In Paul’s day, much like today, people confused prosperity with “living right.” Like today, in Paul’s day there was a popular perception that those who have money must’ve earned it. Powerful people must’ve deserved their power. They believed that people were rewarded in direct relation to their effort, their skills and their strengths. And like today, the opposite was considered true as well. The poor must somehow deserve their poverty. People assumed that those who were ill must have earned their infirmity because they made wrong choices. Those who were weak must simply be lazy. In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, he defied popular notions of success and failure. He challenged the idea that we ought to boast in our strengths and be ashamed of our weaknesses. Instead, Paul claimed that it’s in our weakness that God makes us strong in the cause of Christ. When we feel inadequate, God makes us powerful. When we feel impotent and incapable of making a difference, God uses us just as we are to do marvelous work that we never imagined was possible. Paul claimed that he himself had some persistent weakness that plagued him throughout his life. Scholars have speculated widely about what Paul was referring to when he claimed that he had his own “thorn in the flesh.” Paul pleaded for God to remove this weakness from him, but he was apparently never freed from it. Some scholars think that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was perhaps a speech impediment. Other scholars have proposed that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was epilepsy, hysteria, depression, headaches, eye problems, leprosy or malaria. The point is that we don’t know and can’t know what Paul counted as his weakness. But whatever he counted as weakness God used to the advantage of the work of Christ. The very thing that Paul prayed desperately for God to remove from him was the same thing that God explained was a blessing in disguise. Paul thought that this thorn in his flesh was planted by Satan, but God explained that what Paul counted as weakness God considered to be just one more tool to further the message of God’s love in Jesus Christ. So Paul commended the people in Corinth not to boast in how wealthy or powerful they were. Paul encouraged them not to boast in all that they accomplished by cleverness or skill. But Paul did give them permission to boast in their weakness. God’s glory is shown in how God uses our weaknesses in the exercise of ministry.

God takes what we count as weakness and uses it in powerful ways. God takes our failures and reshapes them into opportunities to reach new people with the message of God’s love. “I’m too small and unimportant,” can be just a justification for sitting back and letting the bad stuff happen. “I’m not smart enough or old enough or young enough or strong enough” are just the excuses that we use to let us off the hook. We shrink behind our inadequacies and deny that God can do more through us than we can believe in ourselves. At annual conference over the past two years some people have voiced their disapproval of my continued ministry as an ordained pastor. They say that United Methodists in their churches are losing their faith because I’m permitted to remain a pastor. They claim that my presence in the pulpit threatens the integrity of our annual conference. They suggest that my ministry shakes the very foundation of our denomination. It’s very strange to be talked about like that, right in front of me. Over the past two annual conferences, our lay member to conference, Anne and I have turned those awkward moments into a private joke with each other. Whenever someone says that the future of the whole church rests on whether I’m allowed to remain in ministry, Anne looks over at me and says, “Boy, you’re powerful!” I never thought of myself as powerful enough to make or break the church. I didn’t believe that the future of our denomination rests on my shoulders. But this year at annual conference it suddenly struck me: I am that powerful. In my hands, in my words, in my actions I hold the potential to destroy the church or to affirm it or to radically recreate it. More to the point, you’re that powerful. Each of us holds the power to create life and community and vitality, or to chip it away through apathy, antagonism, and suspicion. Coming to worship is a powerful act. Coming to worship is of momentous importance. Your presence this morning may make a crucial difference in sharing the love of Christ with someone who needs it. Your kind words to another person may forge our community tighter. Your words of challenge in the face of injustice might be just the thing that changes someone’s mind. What you do and say, how you express your faith, how you show your love of God and your love for your neighbor, these things are powerful in shaping the world around you. You are that important because you are a child of God, and God is working through you. The future of the church rests in your hands. If you love the church and nurture it and invest your life in it, God will do marvelous things through us all. Barbara Dadd Shaffer is a lay woman at annual conference who told the story about the first time the Alaska Missionary Conference was empowered to send a voting delegation to General Conference. They got to send one clergy and one lay delegate out of a thousand delegates to General Conference. The Alaska Missionary Conference didn’t feel like they had much of a voice. But that year General Conference was debating an issue that everyone seemed impatient to pass. There wasn’t much dialogue, and they were about to quickly approve a piece of legislation. But the lone clergy delegate from the Alaska Missionary Conference stood and spoke. He pointed out a flaw with the action that they were about to take. And suddenly everyone paid attention a little closer. With that one voice, everyone recognized the mistake that they were about to make, and they changed course. They amended what was before them because one person spoke. Even when we feel impotent, even when we think we can’t make a difference, God is doing marvelous things in our lives. Nothing that we do is of little consequence, because God works through us. Each of us this morning holds in our hands the potential to destroy the church, or to affirm it, or to recreate it in some radical new way. We are that powerful, because God works through us.

I had a Buddhist seminary professor who explained that in her life of meditation, she strives to pay attention to everything, in order to truly see things for how they are. As she meditates, she tries to pay as much attention to the insect crawling across the floor as to the crash of thunder shaking the windows. She attempts to devote as much attention to the movement of a leaf swaying in the breeze as to the person sitting next to her. God doesn’t make expendable creatures. God doesn’t decide that some people are important while others can be thoughtlessly ignored or thrown away. There’s no plant or animal or rock or cloud that is inconsequential, because each of them is sculpted by the hand of our Creator. So it is with us. We may feel overwhelmed and unimportant at times. We may feel powerless to change things or to overcome injustice. But we are consequential because each of us is sculpted by the loving hand of God. We are powerful, because it’s not our own strength or achievements that amount to any lasting importance. It’s God working through us that makes us powerful and important. Let us never think too small or accept too little responsibility for the world around us. We may not have our act together all the time, but still what we do and say matters, for God is at work in us. Thanks be to God. Amen.