The Power of Weakness

Risking vulnerability for the sake of life | The Word in the Wild, Proper 9, Year B

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 6:1-13

“He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts…”

“…power is made perfect in weakness.”

They are crushed, cracked, spread across the ground. Some are eaten, others washed down hillside creeks, tumbling to the river. Still many, enough, are covered by the leaves, welcomed into the fragile, dark womb of the forest floor. With the rain, a root will begin, reaching down, traveling at a pace too slow to notice through the quick, clicking vision of the human mind and yet it is movement all the same. That root will descend, navigating rocks, sometimes splitting them, branching down and out. Its strength comes not from any hidden energy, a dynamo unseen. Instead, each move, every millimeter descended, is met with welcome and encouragement. Small creatures releasing electro-chemical pulses draw it on, fungi connect through the root’s porous cells, bringing this natal plant into the wider community of the woods.

In several decades, half a century, the hickory that began as this fragile seed will be tens of feet tall, its weight dangerous. If it were cut, milled, made into boards, the result would be the most sought after building material in the world—the unique blend of strength and flexibility of wood. Hickories, specifically, are a favorite wood for axe handles and baseball bats; their fine grain makes them a choice option for the carving of bows and furniture. And yet, every hickory begins as a nut that could be cracked by a child.

Hickories provide an entry into a truth that echoes across the given world—“a power made perfect in weakness” in the words of St. Paul. Water dripping against a rock, wind gently pushing across a plain, the soft, slimy motion of an earthworm—these are all small, almost imperceptible actions, and yet they change landscapes, they wear down what seemed inevitable and unalterable. Taken alone, at any moment, these gentle works are fragile, tenuous, but in their steady, patient continuing they outlast empires—“Summer grasses, all that remains…,” as Basho put it.

To be weak is risky in a world of rock and steel, the churning of the Machine. And yet, it is the fragile and small, the gentle and weak that have so often overcome the world. This is a truth at the center of the Christian message—the healing of the world comes though the stasis of death on a cross rather than the might of sword or shield. It is Jesus, naked and defenseless, that overcomes the evil of the world. His invitation to all disciples that come after him is to “come and die” not “rise and conquer.” The seed must descend and be buried.

When Jesus gathered his little group and sent them out, he knew they would be tempted toward power. They would do wonders and it would be easy to turn those healings into a spectacle. So Jesus sends them out with no resources beyond their relationships. They could take no food, no money, no extra clothes. They ventured out in the risky vulnerability that would require them to depend on the hospitality of those they met, and even more deeply, the hospitality of God.

It was that fragility of their dependence that opened them up to the power beyond their personhood. For a hickory, an oak, or any other tree to grow, it must join in a wholeness. No tree can grow by itself, just as no human life can live by its own power, and yet so often our resources help create that illusion. We think we live in independence without every acknowledging the many and varied dependencies that have sustained us and continue to sustain us.

When we think we live beyond dependence we move toward the violence of defending ourselves. We have to hold onto our food, our money, our clothes and all the many layers of new necessities the market has placed on us. We even have to defend our reputation, our image, our pride because we do not trust our neighbors, our communities.

In Second Corinthians Paul is facing a challenge of hospitality. He is hoping to return to the church in Corinth, a church he founded and grew. But they have excluded Paul, rejected him. Paul could approach them with the strong defenses of one with rights that must be respected, an injustice that must be rectified. Instead, Paul claims his poverty, his abject dependence, his weakness. He writes to them in power, but not his own power. He writes in the power that can only come through allowing the cracks in his life to remain open so that the light can shine through.

Paul continues the path on which the first disciples were sent, the path that all who follow along the way are also called to join. It is the path of letting go of control, of welcoming our dependence, and growing into the strength that can only come through the humble work of staying close to the ground. It is a risky and perilous path. In the book of Revelation, the saints conquer not by shedding the blood of others, but in offering their own. This is what the real power of vulnerability looks like. And yet, it is through such an offering that life comes—there is a tree at the center of the New Jerusalem and its fruits will be for the healing of the nations.

Curiously, though he forbids a change of clothes, a bag of money, bread for the journey, Jesus allows his disciples to take a walking stick. It’s a strange allowance, and yet, perhaps it makes sense. A staff is helpful to those whose legs are tired, whose balance is challenged through exhaustion. To see someone walking with a staff is to see someone admitting to a vulnerability—the need for a crutch. (Religion is a crutch, the skeptic scoffs. No, religion teaches you how to acknowledge all the crutches that allow us to walk.) Thinking about trees, like hickories, who live from such a small and fragile beginning and grow into such strength, I have to wonder if perhaps Jesus offered his disciples a portable example of how they were to live. In their hands, all along the way, they held a strength that had been made powerful in its weakness, the wood of a tree that had begun as a fragile seed.