Concealing Treasure

As I said last Sunday, we will be journeying through 2 Corinthians this summer. And yesterday, Kirsten said to me, “I can’t wait to find out what happens next…it’s like a soap opera!” Well, like a soap opera, we are going to go back and review for a moment where we left off last week…and then dive into this week’s text.

Remember that Paul traveled to Corinth and lived there a couple of years as an evangelist. Before Paul got there, they had never heard of a man named Jesus. It was through Paul that their lives were transformed by the Gospel. After the church was established, Paul moved on, but he stayed in touch through letters and visits and friends. I Corinthians is one of Paul’s letters and its focus is on answering the questions that came up about how to live as faithful disciples in a city that is not Christian. And some time after that letter, Paul went to visit. It didn’t go well. There were questions about Paul’s motives in asking for offerings. There were grumbles about his authority. And it went so badly, that Paul left early and not on good terms. He sent a letter we know as the “letter of tears” that we do not have. He sent Titus to smooth things over. Last week, we read Paul recounting to the Corinthians his inability to preach the Gospel in Troas because he was supposed to meet back up with Titus there, and when Titus didn’t show he was so upset that he just couldn’t preach. So, he went on to Macedonia.

Yet even though he didn’t feel he could preach, God still used him to evangelize in Troas. The very essence of who he was allowed them to come to know the impact of Jesus’ message that God loves us.

Every moment of our lives, we are, by who we are, spreading the grace of God. I read this week a quote of Martin Luther, who nailed the 95 thesis on the door of the church in Wittenberg setting out to reform the church, he said “While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the gospel runs its course”. He certainly didn’t sit back, relax, and expect God do all the work. But he did know that God is at work through us all of the time in the very essence of who we are.

As you know from last week, 2 Corinthians is written by Paul to the church at Corinth in the wake of their argument. In the passage we read this morning, we have what I think is Paul’s idea of an apologetic explanation for how they got into the argument.

Paul here lays bare his weakness. Paul is ordinary. This year at VBS, I got to make snow. Monday the theme was “God has the power to provide.” I took plain, ordinary water and mixed in this powdery substance, and it turned into snow. I made a point of emptying out the pitcher and letting the kids watch me fill it with plain, ordinary water out of the tap. And I talked about how we are just like this water, plain and ordinary. And in one of the groups, one little girl was not having it. “We are not ordinary,” she insisted, “we are extraordinary.”

But, Paul would teach us that we really are plain and ordinary and not extraordinary at all, if it weren’t for what God has placed in us. After I measured out the water, I measured out the powder. I sprinkled a tablespoon on the top of the water and told them how this is like God working in our lives to change us from ordinary to extraordinary…and then I scooped a little more powder and sprinkled it over because we can never have too much God in our lives. Then I stirred, mixing God all in and through our lives until the water turned into snow – from common to amazing.

Paul knows he is ordinary. It has been hard. The questions and the accusations have hurt him. He is humbled. And he admits, I’m nothing more than a clay jar formed from the dust of the earth. God is the one with power. God is the one who speaks and there is light. The light is knowing the glory of God. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That is the treasure we carry, the glory of God, seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

Biblical scholar N. T. Wright relates the use of us to carry the gospel to the strategy that Sir Oliver Franks used to relay information back and forth between the United States and Britain during the cold war. Sir Oliver Franks was the British Ambassador to the United States and “he was in touch, often on a daily basis, with the President on one side of the Atlantic and the Prime Minister on the other….He frequently needed to get urgent, important and top secret messages to and fro between Washington and London. It was far too risky to make phone calls; the line was almost certainly bugged. There was a diplomatic bag which went to and fro each day, bringing confidential documents by air across the Atlantic. That was the method he used for most of his important and confidential messages. But when something was really confidential, utterly top secret, and desperately urgent, he wouldn’t trust it to a bag which everybody knew was important. He would put it into an ordinary envelope and send it through the regular mail. What Paul is saying,” asserts N.T. Wright, “is that there is no chance of anyone confusing the content of the envelope with the very ordinary, unremarkable envelope itself.” We are plain old, common, ordinary envelopes; plain old, common, ordinary water; Paul says we are clay jars. Clay jars were common and ordinary, fragile and cheap. It is the message that is treasure. The message that God places in us.

The psalmist says that God knows everything there is to know about us. Our strengths and weaknesses, abilities and inadequacies. God knows us! “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knows we are made of dust, fragile; God knows we are cheap clay jars.

We will crack; we can easily break. We will disappoint others and ourselves. The good news is that we are not the message. We have been called, to be bearers of the message, not because we are strong and have it all together, not because we always know what to say, how to say it and what to do. We were chosen NOT because we are perfect, but because we aren’t. So that we wouldn’t get confused with the message.

Ministers aren’t perfect. Church members aren’t perfect. Christians aren’t perfect. Churches aren’t perfect. It’s true. We are clay jars.

Several years ago, a college student I knew was working part-time at his church, to be a “staff person” in the building in the evening, doing some light admin work like stuffing envelopes, and then locking up. I asked his dad one day how it was going. He said, “I had to explain to him that the church is not a gathering place for saints, but a hospital for sinners.”

Paul says, “We are afflicted in every way…perplexed…persecuted…struck down.” We are clay jars…the least likely place to put treasure…and yet, the place God chooses. Because it is not us who are perfect; it is God. It is not us that have the extraordinary power; it is God. Thanks be to God. Amen.