The Round Church
at St Andrew the Great
Cambridge
A Sermon Preached
on Sunday 2nd March 2003
by Mark Ashton
If this is the first of this sermon series in 2
Corinthians that you’ve joined us for, we’ve reached today what’s sometimes
called ‘The Fool’s Speech’, this boasting by Paul about his work. Paul was
writing to a church he’d founded, in the Greek city of Corinth, but which had
since started to follow other teachers with a very different ministry from
Paul’s. So there’s a bit of a squabble going on; and it’s hard for us to guess
exactly what it’s all about. But there is plenty in today’s passage about the
service of God which is completely relevant, completely clear for us here
today.
1) Selling
Ourselves (vv. 16-21)
‘I repeat: let no one take me for a fool. But if you
do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little
boasting. In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would,
but as a fool. Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will
boast. You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! In fact, you even
put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you
or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we
were too weak for that!’ (2
Corinthians. 11:16-21).
That was an age very like our own, with no hope beyond
death. So it was an achievement-oriented culture. What you achieved in life was
what really mattered. It would have understood the mindset behind that personal
statement that you have to make when you apply to university nowadays: Sell
yourself – highlight your strengths, disguise your weaknesses. We even have
firms of consultants now that will help us prepare our own CVs when we are
applying for a job. One of those firms has listed some to the mistakes that
they’ve discovered in job applications. For example, one computer-hardened
applicant began the vital letter, “Dear Sir or Modem”. Another risked offence
by signing off, “I hope to hear from you shorty”. One woman claimed to have
left her previous job because of “maturity leave”. And another person reported
more bizarrely, “I terminated myself.” Almost as bad, apparently, according to
this firm, are the over-enthusiastic applications, like the secretary who
claimed to type at 756 words per minute. And the accountant whose 43-page CV
included a reference from his old scout leader, his First Aid certificate, and
a photograph of his wife and child (maybe accountants will do anything to make
their CVs sound interesting)!
Well, selling themselves was something that these
other teachers in Corinth seem to have excelled at. And Paul intended to try
his hand at it too: ‘Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast.
You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise!’ (v. 18, 19).
Notice why they did it (I think that’s what lies behind verse 20): ‘In
fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes
advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face.’
They sold themselves to people in order to gain authority over those people’s
lives. That, after all, is the normal way of the world. Samuel Johnson once
said, ‘No two men can be half-an-hour together without one gaining an evident
superiority over the other.’ You can often hear that in so much of our
conversation: a little implicit boast here, a coded claim to superior knowledge
or experience there. And what we’re actually saying in our subtle, coded, ways,
is “I’m a little above you and you ought to bow to my superiority.”
These teachers obviously went further than that. But
it was the same game – and it always has been. There are plenty of religious
leaders today who are basically after those same three things: the 3 Cs:
Crowds, Cash and Control. So this may be a particularly salutary passage for us
to look at on a Gift Day. And I have just made an appeal to you to give. So
let’s just note verse 20 in passing. We will return to it again before the end
of the sermon. But now let’s consider our second heading.
2) Paul’s
CV (vv. 21-29)
He starts, as you would expect him to, with his
origins and his lineage: ‘What anyone else dares to boast about – I
am speaking as a fool – I also dare to boast about. Are they Hebrews? So am I.
Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I’ (vv.
21b-22). But then at verse 23 he ups the anti: from claiming equality with
these others, he now starts to claim superiority: ‘Are they servants of Christ?(I
am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more.’ Now he is going to
show us why he is the one to listen to, and no one else – because his ministry
is this successful: ‘… I have worked much harder, been in prison
more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again
and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one [that’s
because they were only allowed to give 40, so they stopped at 39 to be sure
they didn’t accidentally go over the limit]. Three times I was beaten with rods,
once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in
the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from
rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger
from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at
sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have laboured and toiled and have
often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone
without food, I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily
the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel
weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?’ (vv. 23b–29).
“Hang on, Paul,” we might want to say, “you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
You’re meant to be selling yourself to us, not pleading for our pity.” We were
expecting to hear a list of his successes – the churches he’d founded; the
people he’d converted; the new areas he’d pioneered for the gospel – not
sufferings and losses and trials! But Paul’s CV is rather different.
