Rev. Kevin Pleas

Second Corinthians 12:7b-10 October 25, 2009

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

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Any time a passage of scripture starts with the word "therefore," one of the things we know immediately is that the reading is part of a larger piece that is already underway. Today's reading is no exception, and it deserves to be set in its proper context. So let me give you a little background.

The church that Paul established in Corinth must have been something of a trial for him. In the New Testament, we have the two surviving letters of at least four that Paul sent to the Corinthian church. We know there were other letters because of references he made in the two we do have. One of those references speaks of a "painful letter" Paul wrote "out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears." (2nd Cor. 2:4) Too bad we don't have the letter itself. Wouldn't that be interesting? Clearly though, the church was finding it challenging to hold onto the spirit of Paul's teaching when he wasn't right there with them. So, while he was away, he wrote them letters to teach and encourage, to correct misunderstandings, to clarify the nature of the true church and chastise those who weren't living up to it.

In today's passage, Paul is responding to a challenge that called his own ministry into question. We find him right in the middle of defending himself against what he called "false apostles." Apparently, there were people following along behind Paul trying to undo all his hard work. They called themselves apostles, but offered interpretations of Jesus that were wholly out of keeping with Paul's understanding. So, to prop up his own authority, beginning in chapter eleven, Paul lays out an entire catalogue of the things he had suffered for the sake of the gospel; sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, beatings and so on. Then, he goes on to share an experience he had of being "caught up to the third heaven" and seeing visions and revelations. His point is, on the one hand, that he was willing to go to the wall for the churches he had established, and on the other hand, that he was a person God apparently trusted, which meant they should trust him as well.

Then his argument takes an interesting turn. Arriving at today's reading, he says that, with all of this to his credit, he might well have lost his head. He might have become so full of himself that he would have had no room left to be full of Christ. But, he says, to prevent him from going off the deep end God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, gave him a "thorn in the flesh." We have no idea what that thorn was. Over the years people have made all kinds of guesses, but there's no way of knowing for sure. What we do know, is that it caused him great pain, and that because he doesn't bother to explain himself to the Corinthians, they probably already knew what he was talking about.

At first, Paul prayed fervently for relief. But when he didn't get any, he came to believe this thorn in the flesh was part of God's plan. In a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade, Paul began to see it as a blessing rather than a curse. "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ;" he says, "for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." In the end, he used even his handicap, whatever it was, as an argument in favor of his authority. Pretty smart I'd say.

I love that line he uses: "Whenever I am weak, then I am strong." It says so much about the paradoxical nature of faith. It's the same point Jesus made when he said that the last shall be first and the first last. The message seems to be, if we're going to understand the world from God's perspective, we often have to stand things on their heads. Paul's pain, his "thorn in the flesh," could have destroyed him if he let it. But instead, he chose to see it in a paradoxical light. It became an opportunity to deepen his faith. It gave him the chance to feel his pain in a way that strengthened, rather than destroyed, his ministry. And that's the point I want to explore this morning.

From the title of my sermon, "Feeling Pain," some of you must have thought that, since many of the women are off on a retreat this weekend, I decided to craft a special message just for the guys; something along the lines of: "No Pain. No Gain." If that had been the case though, I'd probably have just skipped the sermon altogether and sent us all out for a couple of good laps around the block. Then maybe we could have done a little walking across hot coals for good measure. Now there's an idea. We could call it, "Iron John Sunday," in the best tradition of Robert Bly. What do you think?

Obviously, that isn't quite what I had in mind. Sure, we could all stand to burn up a few calories, especially if our masculinity gets reinforced in the process. But where pain is concerned, I mostly think seeking it out in order to prove ourselves is more than a little suspect. Usually, enough pain comes along all by itself without our having to go looking for more.

The reason I'm talking about it at all is that pain makes a guest appearance in the book we've been discussing lately, Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World. She has a whole chapter on the spiritual value of feeling our pain. She, also, makes the point that it's not something we have to manufacture. "Feeling pain," she says, "is not optional for human beings." It comes to all of us sooner or later, and the point is that we have choices about how we face it and what it means to us.

"I can try to avoid pain," she writes. "I can deny pain. I can numb it and I can fight it. Or I can decide to engage pain when it comes to me, giving it my full attention so that it can teach me what I need to know about [what is] Really Real."

What does pain have to teach us? It's funny. Mostly, when we're in pain that's a question we can't focus on very well, and when we're not in pain we'd just as soon focus on something else. However, Taylor makes a wonderful case that, if we're willing to listen, pain can teach us some of life's most important lessons. It can, as she says, be "one of the fastest routes to a no-frills encounter with the Holy."

