The Final Freedom
“… a thorn in the flesh was given me, a messenger of Satan, to harass me from being too proud. Three times I prayed to the Lord about this and asked him to take it away. But his answer was, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
February 17, 1980
"A thorn in the flesh" is what Paul called a painful physical condition with which he had to live and with which he had to come to terms. Just what this "thorn" which dug into him was has intrigued Bible scholars for a long time. Speculation has ranged from the assaults of epileptic seizures, to racking headaches, to sight problems, to a recurrent disorienting malarial fever.
No one knows for sure. What is clear is that it was a condition, a situation, Paul could not change. Even God, he says, would not cooperate with his plea to take the pain away. It was hard enough to travel in Paul's day without some physically crippling problem. The roads were robber infested with no Holiday Inns along the way. Travel by sea was so dangerous that people considered you crazy if you did it. But travel Paul did. He traveled to spread the news of God's death defying love shown in Jesus Christ; he traveled to call people to live like brothers and sisters instead of fighting like animals. He journeyed from Palestine, to Syria, Asia, Greece, the Mediterranean islands, and finally to Rome. In order to do this, Paul had to decide how he would live in spite of and because of his painful condition which he could not change.
This brings me to the question of this sermon: What are you and I to do when we are up against an unchangeable situation in life? What are we to do when we do not have the freedom to change reality to meet our specifications? If not already, sooner or later each of us will encounter a painful "thorn" in our flesh, heart, or relationships which cannot be escaped, only faced. It may be an unchangeable state of affairs which threatens to take, if not our very life, at least every shred of happiness we have been able to hold fleetingly in our hands.
Paul had no monopoly on "thorns in the flesh". You and I are faced with realities which we cannot control. Realities that resist our fast talking, fancy footwork, and self-pep talks. We plan for our lives to go in one direction. And we work hard for them to do so. Yet before our very eyes they go in another unplanned and, at least at first, unwanted direction. People we trust let us down, and we have to content with hurt and resentment we did not bargain for. When I counsel with people considering marriage, I remind them that along with each other they choose, they get a whole family of in-laws and out-laws they did not choose, people who will bring obligations to them. In marriage, we get not only the person we thought we were getting, we also get the person our mate really is after the romance of the honeymoon has melted away. In spite of our efforts, and more because of who we are than we like to admit, our children are who they are, not just who we want them to be. The death of loved ones thrusts us into situations over which we have little control. Like Paul, some of us must live with illnesses and physical conditions we cannot escape. For some of us, ourselves become our thorn because of some failure or betrayal we have committed. Despite our regret, it is impossible to change the past. Apart from the sorts of situations I have suggested, life itself in general and in particular presents every living, dying one of us with certain ultimate facts. The basic fact of reality is that our lives themselves are dependent upon forces which in the final sense we do not control. I have no control over my birth and pitiful little over my death other than moving its arrival forward or backward a bit.
What is your particular "thorn" which you cannot escape? What's digging into you now? It may be one of those "thorns" I have mentioned. Or it may be one only you know. We are all – in spite of our ability to put humans on the moon and cure polio – threatened by the slavery of the uncontrollable. Like Paul, we have to decide how we will respond. In what remains, I would like to share three ways we might respond to the "thorns" that elude our dodging maneuvers and dart their way into us.
1. BECOMING THE VICTIM. There is a story of a man who became so fed up with the uncertain – ties and rat race of life that he applied for membership in a monastery. It was explained to him that the monks observed a life of hard work in the garden, long hours of meditation, and above all no talking whatsoever. The guy, jangled by telephones and schedules, said this was great. Upon admission to the monastery, the man was informed that he would be given an audience with the abbot, the head monk, every five years to discuss his progress. At those times, he would be allowed to speak two words. After five years, he met with the abbot. The abbot expressed satisfaction with the new monk's behavior and asked if he had anything to say with his two words. To this, the man replied: "Hard beds." The abbot said, "Thank you, I’ll make a note of it.” Five years later, after ten years in the community, the man returned for his second session with the abbot. Again the abbot expressed satisfaction with the monk's progress in the monastery. Again, also, he gave the man a chance to speak his two words, and they were: "Bad food.” Wrinkling his brow, the abbot indicated that he would note the man's complaint. Lo, five years later, the man came for his third interview and before the abbot could speak, he blurted out: “I quit!" To this the abbot answered: "That's fine with me. You've been here for 15 years and all you've done is complain.”
One alternative always open to us when life doesn't go the way we want it to is to withdraw and become a victim. Paul could have done this. He could have hung up his walking shoes, forgot the missionary idea, and begged off because of his "condition". Most of us know people, as the saying goes, who have enjoyed bad health for years. When I was a child, my parents said I had a convenient stomach ache that mysteriously appeared when I didn't want to go to school. There seems to be an epidemic of those kinds of mysterious head, back, and stomach aches that afflict us adults, too. After all, how can others expect much of us when we are victims of this pain. And since I am a victim of this pain, you ought to do this and that that I ask you to do. I by no means want to imply that all physical problems are contrived. Most are illnesses that we do not enjoy. But they, too, make us feel like giving up and being a victim.
We also find ourselves feeling like victims of our pasts, our childhoods, of people who have let us down, of bad breaks, and unexpected happenings. The temptation is to become the pitiful victim here, also. Why try? I always get kicked in the seat of the pants anyway. Because I can't control everything, I decide I can't control anything. If life and every one in it will not play by my rules, then I'll take my ball and bat home and quit. Victims moan, groan, pout, sulk, feel sorry for themselves, and complain. They make themselves more miserable. And contrary to the old saying, people do not like the company of the proponents of misery.