Notice, some of these come from without – enemies
beating, flogging and imprisoning him; circumstances threatening his life on
land and sea; and even opposition from inside the churches. (Did you notice
that sudden little dig at the Corinthians at the very end of verse 26? I guess
that is what it is). And others of these trials and pressures come from within
Paul himself – the self-inflicted pressure under which he worked: ‘I
have been constantly on the move’ (v. 26). And then verse 27: ‘I have laboured and toiled and have often
gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without
food, I have been cold and naked.’ And his concern for all the churches
in verse 28: ‘Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for
all the churches.’ And his awareness of his own weaknesses there, in
verse 29: ‘Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not
inwardly burn?’ “Their weakness
make me aware of my weaknesses”, I think he’s saying.
Paul is here reducing the ‘sell yourself’ mentality of
the CV and the personal statement to absurdity. It must have formed a striking
contrast with the CVs of the false teachers. But lest we miss the point and
think this is just a perverse parody by Paul, the next paragraph makes his true
purpose clear.
3) The
Purpose of Paul’s Boasting (vv.
30 – 33).
Paul is not trying a sort of inverted boasting (I
think we can read it like that if we’re not careful); as though the false
teachers boast of their successes and so Paul will boast of his patience and
perseverance in failure: “Look how tough I am to have survived all this! And
I’m going to go plodding on. Doesn’t that make me out to be a great person?”
No, it is not his toughness, but his weakness that Paul wants to display: ‘If I
must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness’ (v. 30).
And then he adds verse 31 to emphasise the point: ‘The God and Father of the Lord
Jesus, who is to be praised for ever, knows that I am not lying.’ He really feels the need to say that very
emphatically: ‘Don’t read my CV in verses 22-29 in any way as triumphalism. I’m
not just turning their values upside down and then saying, “If you look at me
in the right way and you’ll see I am a great man too. It’s just that my
greatness has been shown through all the things I’ve suffered.” ’ He’s not
saying that. So he goes on to give a supreme example of what he means in that
last rather odd little bit (unless you read it in this way you think, Why on
earth has he suddenly added this?): ‘In Damascus the governor under King Aretas
had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered
in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands’
(vv. 32, 33).
This incident occurred right at the beginning of
Paul’s ministry, just after his conversion. He had swept towards Damascus as a
non-Christian, with in his hand the authority of the High Priest to persecute
Christians. It was possibly at the high point of his career as an outstanding
young rabbi, wielding political and religious power as he rode to Damascus. But
then he had been ignominiously bundled out of Damascus in a basket,
fleeing from the civil authorities. “That,” says Paul, “is what it is to be an
apostle of Christ. None of your power; none of your influence; no respect in
the national press; no city services where the Mayor and all the councillors
come to church. No titles in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. No status in the
eyes of the culture whatsoever. And more than that, the failure of inherent
human weakness.” Paul may even be saying here, “If they really want to know
what sort of an apostle I am, I am the sort who when the going gets tough, runs
away. It is true. I have always been like it. The very first thing I did after
I was baptised was to run away.” That is how verses 32 and 33 fit into the
chapter.
There was a special medal for valour in the Roman
Army, known as the Corona Muralis, the crown of the wall. it was for the first
soldier who scaled the city walls when the Romans were besieging a city. It was
for the first up the scaling ladders and over the top of the wall. Paul says,
“I was the first down! In a basket! I ran when the going got tough.”
Paul was determined that the Corinthians should see
him as he really was: ‘If I must boast, I will boast of the things
that show my weakness’ (v. 30). It’s not just that Paul boasts of
different things in his CV, he boasts for a different purpose:
(a) to turn the focus back on to God.
Paul had been very reluctant to do this boasting in
the first place: ‘I repeat: let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive
me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. In this
self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool’
(vv. 16, 17). And there are little interjections that follow which you will
have noticed: ‘ – I am speaking as a fool – ’ (v. 21); ‘(I am out of my mind to talk
like this.)’ (v. 23). But in effect he is saying this: “If you want me
in the spotlight instead of Jesus, let’s see what we see when we turn the
spotlight on me (Paul). Put Paul, as it were, under the magnifying glass
(although I’m not sure Paul ever mixed his metaphors quite as badly as that)
and what will you see? Weakness.”
So many, too many, of us want the spotlight (even if
only a little bit) on ourselves as well as on God. But we cannot do that
without taking the glory from God – if you want to turn the spotlight away on
to Mark Ashton and what he is like. At least, if we want the spotlight to make
us look good, then it cannot but detract from the glory of God.
The only way we can share this spotlight is if it
shows up my weakness, and then it will also show God’s glory. The only way that
God and I can be in the same spotlight is when it is my weakness that is
revealed, my sinfulness, my unworthiness to have anything to do with the living
God. While there is any vestige of strength, of virtue, of merit that I want in
me, that I want to impress you with, I can’t give the glory to God at all.
