Paul's thorn and our identity

 Pentecost VII sermon, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

There has been a lot of speculation over many, many years about Paul’s “thorn” in his flesh that he mentions in his letter to the Corinthians, and that has led to speculation that he had some physical ailment. In the closing of his letter to the Galatians, he writes “see what large letters I write with my own hand,” suggesting something affecting his vision or maybe dexterity. Other interpretations are more spiritual or pastoral, picking up on his underlying message to the Corinthians that this ailment, this suffering, is to the glory of God. Amid his mention of his thorn is a lot of talk of boasting, calling attention to his strength of faith with a little bit of pride thrown in. He boasts about a spiritual experience that “someone I know,” meaning him, had, and about the “exceptional character of the revelation,” meaning his story, and then goes on to talk about his thorn that keeps him from boasting about himself. And then he goes on to boast about his strength in weakness, which these days we might call humble bragging. Maybe I am being unfair to Paul in not taking seriously his perseverance in the light of a physical limitation, which is to be admired. Maybe I should see him as an example of overcoming personal challenges to do great things in the world, which is noteworthy. In the end, this is one of the places where I have trouble finding the gravity in his ideas because here his identity revolves around his call from God to do, rather than being from his core being, that is, who God made him and called him to be.

In the weeks before the General Convention, there was a discussion in a Facebook group dedicated to the Book of Common Prayer around a resolution that would remove some words from the prayers. Among them was the word “walk” because some felt it was an ableist attitude denigrating to people who can’t walk, as voiced by a wheelchair-bound priest. Another wheelchair-bound priest offered a counter argument saying that they didn’t object to the ambulatory verb because they were more than their disability. In both of these illustrations, there is an encounter between two opposing attitudes, where one is a personal identity centered around something distinctive about that person, and the other is an attitude that something distinctive about someone is just one part of their identity. It’s a question of where the center of their identity is and thus what they feel they need to defend.

Neither attitude is entirely wrong, but each has a weak spot. A personal identity centered on a particular characteristic can be self-limiting and self-centered, while a personality that potentially minimizes personal limitations can lead to hubris and unrealistic goals. There is a problem, too, in interpreting the word “walk” at the end of the confessional prayer “that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.” Do we physically walk in God’s ways, or can we practice them? Are God’s ways a physical path somewhere that can’t be followed by a disabled person, or are they instead found in scripture? The question of who is being harmed by a word comes down to why they feel harmed. When we consider how we express our faith as children of God, we must carefully consider why we express it the way we do so that our expression is for the glory of God, and not for our own glory or to the denigration of others. Words are powerful, so we must be careful in how we use them and in how we interpret them. A wrong use or a wrong interpretation of a word can cause a lot of harm.

The story of Jesus preaching in his hometown and the resident’s reaction to him represent a different perspective on the source of personal identity. The people in Jesus’ hometown took the  position of identity centered on a personal characteristic, where they insisted on Jesus’ identity revolving around his profession. They dishonor him by missing the point that he is much more than just a carpenter, that being a carpenter is just part of his identity. His claim to be much more than what they think he is offends them because he doesn’t accept their limited view of who he is. He rejects the idea that he is defined only by his skill and his family, and that rejection is misunderstood to be a rejection of his hometown. They’re ok with his identity as long as it involves them.

This goes on in our time, too. People get upset when someone parks in a handicapped spot who doesn’t fit their conception of what a disabled person must look like, and they want to define what being disabled is. It’s an attitude of “Oh, you’re disabled, so you have to act like this, or you aren’t really disabled.” That can lead to internalizing an attitude of “I have to act like this or else I won’t look disabled.” There is also the attitude of “You should tell us your pronouns or you aren’t really an ally of the non-conforming gender community;” or “You don’t speak English, so you aren’t really an American.” It’s an easy, lazy way of deciding who someone is without actually getting to know them and all of the different parts of their identity. It’s a convenient way of including and excluding people based on a single thing you see in them. It is an undignified and unjust way of treating people who make you uncomfortable because you don’t understand or like them.

Because the people in Jesus’ hometown couldn’t get past the identity that he claimed, they picked the easy, convenient part of him that they did know, and made that his identity. It would have been easier for them if Jesus had said “Hey, I’m not going to talk about myself, but did you see that leper I healed in that village over there?” because then they would have had something concrete to reject. But he didn’t, because out of that attitude of many things contributing to his identity as the Messiah, the son of Mary, the brother of James, came a humility that was not based on celebrating that differentness. That differentness was simply part of who he was that didn’t overwhelm him the way it overwhelmed others who held him in awe or in contempt. It was a differentness that led him to humility, the humility that Paul talked about but was still searching for, a humility that erased the difference in power that Jesus, and Paul, had because of their authority.

That, I think is the key to our humility in life, that there is no one thing that makes our identity unique or notable, no single thing that makes us more or less powerful than everyone else around us. All parts of us, everything together, coexisting in harmony and in contradiction, is what makes us unique. That is how Paul could see beyond the disability that limited him to understand that there was much more that he brought to the world, and that was what made him unique. That is how we can look beyond our limitations to what we bring to the world, to look at what we value and what we are capable of, rather than proclaiming that what we have accomplished or experienced is the core of our identity. Our identity, and even our vocation is for us to decide, requiring an expectation of tolerance from others and tolerance from us for others. So, what are your thorns, and how much do they contribute to your identity? A lack of self-esteem? Crushing self-doubt? A lack of ability? Something hidden deep inside that you can’t speak of? Whatever it is, it is just one part of you, one part that coexists with the good that comes from living a life in Jesus. This leads me to ask, where do you want your center of identity to be?