2 Corinthians 12:1-10
Textual Introduction: Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians seems
to have been written, in part, as a defense of his ministry against false
accusations by unnamed opponents. Some
of the statements are in the form of irony to underscore his commitment to the
gospel and to the Corinthians. That’s
the only reason he offers the catalog of his troubles: to refute the charges being made against
him. My concern is not with his defense
but with the personal dynamic involved in an incident he shares.
**********
Back
in the 1970’s Dr Hook and the Medicine Show sang a song called “The Ballad of
Lucy Jordan.” You don’t hear it much
anymore. In fact, the last time I heard
it was on a radio station devoted to comedy songs. “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” is hardly comedy.
The
song tells the story of a suburban homemaker who suddenly loses her grasp on
reality, runs screaming through her neighborhood, and then climbs to her roof,
where she must be rescued and taken to an institution. The song’s memorable refrain goes:
At the age of thirty-seven
She realized she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair.
Lucy
Jordan lost her sanity because she wasn’t able to give up on a hope she
had. Or, as some might say, give up on
a very specific dream.
In
his letter to them, Paul tells the Corinthians of a time when he had to give up
the hope of being free from a very troubling problem.
Let
me be clear. This was not the yearning
of a man we would call a whiner. In
fact, in the previous chapter he lists some of the experiences he had had while
sharing the gospel. Listen to what he
says:
I’ve … been jailed …often, beaten up more times than I
can count, and at death’s door time after time. 24I’ve been
flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, 25beaten
by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked
three times, and drifted in the open sea for a night and a day. 26In
hard traveling year in and year out, I’ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers,
struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I’ve been at risk in the city, at
risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by
those I thought were my brothers. 27I’ve known drudgery and
hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted
by the cold, naked to the weather.
All
of this Paul endured to carry out his mission of sharing the gospel. And though he wasn’t a complainer, he hoped
one thing would change. So, he prayed
about it and he prayed about it and he prayed about it. Paul knew the stories of individuals like
Hannah who prayed and prayed for a child; finally, God said to her, “You can
stop praying, it’s about to happen—you’re going to have a son.” But in Paul’s case God spoke to him and said,
“You can stop praying, it’s not going to happen.”
Paul
had been praying about getting rid of what he called “a thorn in the flesh.” He really doesn’t identify it, apart from the
note that it was “a messenger from Satan, sent to keep him from being too proud
or elated.” However, that interpretation
may reflect hindsight rather than his understanding at the time he was praying
to escape.
Over
the centuries, Bible students have debated what Paul was talking about. The suggestions have usually involved one of
the following.
·
The “thorn” was the persecution Paul
faced for preaching the gospel, perhaps at the hands of an anonymous enemy who
followed Paul on his journeys.
·
The “thorn” was an actual demon
following Paul around.
·
The “thorn” was some physical ailment
like poor vision, clubfeet, or even a hearing loss.
·
The “thorn” was a specific kind of
temptation, particularly sexual temptation.
·
The “thorn” was some form of epilepsy.
Truth
is, no one knows. We just know that Paul
asked for it to be removed and God did not allow that hope to become a
reality. As the story suggests, Paul
seems to have stopped praying, he seems to have given up on that hope. That was okay because he discovered he was
better off without that particular hope.
I’ll talk about that later. For
now, let me talk about this whole matter of giving up hope.
In
the minds of some people, preachers aren’t supposed to say things like this;
but there are times when we should give up hope. Holding onto hope past its sell-by date can
be detrimental.
--that
unfulfilled hope may seize our hearts, driving out all other thoughts, leaving
us spiritually and emotionally unbalanced.
--that
unfulfilled hope may make us laughing-stocks to those who watch us.
--that
unfulfilled hope may cause us to doubt the promises of God.
I
say this because we sometimes believe every hope comes from God. We fail to see that some perfectly good hopes
are the product of our own desires and wishes.
At the same time, we may have unhealthy hopes—hopes that would be
harmful to us if they became reality.
Sometimes we also attribute such hopes to God.
I
don’t know if you have some hope you need to give up. I don’t know if year after year you’ve been
harboring that hope, pouring more and more emotional energy into it, only to
see it fail to materialize, but I do know if you hold onto a hope you should
abandon, you aren’t doing your soul any favors.
Before
I try to describe the kind of hope we should abandon, let me remind you of
those hopes you should hang onto.
You
should hang onto any Biblical hope that is clearly addressed to all
believers.
You
should hang onto any hope where you see progress—however small—toward
that hope becoming a reality. (For most
of us, this would include the hope of becoming better Christians.
You
should hang on to hope—even in the face of failure—if that hope involves
doing something significant for God.
Your failure may have more to do with you than the nature of the
hope. Moses hoped to save one Israelite
and failed. He had to learn to trust God
so he could save 3,000,000 Israelites. I recently heard this summary of Moses’
life: Moses spent forty years thinking
he was somebody, then he spent forty years thinking he was nobody; finally, he
spent forty years discovering what God can do with somebody who thinks he’s
nobody.
*****
In a sense, Paul
was lucky. He gave up a hope he had held
onto for a long time because God told him to.
Most of us don’t have that experience.
What then should we do? What
kinds of hope should be given up? Since
I don’t know what your individual hopeless hope may be, I am going to speak in
generalities.
1) Give up any hope the fulfillment of which
would injure another person.
