Reflection: The Renewing Prayer of Weakness (March 14, 2012)

Lent Mid-Week 4
Psalm 31:1-16; Ezekiel 34:11-16; 
2 Cor. 12:2-10; Matthew 26:36-46

We value strength.  From the superheroes that we create to the athletes that we applaud, we celebrate strength and honor those whose strength surpasses that of average people.  Our admiration of strength goes beyond physical strength.  We also recognize people with mental stamina and wills that are strong enough to overcome adversity.  Our economic model is one that offers the strong great financial rewards, often at the expense of the weak.  Yes, we value strength.  But there are ways that strength works against us.

In the first place, strength can lead to arrogance.  When we are strong we are prone to credit ourselves for our accomplishments.  We fall under the delusion that we have succeeded on the basis of the strength of our commitment, resolve, efforts, and sacrifices.  When we see our strength as the means by which we achieve our goals or overcome adversity, we are likely to put our trust in ourselves and our strength.  There is little reason to consider our great need for God when we are strong.

Strength also works against us because it always eventually fails us.  Sooner or later, the strength in which we have taken pride, established our independence, and grown arrogant crumbles and we end up becoming what we had previously despised: weak.  Once we've become weak we still value strength as something desirable, but we also discover that strength is something to be feared as much as valued.  In our world, the weak are at the mercy of the strong -- and the way that we celebrate strength leaves little room for mercy.  Those of us who are strong have little use for what is weak.  But God delights in our weakness.

Ultimately, our weakness serves us better than our strength.  When we are weak we do not find our confidence in ourselves, we don't trust in our own abilities, and we recognize our great need for God.  Paul was a man who was strong in earthly ways.  He had every advantage working for him.  He was well educated, well connected, and had influence and power.  He used his strength to further himself and his agenda by persecuted what he saw as weak.  But as he traveled to Damascus in all of his strength to crush the Church that had fled to that city, God stripped him of that strength and left him in utter weakness.  When Paul prayed to have that weakness removed, God refused to make Paul strong again in the way that we celebrate strength.  Instead, God displayed His strength through Paul's weakness.  "My grace is sufficient for you," He told Paul, "for my power is made perfect in weakness."

This is God's answer to those who call upon Him in weakness.  Whatever it is that we think that we are praying for when God drives us to our knees in worldly weakness, He gives us a strength that far exceeds what we think strength is.  His power is not just displayed in our weakness, it is "made perfect" in it.  By faith we discover, as Paul did, that when we are weak we are strong.  We recognize that the strength of the world is weakness in God's understanding of things and that it will only lead us away from Christ.  But the strength that God gives to us in our worldly weakness always draws us close to Christ.  The people of the world boasts in their strengths and perish.  We boast in our weaknesses and Christ's power makes us strong unto salvation. 

Audio file of the sermon based on this reflection