How had he said it earlier in the letter? ‘We
have this treasure in jars of clay’. The modern equivalent would be
those little plastic cups you are going to drink your coffee from in a moment
or two. We have this treasure in disposable plastic cups, to show that the
all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
There is power, there is glory in the gospel. It is
a power (as we were seeing in earlier weeks) greater than any other we can know
on this earth, because it can change the very nature of a human being; and
there is nothing else that can do that. There is nothing else that can change
your heart and mine. If you’ve found something else, please tell me on your way
out of church: because I don’t think there is anything else that can change the
human heart except the power of the gospel: because it can bring me back into
living contact with the Creator God who made me and who gives me spiritual
life.
But it is a power that only reveals itself in the
context of human weakness. That’s true of conversion as well, isn’t it? We have
to come to the point of knowing that we can’t save ourselves; and there can be
no merit in me if I’m going to be saved by God. I have to cry out, “Lord, save
me; because left to myself I am lost. I’m not a good person who just needs a
little help from you to become a bit better. I am a lost person who needs you
to save me from hell.” I don’t know if you’ve reached that point yet. I guess
there will be some among us who probably haven’t yet. Maybe you still think
there is enough good in you that you don’t really need saving by God. Well, the
only thing we contribute to our own salvation is our sin.
And it’s true of the ministry – the service that
follows on from conversion. That’s our final little point today.
(b) to show the nature of Christian
ministry.
It is not power: it is weakness. Look back again (as I
promised we would) at verse 20 – at what those other folks got up to: ‘In
fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes
advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face.’ That
was the way they worked. But Paul had said how he worked back in
the last verse of chapter 1: ‘Not that we lord it over your faith, but we
work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm’ (1:24).
“You won’t stand because of my leadership and my preaching, my input into your
life. You’ll stand because you trust Jesus and that alone. It is by faith that
you stand firm. We don’t lord it over your faith, we don’t tell you what to
believe, we don’t boss you around. We work with you for your joy”. I’m
suspecting as we go on in the study of the letter that that verse is far more
important than I previously realised – for us to understand what Paul is trying
to say about himself.
The exercise of power is not what the Christian faith
is about. The accusation the world throws at fundamentalists, people who
believe a text, as Conservative Evangelicals do, that it’s a power play. We
need to think that through and ponder it, I suspect, because Paul is warning us
so strongly here: the exercise of power is not what the Christian faith is
about. Not in evangelism, whether the domination of powerful arguments and
impressive experiences, or manipulation with false offers and cult-like love
bombardment: “Come on! It’s lovely. It’s a party: come on and join us.
Everybody will smile and enjoy.”
Evangelism must be true to the New Testament, which
means it will be weak and at times it will fail. Can we cope with evangelism
that fails? Do you ever see a newspaper heading in a Christian publication like
this?: ‘Christian Union Mission in Cambridge – Disappointing Results’ Not even
in Evangelicals Now. But the weakness
and failure of our efforts evangelistically are no indicator whatsoever of what
God is doing.
This means that our Church life will not just be about
success and growth and big numbers and chumminess and affirmation. It will also
be about suffering and growth in holiness together. I wonder how many of us
would have wanted to join a church led by Paul. You can imagine the slogans:
“Join St. Andrew the Great – a growing church where everyone laughs and is
encouraged.” Or: “Join Paul’s church – where you’ll find weakness, hard work
and failure. And everyone learns to cry together.” Well, that’s an
exaggeration, I know, but it makes me think. It challenges me about Christian
leadership. Christian leadership is not about getting my own way – how much
I need to learn that! It is about service. And all of us who have a role that
gives us power over others, whatever it might be: teachers, parents, employers,
doctors, managers, group leaders, CU reps., Boat Club captains, supervisors –
we all need to exercise the authority our role gives us, but as a servant
leader.
‘The message
of a Messiah who carried a cross will be conveyed by a messenger who carries a
cross.’
The gospel is not just the content of the message that
we have for this world, it also is the medium, the means, the manner in which
you and I have to conduct ourselves in this world – in order that the power of
God may be seen, in order that human beings may be brought back into
relationship with the living God. And the greatest power that this earth has
ever seen may be let loose in your heart and in my heart and in the hearts of
those we know: our friends, our neighbours and our families.
You see, we worship a
Servant King: ‘This is our God, the Servant King, He calls us now to follow Him
…’