Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
7^th of July 2024

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

If only the Apostle Paul had known that his letters to the various new communities of Jesus’ followers were still going to be read two thousand years later. He might then have given us a few more details to explain exactly what he was saying. ‘I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven … And I know that such a person … was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.’ Really, Paul? The third heaven? Things no mortal is permitted to repeat? What on earth are you talking about?

As I said last week, Paul had a difficult relationship with the church in Corinth, involving chastising letters and painful visits. In the passage we hear today Paul seems to be responding to challenges to his ministry from those he refers to as ‘false apostles’. From the way Paul responds to them, these apostles seem to have preached with eloquence, boasting of the special revelations and visions they had received from God. The church in Corinth was being led astray by their preaching, and so Paul needed to justify himself to them again. But were he to justify himself through his own special revelations and visions he would be playing their game. So Paul takes an indirect route.

Everyone agrees that when Paul is referring to ‘a person in Christ’ he is talking about himself. By using the third person Paul is distancing himself from his experience so that he does not get into a competition of ‘my vision is better than your vision’ with his opponents. For the same reason, rather than describing what he saw in Paradise in the sort of detail that the author of the Book of Revelation uses, Paul says that revealing what he heard is forbidden. He may be describing his encounter with the risen Christ that we hear about in the Book of Acts (9:1-9). But we cannot be sure, because Paul gives us no details. He is saying that he could boast, but he will not: ‘except of my weaknesses’.

Paul then goes on to talk about the thorn that Satan has placed in his flesh. Again, we are given no details. This could be because the Corinthians already know what his thorn is. Down the centuries Christians have guessed that it was sexual temptation, or guilt over his earlier persecution of the church, or his humiliation at not convincing more of his fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, or an illness like epilepsy, or the very external opposition by super apostles that he is now facing. Paul’s reticence means that all of us can empathise, being reminded of our own individual thorns in the flesh. Mine is the illness I refer to as The Evil Depression. You will all have thorns of your own. Paul’s point is that his thorn reminds him not to boast of his own achievements or his amazing spiritual experiences, as the super-apostles do. Instead, he boasts only of his weaknesses, because they ensure that he correctly attributes any success he has to God. And he knows that weakness is no reason for shame, because God’s power is made perfect in Paul’s weakness, and so whenever Paul is weak, then he is strong.

In today’s passage from the Gospel according to Mark we see that Jesus also has a thorn in his flesh: the disbelief of his own people. After healing the woman with a haemorrhage and the daughter of Jairus, Jesus goes home. And as Jesus himself says: ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house’. Unlike the story we heard last week, today’s story is an un-miracle story.

To the people of Nazareth, Jesus is not the teacher, healer, and worker of miracles. He is the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon and his sisters. They cannot believe that this man that they know, this ordinary labourer, could be empowered and authorised by God. This is the scandal of the incarnation. God is being revealed in someone ordinary, someone known, a carpenter, son and brother. For those who expect to see God only in greatness this ordinary man simply cannot be the bearer of the presence of God. And so his own reject Jesus, and he can do no deed of power there.

Jesus’ mission does not end just because his own town has rejected him. Jesus extends his ministry by sharing it with the Twelve; he now commissions them to repeat in their lives and mission his life and mission. He instructs them to go out two by two, taking nothing for their journey except a staff, wearing sandals and staying in the first house that welcomes them until they leave a place. These instructions ensure that the lifestyle of the Twelve is a statement in itself. The missionaries are to put their lives where their words are. They go out in pairs because according to Jewish law, two people are needed to provide reliable evidence, and because the mission is communal, not that of charismatic individuals. Their staff and sandals are symbols of the pilgrimage lifestyle that they are taking up, and it is interesting that in Matthew and Luke’s telling they are denied even those. (Matthew 10:10, Luke 10:4) They are not to move from house to house seeking better lodgings. And they are to travel light to show trust in the authority that sent them and to ward off suggestions of self-serving.

The mission of the Twelve foreshadows the mission of the church. Like the Twelve, the church is always a community on the way, entrusted with the message of the gospel and the healing ministry of the sacraments. We are called to live as Jesus lived and as the disciples lived. The charge to the church to travel light still applies. And the church, like Jesus and the Twelve, can expect rejection. One of the instructions that Jesus gives is: ‘If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ This is interesting because in Mark’s telling of the gospel it does not appear that the Twelve are rejected. But between their sending and their return Mark gives us the story of the murder of John the Baptist, which we will hear next week. Despite an apparently successful mission tour, Mark is still reminding his readers that what Jesus’ followers can usually expect is rejection. He is writing about his community’s own experience.

Both Paul, describing the thorn in his flesh, and Jesus, telling the Twelve to take nothing for their journey but staff and sandals, are making the same point. We do not share the good news of Jesus Christ using our own power. We do so in the power of God. Like the Twelve, we are sent by Jesus, and it is Jesus who gives us any authority we might have. This means that we do not need to let any thorns in our flesh prevent us. As God told Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ Whenever we are weak, then we are strong, because God is with us. Let us follow in the footsteps of Paul, and of the Twelve, as they follow in the footsteps of Jesus – even if we cannot boast of being ‘caught up to the third heaven’.