FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

In the Gospels in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed Jesus command the wind and sea, and order a little girl to arise from the dead. But today’s Gospel is blunt: “He was not able to perform any mighty deed there.” Why not? Because of the people’s lack of faith.  As Paul confides in today’s Second Reading, insults and hardships are God’s way of teaching us to rely solely on His grace.

By all accounts, Paul wasn’t an impressive man physically.   Paul himself says that some people say about him, “His letters are weighty and forceful but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” But Paul didn’t let this get him down. And he knew a thing or two about boasting. When he was still known as Saul, he could boast that he did really well in Pharisee school. He had already brought down several Christians and was on his way to Damascus to round up several more when the risen Lord knocks him flat on his back, blinds him, and gives him a right talking-to about persecuting him—the Lord—when he hurts his brothers and sisters. Saul, totally disoriented, blind, and incapacitated has to be cared for three days by the Christians he had planned to haul off to prison. “Okay,” says the Lord, “now you’re ready.”

Ready for what?

More suffering. Shipwrecks, imprisonments, beatings, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, sicknesses, weaknesses. But all for Christ. So, Paul is one of the most joy-filled and confident people on the planet. He has the power of Christ—not his own power, but God’s power, to do God’s will, to know and accept God’s gift of grace. He got it and wanted everyone else to know that God’s gift of salvation is free—gratis—grace. There’s nothing you can do to earn God’s love. You can’t earn it, buy it, deserve it. You can only accept it. That’s it. Crazy. Ridiculous. Who can love with such wild abandon as not to require a certain amount of accomplishment to get into God’s kingdom, self-earned worthiness, deservingness?

“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength,” Paul wrote (See 1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

And God’s weakness is stronger than anything else, visible or invisible. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul wrote, “Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?” (Romans 8:35)

“No!” is the answer. Paul continued, “In all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39).

When we are weak, when we rely on the strength of God, we are strong.

What does this mean for us? It means if God asks you to do something, God won’t take ‘I can’t do it’ for an answer. God already knows you can’t do it. But God’s not asking you to do anything on your own. In fact, if you try to do it on your own, you will fail. But “I can do all things through [God] who strengthens me,” as Paul writes in Philippians (4:13).

It means we may not get what we want. We may not even get the kind of strength we want, even to do things we think God wants us to do. Paul prays three times that whatever it was he was suffering with might be taken away from him. God told him no. It was more important to learn the deep and abiding truth: lean on God.

Sometimes it takes an experience of great weakness to remember we can throw ourselves on the mercy, love, forgiveness, grace, and strength of God, and find that this holds—that we are held in everlasting arms, the strongest arms, the only strength we need.

Jesus will work no mighty deeds in our lives unless we abandon ourselves to Him in faith. Blessed then are those who take no offense in Him. Instead, we must look upon Him with the eyes of servants—knowing that the son of Mary is also the Lord enthroned in the heavens.

[little2add]

Lord, you are the source of all life and health. As we pray for the sick person, we ask you to bring them healing and comfort. May they feel your presence with them, and may they be strengthened by your love. We pray that you will grant them peace and rest, and that they will be restored to full health. Amen.