Grace and Peace from Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

We all have thorns in our life.  Your thorn might be a malady.  It might be being unable to walk like you want.  Your thorn might be a broken relationship.  Your thorn might be trouble trying to make sense of God’s reasons for a certain event to come unto your life.  It might be an illness?  It might be the loss of a loved one.  It might be a continual prayer that always goes unanswered.  We all have thorns!

Today’s lesson comes to us from 2 Corinthians and tells the tale of a man named Paul and Paul’s thorn[1].  I suppose, I should say a little bit about Paul.  Paul was not going through life as a lucky man.  Paul was short, bald; he had a thick, ugly nose along with bushy eyebrows[2].  Paul went through life unmarried, and there weren’t many women complaining about this fact[3]. 

Paul went through life as a rather mundane presence, the type of guy that could sit in the back of the room without anyone noticing him.  Paul was a preacher, who actually wasn’t a very good speaker[4]. 

Paul’s life had been bad in recent years.  He had been lashed, pelted with stones, shipwrecked, and forced to journey from town to town.  Paul had more enemies than friends.  Paul went nights without sleep; or even anything to eat or drink (2 Corinthians 11:24-27).

Paul didn’t consider himself all that needy an individual as he endured all these things, but Paul continued having to come face to face with his thorn.  Paul wouldn’t quite say what his thorn was.  Some people think it was epilepsy, whereas others weren’t quite so sure.  Perhaps it’s not important that we know what Paul’s thorn was because we all have thorns.

Paul’s thorn was such that it consumed him every night as he went to sleep, and Paul reflected upon his thorn as soon as he awakened.  Paul would have given anything for his thorn to go away.

Paul would pray on three separate occasions “Lord, Lord, please take away my thorn[5]”. 

The response on the other line was silence; Paul waited then waited some more.  Finally, Paul would lower his head as he realized that his thorn would remain.  Nearly all of us have been where Paul was when these prayers went unanswered at some time in our life. 

Could there have been a purpose behind Paul’s thorn?  You see Paul didn’t hide his thorn as a secret shame like many of us would do.  Paul was going to share his thorn with the Corinthian church. 

Paul felt that the Corinthian church needed to hear about his thorn.  You see the Corinthians were a new church that was attracting all kinds of different members.  The Corinthians had two types of people within their congregation.  You probably know people like those who existed within the Corinthian church. 

The first type within the Corinthian church showed up with their heads held in shame.  They were maybe living in sexual relationships that they didn’t want others to know anything about.  They were disappointed that their children were in the news for all the wrong reasons.  They felt inadequate and unprepared to defend their faith in the midst of people that challenged it.  They gave what they could, but it wasn’t much.  They prayed occasionally, but never enough.  They were longing for something missing in their life; they hoped that the church could give.  These people would never dare to give a look-at-me testimonial in front of the churchy crowd.  They were like the Syro-phoenican woman within the Bible hoping to receive any crumbs that Jesus might give[6].

We know the other type of people within the Corinthian church you might as well call them “super-apostles[7]”.  These were the people who seemed to have it all together.  They were socially polished, self-disciplined and self-controlled, they could pray beautiful prayers, and if the Corinthian church lost them then they would be in big trouble.  The back row crowd was always ready to submit at the front row crowd’s beckoned call.  The back row crowd didn’t want to hear anybody bring up the reasons why people shouldn’t listen to them.  The back row crowd felt inadequate and unsure of themselves, they didn’t want to be leaders; all they wanted was to hear about this Jesus.

Paul had founded the Corinthian church; he had also founded churches in Ephesus, Thessalonica, Galatia, and Colossae.  Paul had given for the church with every fiber of his being.  People would assume that when Paul was envisioning the perfect church with all sorts of super-apostles filling the Corinthian congregation.  Paul though had been to the top and came to realize that there were more important places to be.  Paul had started out his life with all sorts of power.  Paul was born a Roman citizen; Paul was educated by one of the most influential rabbis in human history.  Paul began his life with so much power that he was able to send soldiers after those with whom he disagreed[8]. 