From the stories Taylor tells, it's clear she speaks from some considerable experience. One time she was out riding a horse and ran into a low hanging tree branch. She woke up in the hospital with a serious concussion that took weeks to recover from. Another time she was pruning trees and got stuck in the eye with a sharp stick that tore her cornea. She describes that as an excruciating experience. At four years old, she remembers battling it out with her parents over a vaccination she didn't want. Just when the nurse stuck her with the needle she jerked away and broke it off right in her backside. The experience was so traumatic that she later refused Novocain on a visit to the dentist because she feared the needle worse than she feared the drill. On that occasion, she writes, "The pain [of the drill] was exquisite but bearable. It was like being stung by a wasp with a really long stinger for a really long time, while someone tapped on my jaw with a ball-peen hammer." Well that's pretty graphic.

By comparison, my life has been relatively pain free. Although, there was that time I sliced my finger open and needed eleven stitches, and the time my Grandmother's dog bit me when I was taking out the trash. And of course, I'll never forget the three days I spent in the hospital after a motorcycle accident I had when I was in the Coast Guard. Would it be hard for any of us to come up with a list of the pains we have suffered, or are suffering in our lives? I doubt it. Human bodies are soft, and life is hard. Very few of us get very far into along in our lives without knowing pain in a deep and intimate way.

The question is, what do we do with it? My usual response is to hunker down, grit my teeth, complain a lot, take all the ibuprofen I can find and tough it out. Having read Taylor's book however, she makes a number of points about pain that are worth considering. Let me just list some of them off.

First, pain is subjective. We can't ever know, from the inside, what other people's experience of pain is like. We can extrapolate from our own experience and make guesses based on how they describe their pain or how much suffering they seem to be in, but we can't ever really know, which means, we should be careful about making judgments.

Second, there is a lot of theology out there that has developed around the subject of pain; what it means, where it comes from, what it says about the nature of God. As I've said before, because of my theological training, I know a lot about the answers people have come up with to explain human suffering. But, as a pastor, I also know that rational explanations aren't terribly helpful when someone is in the midst of suffering, and they can be downright destructive. Every once in awhile I hear about some fire-brand preacher going into hospital rooms and telling people they are suffering because they aren't right with God. Folks, let me say in no uncertain terms, there is just no excuse for that kind of behavior. But it is only the most extreme form of something a lot of us are guilty of; placing our own interpretation on the suffering of someone else. Even well-intentioned people can offer explanations that aren't very helpful.

Third, pain is pain. It comes in all shapes and sizes. Chronic pain is a different experience than acute pain. Emotional or spiritual pain can be just as real, and just as devastating as anything physical. We've made some progress in the last few years, but we still have a ways to go, in understanding that the pains in our minds and hearts can be every bit as real and legitimate as anything that takes place in our bodies. And, in fact, there is hardly anything that can be called real pain that doesn't somehow manifest itself in the whole of our being; body, mind and spirit. Pain is pain.

Fourth, that said, pain is not necessarily the same as suffering. Taylor makes the point that pain happens in our bodies and suffering happens in our minds. I'm not sure the distinctions are quite so clear, but it's obvious that we can, and often do, make our pain worse than is would be otherwise by what we tell ourselves about it. If we get to imagining that pain is something we deserve for something we've done, or believe it is proof that God does love us or that God doesn't even exist, we pile an additional load of suffering on top of whatever pain we're already feeling.

Fifth, though we can't ever feel another's pain from the inside, we can recognize and honor and tend to the pain that others are feeling. We don't ever want to take advantage, but we can recognize that the pains suffered by others are almost always opportunities for the expression of our compassion. And when we are compassionate, that is, I believe, when we draw closest to and are most in harmony with the compassionate ministry of Jesus.

And finally, if we let it, pain can be transformational. If, in the midst of our pain we can understand and trust that God has not abandoned us, that God is not punishing us, but that despite all evidence to the contrary, God continues to hold us in love, it may just be that, like Paul, we can come out the other side with a deepened, rather than a destroyed, faith.

I don't mean to sound preachy. I know most of these are things you already know. But I share them with you partly because thinking about pain is best done when we're not actually in pain, or at least when the pain we're in doesn't cloud our judgment and make it impossible to think at all.

Paul's example is a powerful one for me. What he learned is that, where faith is concerned, our strength can actually become a liability. Where faith is concerned, when we are strong, that's when we are most likely to be weak. When we are strong in ourselves, that is, we tend to be weak in God. But when we are weak in ourselves, as is often the case when we're in pain, it reveals to us our need for God, which is easy to lose sight of when we're not hurting. When we're weak in ourselves, it opens up the possibility of being strong in God. And in those moments of openness, like Paul, we might just experience the transformation of our pain into a deeper faith, and a more profound knowledge of God.

May God bless us and keep us, even, or especially, when we are in pain.

Amen.

Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Matthew 25:34-40 October 11, 2009

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me." Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?" And the king will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."

