Musings on the Daily Lectionary

We live in a media saturated, visually driven culture. Talk with advertisers and they will tell you that it is more important to have visual impact and "feel" in a commercial than it is to have content. Sometimes it seems that packaging is more important than content. In politics the sound-byte replaces carefully articulated positions on issues. News broadcasts say they cannot make money doing traditional, in-depth reporting on complicated issues because of the public's shrinking attention span.

In the church, this trend often produces a desire for worship that is more about feel than content. Worshipers want to be energized and given a boost, but often they're not much interested in wrestling with what the Bible says. Especially for Protestants, who broke away from the Roman Church in part over insistence that each Christian needed to read and interpret Scripture for him or herself, it is stunning how few church members regularly read the Bible.

It makes one wonder how the Apostle Paul would have fared in our day. Even in the First Century, Paul apparently lost points because he was an unimpressive figure and a poor public speaker. Other missionaries, who had more flash, came in after him and sometimes persuaded churches Paul founded to abandon Paul's message of a gospel offered to both Jew and Gentile, restricting it to those who would become Jews. But when Paul defends himself by letter, he insists that his lack of looks, pizazz, prestige, and style is preferable. The good news he brings is not about him and not focused on him.

Today's reading from 2 Corinthians is at the end of a long discussion about boasting. Paul writes, "Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong."

Power made perfect in weakness is one of those biblical concepts than many Christians are familiar with, but lots of us don't quite know what to do with the idea. And I always wondered if the Church didn't sell a good deal of its soul all those years ago when we got respectable, when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. From then on, at least in the West, we've been well connected to power, influence, prestige and the ways of the culture. I also wonder if the Church's current loss of status and prestige in the US might not just be one of the greatest gifts we've been given in modern times. Now if I could only really embrace what Paul says.

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