2. BECOMING THE HOSTILE ATTACKER. A woman was rushed to the hospital emergency room after being bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies. Upon entering the treatment room, the doctor found the woman sitting on the edge of the stretcher feverishly writing something. He thought to himself that the poor lady was in shock, was afraid she was dying, and was trying to write her will. He asked her if she was indeed writing her will. She answered: "Oh, no, in case I have rabies, I am making a list of the people I want to bite before I die.”
Another response to being a victim of situations we don't control is to be the hostile attacker and make others our victim. We growl, criticize, and make sure everyone knows that we have gotten a raw deal. It gives us a "Carte Blanche" to say and do what we want regardless of how it makes others feel because we have been done wrong. Because life, someone else, or my body has thrown me a curve, then I don't have to pay attention to that 'turn the other check' business; I can even forget the moderation of an eye for an eye, and go for blood. You took my eye, so I'll take your head! You have hurt me, let me down, and I am going to remind you and make you pay. Don't expect me to worry about hungry people in the world, lonely people next door, or people who need me across the breakfast table. I've been hurt, no one ever gave me a think, so from now on it's the company of my new holy trinity of me, myself, and I. Individual lives, relationships, and whole races of people have been wrecked because someone decided to get even. The only problem with being the hostile attacker in response to life's thorns is the same one with nuclear weapons. You can't distinguish the corpses of the attackers from the attackees.
3. BECOMING AN EXERCISER OF THE FINAL FREEDOM. This past week, I watched the beginning ceremony of the Lake Placid Olympics. One flag bearer was a young American athlete who was a young American athlete who was born with cystic fibrosis. It is hard for me to imagine the kind of determination he had to become an athlete with a condition that barely allows life for most. It made me think about the life of Olympic runner John Baker. After John Baker's competition in the Olympics and graduation from college, he became an elementary school coach. He paid special attention to those kids who were not the Natural born athletes. With his encouragement, many of these youth were motivated to have determination to train themselves in sports which did not come easily. In 1968, at the age of 25, John Baker was diagnosed as having a terminal disease. At first, he was understandably shattered, depressed, and even considered suicide. Ultimately, Baker spent the last 18 months of his life not withdrawn but more invested than ever in his devotion to his students. In particular, he expanded his program to include handicapped children – children well acquainted with not being included. The upshot of John Baker's life for me is this. In his situation of closing doors and limited choices, he exercised the greatest human freedom. I call it the final freedom. This is the freedom to decide how we will face a situation, what our attitude will be, how we will live, when we are confronted by external realities not of our making and unchangeable by us. The final freedom is our ability to decide how we will change ourselves when we cannot change our circumstances.
Paul spoke of his painful thorn in the flesh he could not escape. His answer from God was "My grace is sufficient for you." God is the giver of the strength to live with, in spite of, and even because of that which we at first feel we cannot live. That power to change ourselves when we cannot change anything else comes from other people, from prayer, from life in the church, and from God only knows where within us. But it comes.
Even though Paul could not be free FROM his thorn, he did not permit it to prevent him from being free FOR the life he wanted to live for his God. In part of our scripture today, Paul told how in his journeys he was beaten, jailed, shipwrecked, hungry, and chased out of towns. Even though he could not be free from his pain, he exercised his freedom to be for his God.
I have seen the witness of this final freedom in every church I have served in the lives of special women who have lost their husbands. Though they are never free from their grief and loss, they exercise their freedom for life in their service to their church and community, in their activities of caring for other people. They, like us, are not free from life's hurts, but they, like us, have the untakeable human freedom to still be for God and his caring work with people.
Surprisingly enough, we humans wind up changing more in life by simply changing ourselves than we imagine. Several years ago, Marabel Morgan (no relation I assure you) published a book called The Total Woman. It would have been better titled The Totalled Woman because it was debasing of women and manipulative of men. Nevertheless, ole Marabel had a point for people be you wife, husband, or single. If you want to change someone, then the best shot you have is to change yourself. Hopefully, as you become the person you need to be for your husband, child, wife or special person, they will be motivated to become the person they need to be for you. People are never fixed from outside, only from the inside. As you exercise your freedom to forgive, you may just find the other person changing into a more forgivable person. As you love someone even when they fail to be all you hoped, they may be motivated to grow more into the person you need them to be.
You and I will never be free from pains, problems, and disappointments. But the freedom to decide what we will be for is never taken away. I am free to be for only myself as a hostile victim or I can exercise my freedom to be, for the people I live my life with. Our society may never be free from those who cheat and look out for number one, but you and I will always have the freedom to work for a society of honesty and integrity. We may never be free from the problems of the hungry on earth. But that does not take away our freedom to feed those we can. You and I have that final freedom to decide how we will face the realities of the world: we can suck our thumb or roll up our sleeves.
One day Lucy said to Charlie Brown: "You know, Charlie, I think of every person being like a playing card in life. Some people are kings, queens, and others are jacks. Some are numbers, too. Charlie asks Lucy what card she thinks he is. To this she answers, "Charlie Brown, you are a definite two of clubs.' He thinks about it for a minute and comes back: "I may be only a two of clubs, but even a two of clubs takes a trick every now and then."
Life's uncontrollables we have been talking about have ways of making us feel like a two of clubs. But the exercise of our final freedom of changing ourselves when no one else or thing seems to budge may be our ace in the hole.
Let he who has ears to hear, hear.