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With your permission, I'd like to start this morning with a gross oversimplification. It sometimes seems that the church can be divided into two groups with two different missions. One is primarily interested in the salvation of souls, while the other tends to focus on loving their neighbors. Of course, the line isn't really that clear. I've known people on the salvation side who believed that trying to save a person's soul is the most profoundly loving thing one person could ever do for another. For these folks, the most important passages in the bible are those that talk about the second coming, the end times, the vision of Revelation of a new heaven and the new earth.

On the other side, people in what we have historically called the "mainline traditions" have gradually moved away from the idea of "salvation" in favor of more direct social action. For us, loving our neighbors is much more about caring directly for their physical and emotional needs. And because that's the way we think, we tend to tune into passages like the good Samaritan, the feeding of the 5000, the healing of the lepers, and this one today, which is sometimes called the separating of the sheep and the goats.

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me." Those who do these things meet with God's approval, and those who don't, don't. Though we're not always comfortable with the notion of people taking the Bible literally, this is one passage we have tended to take at face value. For the most part we are comfortable leaving the salvation of souls in God's hands, while we busy ourselves attending to their food and shelter.

I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with this. As a matter of fact, during last week's new member class, when I had a chance to talk about the various ministries of compassion and healing this church is involved in, it struck me once again that the list of the programs we support, the contributions we make, and the great diversity of people we care for is truly inspirational. I take great pride in the fact that our church family is able to help so many people in so many different ways, and that we do so mostly with grace and good humor. We're not perfect by any means, and there's always more to do. But anyone who plays a part in the outreach ministries of this church has every right to feel good about what we're accomplishing.

That said, the point I want to make this morning is, as important as it is to feed clothe heal and visit people in need, that's not the only possible message we can take away from this passage. As most of you know by now, I've been very impressed lately with Barbara Brown Taylor's book, "An Altar in the World," and I've been using some of her thoughts as fodder for my sermons. Chapter six, "The Practice of Encountering Others" is interesting in that it presents a rather different take on this morning's reading.

Taylor begins by saying that she's an introvert, and that, as an introvert, she's always felt a certain attraction to the early monastic tradition of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. "In the early fourth century," she writes, "just as Christianity was becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, these pilgrims bailed out of the cities in which they lived. They had no confidence in the volatile mix of religion and politics, being pretty sure which one would rise to the top." Doesn't she have a wonderful way of putting things?

"Taking little with them," she goes on "besides their wish to live as close to God as they could, they followed the example of an Egyptian monk named Anthony, who dissolved his parents' large estate six months after they left it to him. He had heard something in church about selling everything he owned and giving the proceeds to the poor, so that was what Anthony did. He gave his land away to neighboring villagers. He sold his goods and gave the money to those who needed it. Then he headed to the mountains across the Nile from his village, where he lived alone for the next twenty years."

Now, I know perfectly well that this kind of ascetic life is something most people find hard to understand, if not actually horrible. For those of us who live more or less comfortably in society, the idea of spending even one day alone in a cave is hard to imagine. Twenty years can seem positively insane. It's certainly not a life I feel called to. But I try to respect the fact that some people do feel called to it, and that some of our most profound human wisdom has come from such people. Sometimes, you just have to turn off all the noise and confusion of daily life if you're going to get in touch with what's truly real.

And interestingly, one of the things they got in touch with through their isolation is the fact that no one should be completely isolated. Even though they spent considerable time apart, they understood themselves fundamentally as living in community. They came together occasionally for worship and fellowship and to sort out various issues that arose. They engaged in conversation and ministry to people who sought them out for guidance. Even though they built their lives around having considerable time alone, around having an abundance of time in direct communion with God, they knew they needed the communion of other people as well. And not just to avoid loneliness. They needed other people, also, to keep themselves from what Taylor calls, "the temptation of believing in their own self-sufficiency."

Taylor tells one story about a brother who went to one of the elders with a question.

There are two brothers, of whom one remains praying in his cell, fasting six days at a time and doing a great deal of penance. The other one takes care of the sick. Which one's work is more pleasing to God? The elder replied: If that brother who fasts six days at a time were to hang himself up by the nose, he could not equal the one who takes care of the sick.

The message here is not simply that caring for the sick is the right thing to do. The message is that we cannot be all that God wants us to be all by ourselves, regardless of how many sacrifices we might be willing to make or pains we might choose to endure. Whether we choose the life of a monastic or live our whole lives entirely within what most people think of as "normal" society, rugged individualism is a fantasy, as least for those who are trying to be faithful Christians.

Why do we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick or in prison? Partly, we do it because God wants us to. Partly, we engage in acts of compassion in order to follow in Jesus' footsteps. But, Taylor's point is that we do not do so simply to gain God's approval, as we often think. We do so because it is in encountering others that we encounter God. When, oh God, did we see You hungry, thirsty, sick or in prison? The answer is that by our very acts of encountering those in need who are strangers to us, we are in fact coming into contact with the Spirit of Christ.