Yet here Paul was years later almost as if he was the basketball player who had transferred from the conference champion to the laughing stock.  Paul had been laughed at plenty for all his poor choices in life.  Paul was the guy who quit his job as a hot shot lawyer, only to spend the last years of his life being barked orders by others while living alone in a tiny apartment. 

Paul wanted to, wait I scratch that, no Paul needed to say something to the big shots in the Corinthian church.  Paul wanted them to know something about the Gospel, so he began to speak about his thorn.

Paul realized something about human nature that we love winners.  We watch our teams when they’re winning, yet tend to ignore them when they’re losing.  We want our religious leaders to have it all together.  We demand sermons that cause us to shed tears for their beauty, prayers that comfort with their compassion, and to be witnesses to personal lives that others should strive to achieve. 

Some of the most popular preachers today have claimed to have been to paradise.  They claim to come to know God as they rose to the top of the mountain within the world around them.  People like getting self-help from people who drive a Rolls Royce around for the world to see. 

Paul was not this leader.  Paul didn’t want the Corinthian church trying to find this leader.  Paul over the years came to realize something about his thorn.  Perhaps, Paul’s thorn had a purpose.  When Paul was Saul, he thought of life according to one set of realities.  Saul was the ultimate religious success story.  Paul spent the last years of his life feeling like anything but a success. 

So Paul let the Corinthians know that perhaps his thorn had a purpose.  Paul told them of the reason that God did not answer his request to take the thorn away.  God said to Paul “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me[9].”

When Paul said these words he remembered the words that his savior had said a generation before “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”-Matthew 23:12

Paul’s whole ministry was about this little thing that he called “grace”.  Paul proclaimed to the Ephesians “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.[10]”

Paul’s definition of grace pointed to the true meaning of the Gospel.  It’s not about whether any individual member of the Corinthian church was a Christian failure or Christian success story.  Grace is about God accepting you on terms regardless of how the world sees you or even how you see yourself. 

People had called Paul a “fool”[11].  People would snicker about what a sorry state that Paul’s life had become.  Paul realized though that in every undesirable weakness that he had been given that they had some meaning.  Paul’s weaknesses were on one hand to show how God really works.

God is at work when someone is broken-hearted about a loved one by pointing them to the day when sin and pain will be no more.  God is at work walking alongside people in hospital beds as they grieve by pointing them to the power of the Resurrection.  Paul realized that one’s weakness point us to the true nature of authority within the Church belonging to Christ alone.  However convincing we appear to be to those around us, we are ultimately powerless.  The truth is we are all weak on some level, yet through Christ we will one day become a “new creation[12]”  

You have your thorns.  You’re probably thinking of those thorns now.  You’ve maybe prayed prayers for these thorns to go away.  You haven’t gotten the answer that you wanted.  When you think of your thorns, think of Paul’s thorns.  How God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.  We are not Christians because we are better than others, we are not Christians because our lives are more together than others, we are not Christians because of the absence of sin in our lives, we are rather Christians precisely because we believe in a God who takes us into his presence in the midst of our brokenness and despair.  Perhaps Paul’s thorns were to remind him and us of this fact.  Amen


[1] 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

[2] This description of Paul comes from Fredrick Buechner’s Weekly Sermon Illustration blog entitled “Paul” published on June 29th, 2015.  Buechner’s description comes from the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla

[3] 1 Corinthians 7:7-8

[4] 2 Corinthians 10:10

[5] 2 Corinthians 12:8

[6] Mark 7:25-30, Matthew 15:21-28

[7] 2 Corinthians 11:12-21

[8] Acts 8:3

[9] 2 Corinthians 12:9

[10] Ephesians 2:8-9

[11] 1 Corinthians 4:10

[12] 2 Corinthians 5:17