Most of us are drawn to glamour and success, at least at some level. We admire sporting superstars like Andy Murray, we're impressed by great orators and high achievers. But all too often this hero-worship, harmless in itself, can find its way into the Church, and then we need to be on our guard.
In 2 Corinthinians 12:1-10, Paul is trying to persuade people not to be deceived by those who are far more impressive and, on the face of it, more spiritual than he is. He's had visions and spiritual ecstasies too, he says, but that isn't what's important: God's power is "made perfect in weakness". It's in people who are imperfect, perhaps in pain and unimpressive that God's power is most clearly seen, because their achievements can only be put down to his grace.
So, he says, God gives him "a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me". He asked God three times to take it away, with no result: Paul remained damaged and weak.
But what is this "thorn"?
The Greek word is skolops, used for things that were sharp and pointed. The word could mean a stake, or a fishhook, too. Perhaps it was a physical ailment. It's been suggested he might have had an eye problem that perhaps didn't look very nice. At the end of Galatians he takes over from his secretary and says, "See what large letters I write to you in my own hand!" Earlier in the book (4:15) he says, "I know you would have torn out your own eyes and given them to me."
On the other hand: the word for 'flesh' he uses is sarx. Thisreally means the side of our human nature that's weak and fallen, oriented away from God. If he had wanted to say "a thorn in the body", he could have done. So perhaps he was talking about a spiritual problem, a temptation of some kind that kept coming back.
Or, perhaps he was talking about a person, or people. Nowadays we talk about an irritating person being a "pain in the neck". In those days, they would talk about someone being a "barb in the eye" – a skolops. So maybe he's talking about his enemies, people who were making his life miserable because they were opposed to what he was doing.
The fact that we don't actually know is important, because instead of narrowing that problem down, it expands it. All of these are things that affect us. We do suffer physical pain, limitation. But we also struggle to live as disciples of Christ in the face of temptation. And we struggle with people who are pains in the neck, who might irritate us, frustrate us or hurt us.
Paul offers us a way of living with these things that's nothing like what we might have expected. He says, "You can't necessarily expect God to solve your problems for you. I asked him to solve mine, and he didn't. But what matters isn't how comfortable we are, but how glorious God is: and sometimes it's our weakness, our failure, our incapacity that shows God's glory, not our strength and our gifts and our glorious achievements."
This is radical. The ancient world was no different from ours. They idolised success, perfection, quite literally. Corinth was a Greek city. We examples of astonishing Greek statues in marble and bronze, representing the perfect bodies of athletes. There are the great Greek stories, too, celebrating the achievements of Achilles and Odysseus. Even the Greek gods were just bigger and stronger versions of human beings. It was all about power, success and glamour.
But Paul says Christianity has nothing to do with that. God says to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." "For when I am weak, then I am strong," he concludes.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
