Psalm108
OT Reading: Isaiah 11.10 to end of 12
NT Reading: 2 Corinthians 1.1-22
Paul and Paradox (1): Suffering and Consolation
As I read the passages we have just heard, I was struck by the contrast between Isaiah’s hope for the restoration of Israel and Paul’s hope for the Christian church at Corinth. In Isaiah’s vision of a triumphant return, Judah is reconciled with Ephraim, Jerusalem with Samaria, and the united front swoops down on Israel’s enemies, scattering them to left and right. Paul is no less full of hope. In chapter 4 of this same letter we find him rejoicing in the God ‘who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor 4.6). What a vision that is; but he goes on to remind us that this treasure – this assurance of God’s power and glory – comes in the fragile clay jars of our human frailty. The glory we see in the face of Jesus Christ, the glory in which we share, is a glory which encompasses suffering. Not only is our experience of suffering transformed by our identification with Christ in his suffering, but the consolation which flows from that experience lights us from within, and may even shine in our faces.
These are bold claims which only someone with Paul’s experience of suffering is entitled to make. His sufferings were both internal and external. At the internal level he had to come to terms with what he refers to in this letter as his ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Cor 12.7). We don’t know whether this was some physical ailment, that struck the apostle down from time to time, or whether it was more psychological – could St Paul have been in some degree a manic depressive? Certainly he contrasts his ‘thorn in the flesh’ with a corresponding experience of elation, like that of someone he says he knows – but it might be himself – who was ‘caught up into the third heaven’ and ‘heard things that no mortal is permitted to repeat’ (2 Cor. 12.3-4). Such out-of-the-body experiences are rare, but not altogether unheard of, even to-day. In a congregation of our size, there would almost certainly be one or two people who have had such an experience, and have drawn comfort and consolation from it, but in the nature of these things there cannot be conclusive evidence, there might very easily be other psychological explanations, and we are well advised to be diffident, as Paul was, even gently sceptical, whilst remaining profoundly thankful for anything which may have mediated consolation to us when we most needed it.
At the external level, Paul is entitled to speak with real authority about his experience of physical suffering at the hands of the mob, or the authorities, as well as the elements. He refers in tonight’s reading to a deadly peril in Asia which caused him to despair of life itself (2 Cor 1.8-9). Elsewhere in this same letter (11.23-27) he lists the floggings, stoning, imprisonments, shipwrecks and all kinds of dangers he has endured for the sake of the gospel. And he tells us that in his experience it is when the going gets really tough that he is most conscious of the presence of Christ to strengthen and console him.
Moreover, his experience extends not only to all kinds of physical danger, but to the no less painful experience of finding himself at odds with his Corinthian friends. He refers to another letter, now lost, which was evidently as painful for him to write as it was for them to receive (2.4; 7.8). The tone of the present letter is for the most part conciliatory, even tender, finding consolation in troubles of every kind, showing how deeply concerned for them he was, even when he may have had occasion to be stern. Writing as he does in the passionate heat of turmoil, danger and dispute, his letter is as confusing in its ups and downs as any slice of life. Perhaps that is why it still speaks to us with such power in the midst of our own stressful, conflicted lives. At every twist and turn, in every experience of mental or physical suffering, Paul’s compassion, mirroring that of His Master, overflows with encouragement and consolation.
This whole letter is full of paradox – next week we shall be reflecting on riches and poverty. Meanwhile, as we meditate on Paul’s paradoxical experience of suffering and consolation, and are perhaps led to find traces of the same experience in our own lives, we continue to be profoundly thankful for his inspired insights into the nature of the Christian life.