July 5, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Psalm 48; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

      Let us pray: O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

      After 20 years of shaving himself every morning, a man in a small Southern town decided that he had had enough. He told his wife that he intended to let the local barber shave him each day. He put on his hat and coat and went to the barber shop, which was owned by the pastor of the town’s Baptist church.  

      It just so happened that the barber’s wife, Grace, was working that day, so she performed the task. Grace shaved him and sprayed him with lilac water and said, “That will be $20.” The man thought the price was a bit high, but he paid the bill and went to work. 

      When he got up the next morning, the man looked in the mirror and his face was as smooth as it had been when he left the barber shop the day before. “Not bad,” he thought, “At least I don’t need to get a shave every day.”  

      The next morning the man’s face was still smooth! Two weeks later the man was still unable to find any trace of whiskers on his face.  

      Well, this was more than he could take, so he returned to the barber shop.

      “I thought $20 was high for a shave,” he told the barber’s wife, “but you must have done a great job. It’s been two weeks and my whiskers still haven’t started growing back.” The expression on her face didn’t even change, expecting his comment. She responded, “You were shaved by Grace. Once shaved, always shaved.” 

      You’re right…it’s a ‘groaner’…I obviously need some time away. 

      This holiday weekend, I want us to consider an old saying.  That is, “War is hell.” 

      War is hell, but it doesn’t always leave its victims with shattered spirits. Sometimes agony leads to ecstasy.   

      For example, a true story from Iraq.

      When the bomb went off on a road near Baghdad, Hilbert Caesar thought his life was over.  In reality, what he discovered was that it was only just beginning. 

      According to a story in The Washington Post (November 26, 2005), Army staff sergeant Caesar was in charge of a long-range 155mm howitzer – a self-propelled gun that resembles a tank. He was out on patrol in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded. When the smoke cleared, Caesar looked down and saw that his right leg was severed in three places, just dangling by the skin. He tried to give his machine gun to a fellow soldier, but discovered it was bent. Then he yelled for the howitzer hatches to be closed, and thought to himself, “This is it. My life is over.” 

      But he didn’t die. The insurgents responsible for the attack disappeared, and Caesar was transported to safety. Back in the United States at Walter Reed Hospital, his missing limb was replaced with an artificial leg of plastic and steel.  

      However, he still felt despair about his future. He was in pain, and was worried that he would never be able to run again, or be attractive to women. He received word that eight men from his platoon had been killed by a car bomb in Baghdad, including one of his role models. This news was almost worse than losing his leg. 

      But little by little his focus began to shift. Caesar met other injured soldiers and heard them talk about their recoveries. He began to look for the best, and realized that he was fortunate to make it back from battle with just one missing limb. “I’m grateful for that,” he told The Washington Post. “I’m thankful for just being here.” 

      Today, Caesar competes in and completes marathons in racing wheelchairs, and has found a job with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He views the loss of his leg as only a minor setback, and believes that he has come out of the war with more wisdom, compassion and appreciation for life. 

      Hilbert Caesar has experienced what some refer to as “post-traumatic growth.” 

      A number of psychiatrists and psychologists are beginning to see that not all soldiers return from war with shattered spirits.   A good number of them are emerging from the experience feeling enhanced. Now this is not to say that war is heaven –rather than that other place. War is not nor is it ever desirable or healthy or good – all arguments about just war theory aside. But it can sometimes lead to personal growth. 

      This might be the same thing that happened to the apostle Paul after he was stabbed with a “thorn” in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7). We don’t know exactly what this thorn was, although biblical scholars have suggested that it could have been anything from epilepsy to stuttering, depression or eye problems or impacted molars. What is important is that Paul considered this affliction to be a painful trap or torture designed to take him out of his spiritual battle plan.

      During the first century, sharpened wooden stakes were often placed in pits, with the hope that enemy soldiers would fall on them and be impaled. These stakes were also used as a method of torture. Sharpened stakes were the roadside bombs of the ancient world, and they were described in Greek by the word skolops – which is the exact same word that Paul uses for his thorn in the flesh. 

      So Paul was stabbed – by a messenger of Satan, according to him – “…to torment me, to keep me from being too elated” (v. 7). He could have given up, assuming that his life as an apostle was over. But instead, he discovered that it was just beginning. 

      Three times, according to this second letter to the Corinthian church, he pleaded with the Lord to remove the skolops, but God said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 9). 

      Power is made perfect in weakness. As amputee Hilbert Caesar says, “It makes me appreciate life a whole lot more.” 

      Power is made perfect in weakness. As Adam Replogle, a tank gunner who lost his left hand in Iraq, says, “Sometimes it takes people a lifetime to realize what it’s all about…you go through something like this and it grows you up a little bit.” 