Taylor quotes rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who said, "The Hebrew Bible in one verse commands, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' but in no fewer than 36 places commands us to 'love the stranger.'" Why are we supposed to love the stranger? Partly, the Bible tells us, the Hebrews were to love the stranger as a reminder that they have been strangers themselves. Those who know what it's like to be on the outside looking in are much more likely to be welcoming and tolerant of the strangeness of others. But there's another reason. We are called to love the stranger because it is those who are strange to us who enlarge our understanding of the fullness of God. To look in the eyes of the stranger, while holding in our hearts and minds that this, too, is a child of God, is to broaden the scope of our compassion and to deepen our knowledge of God's very nature.

Taylor is right though; to love the stranger we have to actually encounter them. Thinking about that, I was reminded of an experience I had before I went into the service. When I joined the Coast Guard, I had signed up for what they called a six month delayed enlistment, which meant I technically had six months in the service before I went to boot camp. During that time, one of the things I decided to do was go off on a driving trip by myself to see some of the world.

The trip ended up being about 4000 miles, up the coast of California, Oregon and Washington, then around through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah & Nevada, before returning home to southern California. It was three weeks of camping, visiting family, seeing some of the national parks and generally having a good time.

Before I left, my mom, wanting to make sure I was safe, sat me down and gave me an armload of motherly advice. One of the things she said was that, if I got in a place where I couldn't find a legal campsite, I should stop by a police station and ask. I forgot everything else she said, but I remember that because I had a chance to try it out.

Driving up through Oregon, just south of Eugene, I accidently ran over a tail-pipe that had dropped off of someone's car. I saw it coming, but I was at high speed and there were cars on either side of me so there was no where to go. After running it over, I took the next off-ramp to see if there had been any damage. I wasn't sure, but I thought there might be a leak in the gas tank and I wanted to have a repair guy check it out before I went any further. With no obvious campgrounds in sight, like the good boy I was, I found the nearest police station. The man behind the counter told me there wasn't anything right nearby, but if I wanted, I would be welcome to stay at the mission. I assumed he meant some kind of monastery, but when I drove across town I found myself pulling up in front of the Salvation Army.

My first reaction was to just keep driving. But then I thought, "Well, the whole point of the trip was to have some new experiences," so I went in. I'd arrived when people were already getting ready for bed. There was a bunkroom upstairs and I grabbed the first available bunk without saying much of anything to the roomful of mostly older men.

Let me tell you, that was one of the longest nights of my life. To begin with, everybody snored. It sounded like a choir of buzz saws. I could hardly believe the roof didn't go flying off. And then there was my general discomfort at being in a place I really felt I didn't belong. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had more money in my pocket than the rest of the people in the room combined. I tossed and turned for hours. Then, along about 2:00 I gave up trying to sleep and went down to the dayroom.

And that's where I had my encounter. Sitting in a chair in the corner was one of the most beaten down men I've ever been that close to. I didn't really want to talk, but I didn't want to be rude either, so I went over and sat down. Turns out, there wasn't much need to hold up my end of the conversation. He asked me to bring him over a cup of coffee, which I did, and then he proceeded to talk at me the rest of the night, with several pauses for more coffee.

He told me about the best places to get free clothing. He listed off a number of what he called the best restaurants in town, which turned out to be the ones most likely to have still edible food in the dumpsters out back. He talked about how to avoid getting in trouble with the police, mostly by using the word "sir" a lot and keeping your eyes on the ground. He said that he had gone to the airport a couple of days earlier to meet his son who was flying through on a business trip. It was a twelve mile walk each way, and it had been raining, and two days later his clothes still weren't completely dry.

I just sat and took it all in. The whole rest of my life, I've never been quite so far out of my comfort zone. I have no idea how much of it was true and how much was fantasy. At the time, I felt like I was suffocating and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I hit the road as soon after breakfast as I decently could. It made quite an impression on me though. I felt so full of life and possibilities compared to what I'd seen at the mission, and I made a promise to myself that I would try to keep it that way.

I didn't do it at the time, but all these years later, I find myself wanting to put that experience in the context of faith. I had had an encounter with the stranger. I had had an encounter with the Spirit of Christ. He had in fact been quite thirsty, and I did in fact bring him something to drink, over and over. But all in all, though I didn't know it at the time, I believe I came away the richer for that conversation. And it wasn't because I had done my good Christian duty by ministering to someone in need. It was because my own understanding of God's compassion was greatly enlarged that night. It was because, whether or not I knew it at the time, by encountering this man who was so much a stranger to me, I was encountering a dimension of God I had not previously known. Sometimes, it takes a stranger to teach us that God is bigger than we think.

Amen