Going for broke

 

2 Corinthians 12: 2-10
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 4, 2021

It was a beloved college professor who introduced me to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and gave me his copy of Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics. At the age of 24, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to the United States in 1930 to study at Union Theological Seminary, was introduced to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and it was then that he began to view the world from below, from the perspective of the oppressed and the marginalized. Later, after he returned to Germany, was ordained, and became a lecturer in systematic theology, he moved from Christianity as an intellectual pursuit to one of social justice and the gospel that can transform human lives. Bonhoeffer was the first to use his position as clergy and as a voice of the Church to speak out against Hitler and his persecution of those of the Jewish faith. In April 1933 Bonhoeffer declared that “[the Church] must not simply bandage the victims beneath the wheel of injustice but drive a spoke in the wheel itself.”

Bonhoeffer continued to run afoul of the Nazi regime because of his pacifist views and his outspokenness. He also had several opportunities to leave Germany and continue his studies and his work with students elsewhere. Eventually he concluded that in order to help reconstruct Christian life in Germany after the war with integrity, he must remain in solidarity and live through the turmoil with those who were resisting. After he had been banned from speaking and publishing, Bonhoeffer joined the German military intelligence and served as a courier for the German resistance, helping German Jews escape to Switzerland. In April of 1943 he was arrested and later accused of conspiring in a plot to assassinate Hitler.



While in prison, Bonhoeffer wrote letters to his fiancée Maria and to his friend Eberhard. In one letter to Eberhard dated July 16, 1944, almost 9 months before his execution, he wrote these words, “So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without [God]. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets God’s self be pushed out of the world on to the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.”

I wonder if Bonhoeffer was thinking about the apostle Paul when he wrote those words. More than most of us, I think he had a deeper understanding of Paul, who would also be imprisoned and write letters from there. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul is having difficulty separating his ego from his leadership. He wants to boast of his ecstatic visions, his spiritual experiences with the supernatural to surpass those of his rivals who were putting him down, trying to usurp his place in the Corinthian church. But he realizes that he cannot boast if he is to remain true to Christ: Christ who saved his life, Christ who embraced weakness, who was pushed out of the world on to a cross.



Paul goes on to say that to prevent him from exalting or elevating himself over others, he was given a thorn in his flesh to torment him. Many have speculated what this could be, a physical ailment or something that reminded him of the persecutions he prosecuted, but it is bad theology that attempts to redeem human suffering with God’s purpose for it. Instead, I think Paul is having a ‘come to Jesus’ moment in which he hits the bottom of it all. He speaks his truth, he goes for broke: he has no power, he has nothing to claim for himself, save for his weakness, his vulnerability, his authenticity, his humanity, and Jesus showed him the way.

It is at this Table that we face the same truth and we are loved into that same grace. It is not a table for when we have it all together but when we don’t know how we’re going to pick up the pieces. It is not a reward for the righteous but rather healing for the wounded and mercy for the brokenhearted. This is the Table where we are invited to lean into our weakness, our mess, our powerlessness, uncertainty, discomfort, the hard yet hopeful things and be free. It is the Table where we view life from below rather than from above. It is a Table where our thorns and our imperfections are welcome, with no shame or judgment. It is the Table where we are pushed out into the world, not alone but with each other, to jam a spoke in the wheel of injustice. It is the Table of interdependence. We come to this Table so that all the other tables in our lives and in this world would be like this one. It is the Table of solidarity, compassion, and forgiveness, where we gather with all the saints who have loved us into loving, who have forgiven us into forgiving, who have re-membered us into God’s kindom.



Borrowing a page from Fred Rogers, I invite all of us to take a minute right now and remember those saints who showed us how to be authentic by being just who they were, who invited us into their struggles, who were wholehearted human beings, and give thanks for them.



Who were you thinking of? 



Let us do and be the same. Let us invite others into our struggles, our powerlessness, our weakness—wholeheartedly—and view the world from below. Go for broke. Not only is God’s grace sufficient to our need, we are sufficient just as we are, just as those for whom we are thankful were sufficient just as they were. There is nothing else we have to be except ourselves. Power is made complete, is made whole, is made holy in our weakness, for that is how we set each other free. Thanks be to God.

Benediction – enfleshed.com

Thank God we have each other!
That we can connect in our earthy bodies
on this curvy landscape of existence,
that we can gaze at the stars and dream into being
the compassionate realities we desperately desire.
Go forth, you interdependent part
of the beautiful, heartbreaking whole —
it is for freedom we set one another free.