This kind of hope
is often the offspring of jealousy and envy.
It’s wrong to
expend our energy hoping that our competition, in business or for the slot on
the cheerleading squad break a leg or go bankrupt. To harbor such a hope sickens our souls.
It’s okay to hope
for marriage but it’s wrong to hope the object of your affection will leave his
or her fiancé at the altar to come running to you. It may make a great TV movie but in real
life, it will only make you heartsick and uncertain since running out on a
“true love” may be habit-forming.
2) Give up any hope the fulfillment of which
would require an injustice be done on our behalf.
You may want to be
admitted to a school with high academic standards, but your grades are
substandard. To hope that God will
somehow get you in would be to ask for God to overlook those who made the
grade.
3) Give up any hope the fulfillment of which
would circumvent the need for talent, hard work, and commitment others have had
to invest to achieve the same goal.
Have you ever
watched the audition shows for American
Idol? That could be a painful
experience, especially in the days of Simon Cowell. One after another, talentless youngsters try
to make it onto the show. It’s clear
they’ve never met someone like Simon honest enough to tell them that singing is
not their strength. That painful moment
was even more painful when someone argued that Simon and the other the judges
didn’t know talent when they heard it.
These youngsters seemed to think they should be given the recording
contract and skip the whole contest.
My point is there
are few overnight wonders. If you hope
to do something worthwhile without hard work, you probably need to give up that
hope.
This is why so
many of the old professions and a few of the modern demand that aspirants must begin
as apprentices and move through stages of training before they can claim to
have mastered a craft. To put it another
way, you have to learn how to cut carrots before you can wear the funny pants
and chef’s hat.
If you hope to be
an effective Bible teacher but don’t want to spend the time looking at the
passage you want to teach to try to understand what the author was saying and
why, and how what that author says should speak to your students, you’ll never
be more than superficial.
4) Give up any hope the fulfillment of which
can’t give you what you’re truly hoping for.
Some hopes can’t
deliver on their promises. This is a
“false hope.” It’s the hope which says
my life would be better if I could be somewhere else, had something
else, or were with someone else.
It is the hope which says a bigger bank account will make me happier,
more content.
Now, don’t
misunderstand what I’m saying. A bigger
bank account might make you feel less anxious when the bills arrive, but a
bigger bank account won’t make you feel greater value as a human being—if it
does, you’re trapped in materialism. If
you hate Ohio summers, moving to Alaska might make you cooler, but if you hate
yourself, it won’t matter where you move because you’ll always be there.
People who are
susceptible to this kind of false hope sometimes fall prey to hucksters. There the people who believe the agent who
says, “These stocks will double your money in a year,” or “This business is
recession proof.” They’re the folks who
grab their checkbook, an envelope, and a stamp when the TV evangelist says,
“Send in that check and God will return it a hundredfold.”
Before you embrace
any hope, make sure it merits your commitment.
Lewis Smedes
writes about knowing when we should stop hoping. His words help summarize some of what I’ve
been saying. He says, “There is a time to hope and a time not to
hope. It is not wise to hope for thing
that cannot happen. It is not right to hope for things that should not happen.”
We hope for the
impossible when we hope God will violate the free will of others to force them
to conform to what we feel they should do.
That’s true even if what we want them to do is wiser and healthier than
the course they have set for themselves.
Those of us who
have been wounded by the actions of someone in days past, maybe even in our
childhood, might fanaticize about thing having been different, hope for a
different past. But the past can’t be
changed. We can only accept what
happened and set out to deal with its impact on us.
It’s here that we
really need to remember what God told Paul.
God reminded Paul that his grace was enough to help him through the
toughest times. “My grace,” God said,
“is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
What a great
promise that is. The ancient world was
caught up with images of power: the army
with its shining armor, the commander on the powerful horse. Now God is telling Paul that real power comes
when we admit our weakness. The more we
acknowledge our weakness, the more God can work in and through us. The kind of hopes we most need to abandon are
born out of a sense that our lives are not all we want them to be and the
notion that the solution lies somewhere other than our relationship with God.
God promises to be
there for Paul. For his part, Paul says,
“Why didn’t I see this all along? I’m
stronger when I admit I’m weak and trust God than I am when I think I’m strong
and trust myself.” The thorn in the
flesh—whatever it might have been—didn’t go away but its power to impair
diminished before God’s power.
The important
thing for you to remember is that even if you have to give up on some faulty
hope, you don’t have to give up on God.
Paul’s hope of being rid of his “thorn” was trumped by his hope of a
more vital relationship with God.
Conclusion
Lewis Smedes tells
this story:
Tammy Kramer, one of the lovelier spirits who have blessed my
world, was chief of the outpatient AIDS clinic at Los Angeles County
Hospital. She was watching a young man
who had come in one morning for his regular dose of medicine. He sat in tired silence on a high clinic
stool while a new doctor at the clinic poked a needle into his arm and, without
looking up at his face, asked, “You are aware, aren’t you, that you are not
long for this world—a year at most?”
The patient stopped at Tammy’s desk on his way out, face distorted
in pain, and hissed, “That jerk took away my hope.”
“I guess he did. Maybe it’s
time to find another one.”
There may be some
hope you need to surrender. If so, that
doesn’t mean you should give up all hope.
You just need to look for a better hope.
That’s the kind of hope God will help you find.
