Weak
1 Corinthians 9:16-23

February 8, 2009


Teachers are always more influential than preachers. I clearly remember the lectures by our history of Christianity professor John Von Rohr, when with a glow in his face he told us about the early Christian martyrs, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, and others. He so wanted to have been a martyr, but figured the age of martyrs had long since passed. No one quite remembers the specific sermon of any preacher in the same way!

When Christians began writing about their faith - that is after they had finished writing the Gospels and letters of Paul and of others - the descriptions of the martyrdom of early Christians became a popular genre. Some were bishops and prominent persons, others were simply simple people. To us this may seem a morbid pastime, yet many were keenly interested in not only the gory details of their torture and death, but in how they stood steadfast for their faith, how they said No to the powers and principalities and said Yes to God. There ended up being large collections of martyr stories, one notably set in the middle of the Persian/Iranian empire where Christians were looked upon as de facto sympathizers to their Roman co-religionists. Christians read these stories almost like manuals on how to be martyrs or witnesses - as the word originally meant - manuals on how to be weak as a Christian.

They were gathering at the First Baptist Church, Selma, Alabama, for their lessons. In the early 1960’s in various locations in the Deep South the Civil Rights Movement always began in a church, whether it was a sit-in in a segregated lunch counter, a picket line outside a store for whites only, a march to the state capital to insist on the right to vote. The lessons always began with hymns and rousing congregational singing, and then moved on to the organizational matters of the day’s actions, as well as talks and role playing on how one needed to respond non-violently to the vile and violent attacks by those who opposed them. There were all sorts of techniques and psychological strategies they were trained to put into action, but none of these were to involve physical retribution.

But there was one theological strategy - you were not to hate your oppressors, but love them, and try to convince them to treat you as an equal human being before God. In a very real way these protestors, yes, many were Protestants, were being given lessons on how to be weak, but another way of saying it is that they were being given practical lessons on how to be Christian.

It always has been a puzzling issue just how to act as a Christian. Appearing squeaky clean and goody-goody is still employed too often as a cover and a distraction to what is really going on in one’s heart. Most of us are concerned not about how to look like a Christian, but how to act like one. Paul too knew the question needed to be answered.

But Paul knew that lots of people only want to look good as a Christian doing good things, lots more interested in the development of their ego than in the development and nurturing of a good world. If I preach the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. I am not good simply because I am preaching; I don’t have a choice. A person who does not have a choice is not responsible; isn’t that always the argument for soldiers who in the committal of atrocities were “just following orders”? Paul was just following orders.

Orders or no, Paul had the idea. Being a Christian, being a Christian church, is not like other aspirations or organizations. “For though I am free from all people, I have made myself a slave to all.... To those outside the law I became as one outside the law.... To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” You won’t find this strategy in any books in the business section of the bookstore, nor in the sports world, nor on the lips of any motivational speaker for success in your life. Paul, the quintessential Christian, the person many say came up with the ideas of Christianity, became a slave, became an outlaw, became weak in order to embody the Gospel.

You and I may have these Biblical verses memorized by heart, but we don’t believe they are right. We expect our church to be strong, to compete in this world on the same level with other companies and organizations and societies. We don’t want a wimpy, milque-toasty Jesus as a model for our lives and for the lives of our children. Church is supposed to build us up for that rough and violent world out there.

A church, a Christian, who tries to be stronger than the world will inevitably encounter somebody stronger than itself and will be defeated miserably. Even worse, we will be strong doing things that don’t matter. We will have prestige, fame, and fortune, but no real compassion for anyone who is not like ourselves. The stronger you become, the less justice matters, as long as it is your definition of justice.

Yet the moment you recognize that being a Christian, being collectively a Christian congregation is not to be defined and limited by the non-Christian world, then you will understand that our perceived weakness is stronger than anything else in the world. When your strength lies in your weakness you cannot be defeated.

If you become a slave, you will be able to free those who are convinced, those who boast they are strong. If you become an outlaw, you will be able to rescue those who are the outcastes of society. If you become weak or non-violent, violence will tremble in your presence when it cannot destroy you or your argument for real justice.

Remember all those Bible verses? In the first chapter of this same letter Paul meets this worldly power talk head on. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.... Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For the foolishness of God is wiser than people, and the weakness of God is stronger than people” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 20, 25).

Don’t let the world tell you what the Christian Church is supposed to be like, let us gather together and in worship and prayer and in action, let us say to one another, “I heard the voice of Jesus say....”

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan