, even phony? Why are we such “cracked pots”? Were we Christians not supposed to be “different”?
St Paul, the glorious and yet messed up, confident and yet weak trail-blazer, as usual, comes to our rescue. In chapter twelve of his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul was writing what scholars call “the fool’s speech.” The Fool, you recall, is a court jester, a significant character who appears only briefly in Shakespeare’s King Lear. In this great tragi-comic play, the King makes a serious blunder in entrusting his kingdom to his two conniving daughters, Goneril and Regan, who pretend to love him, and banishing the third, Cordelia, who truly loves him and refuses to faun over him. The Fool tries to warn the King, who is too blinded by his stubbornness and pride to grasp what he is being told. The Fool bemoans his situation of knowing the truth and not being heard. In making the foolish wise and the wise foolish, just as the weak are strong and the strong weak, and what seems to be nothing (Cordelia’s love) turns out to be something of surpassing importance, Shakespeare may be seen as writing the entire play as a gloss on St Paul. As masters of ironies, Paul and Shakespeare are both opening eyes to see that it is the sane who are mad and the mad sane, just as it is also the blind who see and the seeing who are blind.
In 2 Cor 12, St Paul engages in ironies as he boasts and in the process intentionally makes a fool of himself. He wants the Corinthians to think he’s a fool. He wants them to laugh and mock him. You see, Paul has been deeply hurt by his critics in Corinth, those “great” apostles who have been boasting of their experience, knowledge and wisdom. Compared with them, he portrays himself as weak and cowardly. The Second Corinthians is Paul’s crying letter and some of his rhetoric in chapters ten to thirteen can be quite disturbing. Sensing his deep hurt, readers may understand why in places he lashes out at the Corinthians and even demonizes those who oppose him, calling them “false apostles” and “deceitful workmen”, like Satan and his servants who disguise themselves as angels of the light and servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:13-15). His pain, disappointment, anger and mourning are hidden in humour – an ancient method practiced by devastated people who needed to laugh (amidst tears) to stay sane, to survive.
And so Paul writes the “fool’s speech”. Like his critics, he too is going to boast. He too is going to puff up his chest and bellow, but with a difference. He is going to exaggerate and deliberately play it over-the-top. He too will talk like a madman, except he is even “madder”. He has had
- far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles; danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. . . . [2 Cor 11:23-28]
And, playing the character of a fool, Paul goes on and on, seemingly pumping his chest, but in reality using the boasting to cover up his own hurt and insecurities. Yet, on closer inspection, items on the list of boasts are strange. They are not the sort of things one would normally boast about – stoning, beatings, shipwrecks, hunger and thirst. Then, it becomes clear. If his opponents boast about their courage, strength, and brilliance, Paul wants to boast only about his weakness and suffering. He has laid the foundation for this approach. For example, he says in chapter 4:
- But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (4:7-11)
Paul’s focus on God and God’s power is the springboard for his rhetorical turn. He will go on to boast about the visions and revelations of the Lord, of which he has been blessed with plenty. Then, Paul discloses a certain “handicap” in him which the Lord would not remove and he delivers the line that has become enigmatic for all times:
- And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:7-10)
Like the Fool in King Lear, Paul’s “foolishness” is really the truth. The clown delivers the profound message. Paul’s message holds the truth that has remained unchanged for two thousand years. If we match our words of faith with our actual living, people will think us fools. Why? Giving of himself for others, the way of Christ was the way of the cross – and the Cross is a countersign, a contradiction, and sheer foolishness to all the Mr. Efficiency, Mr. Successful and Miss Gorgeous of today’s world. The power of Christ was revealed on the cross. Paul has understood his Lord well. So he produces a list of personal sufferings on behalf of the gospel, the only matters he would boast about as actually capable of bringing him into solidarity with Christ. He knows and shamelessly declares that the “power of Christ” dwells in him precisely because of his weakness. He calls himself a “fool for Christ” (1 Cor 4:10).
This idea of the “Fool for Christ” is embraced with great enthusiasm in the Russian Orthodox Church. A number of their saints have earned the esteemed title “Fool for Christ” or yurodivi in Russian. A leading name is St. Basil, born around 1468 into the lowest social class in Czarist Russia. An ascetic at the age of sixteen, Basil lived out the role of a “holy fool”, moving around naked, weighed down with chains, challenging the czar Ivan the Terrible. Many miracles and prophecies were ascribed to him. Even the Czar recognized his holiness and was one of the pall bearers when he died at 88 years of age. Today, that beautiful church which sits in Moscow’s Red Square, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, commemorates St. Basil, this fool-for-Christ.
What does this mean for us today? Struggling with persecutions, Paul’s words in Second Corinthians apply equally to our own human frailty, our brokenness and hurt. Even more, to be “broken” in Pauline sense is essential, if Christ is going to be our strength. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” The human experience of weakness, especially in conscious application of the Cross of Christ in our lives, is God’s blueprint for exalting and magnifying Christ his Son.
Everywhere we turn in the contemporary world, we can sense a deep theological reason for why we must live differently. In many ways, people of different beliefs, racial backgrounds and countries of origin agree that the world in which we live is messed up. The ongoing threats to the ecology warn us all that only by living radically differently can we return to God’s will for creation. Violence in all its different forms and in all spheres of human life compels us to see peace and reconciliation – the principle of the Cross – as the only valid way forward in civilization. In Christian mission and evangelization both within the faith community as well as towards the outside world, the Gospel of Christ is believable when the Pauline spirituality of strength in weakness first lays a genuine hold on us.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, March 2011. All rights reserved.
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