What makes for a great family? Is it when the men are strong, the women are good looking and all the children are above average? What makes for a great country? Is it when you can kick sand in the face of all the other countries and do whatever you want? What makes for a great Church? Is it when you have the best programs and the highest income and the classiest facilities? What makes a great Christian? Is it those who never make mistakes, obey all the commandments all the time, and treat everyone with kindness and respect? We can get the idea that being great is a matter of standing out from the crowd, succeeding more than others, achieving some high goal. We hear (and say) things like: oh, they’re a great family; all their kids went to college. He’s a great individual; he became president of his company. That’s a great church; they have a wonderful choir and full pews. We tend to boast about the accomplishments and triumphs. However, St. Paul in the second reading, his epistle to the Corinthians, has a different idea. “I willingly boast of my weaknesses.” I willingly boast about my failure to attain any status. I willingly boast that my efforts have gone bust more often than not. I willingly boast that instead of accolades I am confronting misunderstanding and persecution. The apostle has a whole new understanding of what is great, of what is praiseworthy. St. Paul is content with weakness.
Paul didn’t dream up on his own this way of re-valuing what matters. He inherited it as part of the Christian faith. Look at the story of Jesus encountering his homies in the sixth chapter of the gospel of St. Mark. They are upset because he doesn’t meet their criteria for greatness. “Where did he get all this?” Jesus looks like us. He doesn’t have any more schooling than any of us. He was never named “man of the year” by Time Magazine — or even by the Nazareth Rotary Club. He has an ordinary job as a carpenter, from the ordinary family of Mary and company, and lives in a two flat down the block. How can Jesus be great when he’s so ordinary, when he never distinguished himself by securing some lofty position? How can someone who has a weakness for dinner parties with sinners be the presence of God in our midst? They kept looking for Jesus to become special — to walk across someone’s swimming pool, to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity, to come up with a cure for cancer. When he continued to look and sound just like they did, “they found him too much for them.”
We gather this Sunday as a people filled with weaknesses, with flaws, with faults and imperfections. Sometimes we imagine they are something to be ashamed of. “How can we claim to be Church when we are sometimes impatient and unkind and uncharitable with one another?” “How can I be a Eucharistic Minister when I’ve done all the good things the bad boys do?” “How can I be a Lector when I find it difficult to keep the commandments?” But St. Paul would urge us to evaluate those weaknesses, those flaws differently. “I am content with weakness, with distress and difficulties,” the apostle says, “for when I am powerless, then I am strong.” His point seems to be: it’s our weaknesses that give God the room to move. Maybe if we were a church where people always got along, where no one lost patience and everyone did their fair share we’d start to imagine that what brings us together is liking this collection of people. However, in our weakness there are disagreements among us, we do snap at one another and some of us do slough off our responsibilities. Our weaknesses remind us that we gather for the sake of Christ, not because we are compatible. Maybe if our families always lived in peace, if everyone developed to their full potential, if we found it easy to be good, then things would look different. But more frequently than not things turn out to be a mess, so we have learned not to rely on ourselves, our strength, our ability. We have learned that God’s grace is enough “for in weakness, power reaches perfection.”
The lesson from the life of Jesus and the boast that Paul makes about his weaknesses are vivid reminders that Christians aren’t expected to be other than who we are in order for the work of God to go on. God doesn’t so much use people who are stand outs but those who are standing up. That’s what the Prophet Ezekiel said: “Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet.” Saint James knows how to respond: We aren’t as loving and forgiving as we should be but Spirit enters into to us and sets us on our feet so that we keep on keeping on. The elderly know how to respond: I can’t do all I used to but Spirit enters into me and sets me on my feet so that I can share the wisdom and compassion I’ve gathered over the years. The young know how to respond: I’m full of questions and fears but Spirit enters into me and sets me on my feet to help resist peer pressure and the allure popular culture so that I can be who God made me to be. Husbands and wives know how to respond: We can’t always find the proper balance of communication to become truly one but Spirit enters into us and sets us on our feet so that we can forgive and forgiven as we work on our relationship. We all know how to respond: We are sinners but Spirit enters into us and sets us on our feet, picks us up and turns us around, and we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.
