Many people have speculated about Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” What was it? A physical ailment, maybe a bad back, or hip, or knee? Was it perhaps malaria, not uncommon in the Mediterranean region at that time? Malaria keeps flaring up and coming back once you’ve had it? We sometimes use the phrase “thorn in the flesh” to refer to a person, someone who’s annoying to live with or maybe to work with. Wow - maybe some people are saying that about me? Anyway, could that be the problem? Did Paul have someone who aggravated him, and who he’d like to be rid of?
Personally, I’ve often wondered whether the thorn was some aspect of Paul’s life he’d tried to put right but found he couldn’t. Like my brother and his smoking. Often when we meet up he tells me he’s given up, but then next time we meet there he is, still puffing away. No tobacco this side of the Atlantic in Paul’s day, but was there some aspect of his character he wanted to change but always found he couldn’t. After all, in another letter he wrote, “The good that I want to do, I find I don’t do.”
So Paul, whatever it was really that troubled him, Paul wanted to be stronger than he was, but he’d come to understand that wasn’t going to happen - and that it would be in his own weakness and imperfection that the strength and wonder of God’s love could be revealed. There was only Jesus he could boast about.
Our Gospel reading today has Jesus sending his disciples out to prepare the way. His ministry is still in its early days, as he travels from village to village in his home district of Galilee. We might think the disciples are rather poorly equipped. They’re sent out with no money, no food, not even a change of clothes. What kind of mission campaign is this? Answer - one in which the missioners also have things to learn and discover. To speak of the Lord, they must also trust in the Lord. They themselves must be trusting in him utterly, completely, for everything.
And this is the example taken to heart by Francis of Assisi when he began his own personal ministry some thousand or more years later. He and the members of the order he founded of Friars Minor, or Little Brothers would also have no money, no pack, no change of clothes, as they journeyed around the villages of that part of Italy, and by doing so began a movement that spread worldwide. “In our poverty, we are rich,” he said.
“In my weakness, I am strong,” says St Paul. Or maybe, in my weakness, my Lord is strong within me. I generally worry more about the Church when it’s strong than when it’s weak. I worry more about rich and powerful churches than poor and struggling ones. With this proviso, though: the church may be small in numbers and poor in resources, but it needs to be big in faith, big in its trust in the Lord.
Like St Paul, and like the disciples Jesus sent out with no pack or second coat, we are in the service of truth, we proclaim the God of truth. My faith tells me this: the love of God is the ultimate truth behind everything I see and know. Love is what makes sense of my life. And I may be small, I may be vulnerable, and I may be getting on a bit, but the truth is no less true for that. Nor is it any less true because not so many believe it.
Father Brian D’Arcy was doing Pause for Thought on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show the other day. I don’t hear him often, but he’s always worth hearing, and here’s something he said the other day: “Always treat with caution anyone who claims to be one hundred percent sure of what they believe.” Isn’t that the opposite of what you’d expect? Surely the more certain and sure the someone is in what they believe and preach, the better?
It may seem counter-intuitive, but I do think that faith is about living with questions. Here’s what Paul himself wrote: For now we see through a glass, darkly; then, we will see face to face. I believe in that “then” Paul looks forward to.
For now, though, I still have questions. Not long ago, someone asked me, “Can you prove to me that what you believe is true?” No, I can’t. I can’t prove it because to live a life of faith you have at some point to take a leap of faith; every step isn’t clearly marked. For one thing, good things don’t only happen to good people, bad things don’t only happen to bad guys; I can see that. Some of the world’s evils can be laid at the door of human greed or avarice or prejudice, but not all of them.
As a Christian I believe that evil has been defeated once and for all, that God’s love is triumphant, and that the place and time and event where this happened is Calvary and the Cross. But I can’t prove it. All I can say is that generations have lived this faith (Francis of Assisi among them), and that I’ll live it too. I may not always feel like living it, I may not always be good at living it, and we all have our thorns in the flesh. But it’s in the living, not through the spoken argument, that our faith becomes persuasive.
And that’s why Jesus sent his disciples out to do things, to heal and befriend and to listen and to forgive, to be compassionate and caring. He sent them to live the Kingdom faith and not just speak about it. Some folk they went to would see and hear and understand; others, perhaps would not, and some would even jeer at them. That’s the reality of mission. That’s what happens. “Take nothing with you,” Jesus had said. So the disciples had nothing to offer but themselves - and their Lord.
However good I may be at speaking and preaching the faith, it’s whether I live the faith that counts. And if my words and deeds don’t match up, however wonderful my words, it’s not going to work. To be blunt, if our message as a church really amounts to “Come and join us and keep our church going,” that’s not going to be enough. We need to inspire people, and to be inspired they need to see in us that what we have is worth having, and worth the living of it.
So here are a few points in conclusion: whatever the thorn was in Paul’s flesh, it wasn’t there to derail his ministry but to keep it real, to keep him on the straight and narrow. That thorn reminded him that he wasn’t Paul the superstar preaching himself but Paul the apostle, preaching Christ. To do that he needed to be humble and self-aware, to know that his own strength could never be enough, and to keep living the life of faith. And those disciples of Jesus? They may have seemed under-resourced when they were sent out, but they weren’t. God was with them all the way, and as they worked they would learn to trust him.
Like them, we go in the strength of the Lord and not in our own strength. Like Francis of Assisi and his band of “little brothers”, our mission needs to begin with service, with things done rather than things said. Think about that, because I’d like each church in this group over the coming months to be settling on one thing (or at least one thing) that we can do, that is within our strength and capabilities, to be of service where we are. And if you’re not sure, nor am I. And if you think you’re too small and weak, so do I. And so, I suspect, did those first disciples when Jesus sent them out on the road. So did Paul, with his thorn in the flesh - maybe that was the thorn in his flesh.
But you know, I think it may well be what God wants of us. And one last thing, a rule of my life. If you want answers, don’t go to the guy who’s got them all, or thinks he has; go to the guy who’s still got questions.
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