      Power is made perfect in weakness. As Tom McNish, a former Air Force pilot who was a prisoner in North Vietnam, reflects: “There is no question in my mind that the experience I had in Vietnam has had an overall very positive effect on my life.” 

      Not that McNish recommends it for anyone else. Or that he would want to do it again. It was truly a time of suffering, after all. But you cannot have post-traumatic growth without trauma. 

      Think for a moment of a time when you have experienced spiritual growth. A shift in priorities. An increase in personal strength. A renewed appreciation for life. A deepening of personal relationships. Have these improvements been the result of smooth sailing and easy living? 

      Not likely. These kinds of growth come from stress, struggle and suffering. 

      I am willing to bet that just about each and every one of us could relate something similar that has happened in each of our lives,, and that there are bound to be several unifying themes.  

      First, trauma moves us from isolation to community.  

      And second, trauma shifts us from self-reliance to God-reliance.  Trauma shifts us from relying on ourselves to depending upon God. 

      Looking back on his experience in battle, Hilbert Caesar says, “The guys I served with were awesome guys.” Times of pain and suffering can force us to turn to each other, rely on each other, and serve each other – many times in sacrificial ways. “I would go through it again – for the guys I served with,” Caesar insists. “Yes. Absolutely. I wouldn’t change it for the world.” 

      In the life of the church, it is typically trauma that moves us from isolation to community. Sure, festivities can be fun, but their effect is usually superficial. What binds us together as members of the Body of Christ are illness, grief, struggle, adversity, confusion and crisis. 

      Share a meal with a neighbor at a potluck, and you have made contact. Work together on a Friday evening during lobster rolls or carry a meal to a neighbor after a death in the family, and you have built a community. 

      Soldiers find that they gain strength and inspiration from each other as they talk about their injuries and their recoveries. They become more resilient as they offer encouragement and support. The same is true as we gather in the church to talk honestly about our struggles, and to share the insights that we have gained from our successes and failures. Whether the challenge is raising teenagers, overcoming addictions, managing money, or adjusting to the loss of a loved one, there is a tremendous benefit in moving from isolation to community. 

      It is when we gather together that we discover that power truly is made perfect in weakness. 

      The second benefit of trauma is that it shifts us from self-reliance to God-reliance. It is abundantly clear from Scripture that this was a major move for the apostle Paul, a superstar of the early church who described his qualifications by saying, “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews … as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4-6). 

      To put that into terms we might better understand today: Yale University, Rhodes Scholar, Harvard Law, Wall Street, and the White House. But Paul tosses all these credentials away, pitches them literally and figuratively into the garbage, because he has discovered the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord. For Paul, a connection to Christ is what saves him from sin and makes him right with God, and he values this relationship above all else.  

      Because of Jesus, Paul moves from self-reliance to God-reliance.

      But this is not the end of his story. Paul encounters suffering. A roadside mine is triggered, a bomb explodes. This skolops, this sharpened stake, this roadside bomb, this personal trauma, has the effect of mediating God’s grace to him. Paul knows that even good revelations can shift his focus away from God and toward himself, and so the thorn comes, the effect is to keep him connected to Christ. 

      “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me,” admits Paul, “but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’” (vv. 8-9). Paul begs that the thorn will be removed, just as veterans of war plead that their pain will end, and their bodies will be restored. But the message Paul gets is that God’s grace is sufficient, in any trauma, in any time, in any situation. 

      Here’s the deal: Sometimes deliverance and victory come by removal of the source of pain. That’s not how it worked in Paul’s case. The lesson he learned is that often God will give us deliverance and victory in the midst of the pain! 

      This is what the people in the examples I have used this morning came to learn – even if they might not express it that way. God’s grace is sufficient. God’s gift of self, God’s gift of Jesus, is enough – enough to overcome any obstacle. 

      This is what Paul learns in his time of post-traumatic growth: God’s grace is sufficient. It is something that we can learn as well, as we discover the power of God’s grace in our community of faith, and in our increasing reliance on the Lord. In fact, we may even follow Paul in actually boasting of our weaknesses, because when we do this the power of Christ will dwell in us. “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ,” says Paul to the Corinthians; “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (v. 10). 

      Reliance on God moves us from weakness to strength, from agony to ecstasy, from cross to resurrection. 

      It is a perfect power. On the other side of pain.  Amen.

 
Sources: 

Ruane, Michael. “From wounds, inner strength.” The Washington Post. November 26, 2005. A1 

Sampley, J. Paul. “Second letter to the Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Bible. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000). 161-168.