2 Corinthians 1:8-11 At the End of Ourselves
Some days I feel a little overwhelmed.
Maybe you do too.
I tune in to the news or browse my Facebook feed and find myself confronted by story after story that provoke anxiety, sadness, and concern about where the world is at and what is going on. There has been plenty to mull over lately. During this global pandemic, our exposure to anxiety provoking and fear inducing news has been particularly high.
If you ever feel overwhelmed by it all, you are not alone.
Research has been done to show the impact of news coverage on our mental health. The psychological effects of news are particularly apparent following a crisis. Examples after the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2014 Ebola crisis concluded that the “more news coverage a person was exposed to, the more likely they were to develop symptoms such as stress, anxiety and PTSD.”[1]
This makes sense – being exposed to distressing news not surprisingly makes us distressed.
I wonder too if at the heart of being overwhelmed with global news is that when we encounter it, we also encounter our own limitations and smallness.
We realize how big the world is and how deep the problems go and how little we can do on our own.
Alongside this there is a deep yearning within many of us that things might be different. We hope for a better world.
But the reality is that there is so much discouragement along the way. It sometimes can be one thing after the other. Our newsfeed can feel relentless.
One cartoon I came across recently joked: “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”
The news isn’t of course our only source of being overwhelmed. Our own local dramas and the incidents of our own lives provide us with our fair share of trials – whether it be sickness or pain, relationship breakdowns, loss and grief – our own personal struggles will all look different.
What do we do when we feel overwhelmed?
What can we do when we find ourselves at the end of ourselves?
What do we do when we find ourselves confronting the limits of our own humanity?
Do we give up in despair?
Do we place our heads in the sand and hope all the problems in the world go away?
Do we just dig in our heels harder and do our best?
How might we find resolve and hope in a world that can often be so bleak?
In today’s reading from 2 Corinthians we see Paul wrestle with such questions. Paul takes us to the brink of despair and there he discovers something that might just surprise us.
Let’s look together at this morning’s passage from 2 Corinthians 1:8-11.
Last week we explored the opening lines of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He sets the scene describing the suffering he has experienced and the comfort he has received in Christ.
In verse 8 Paul get’s a little more specific about his own story. He says this:
2 Cor 1:8 “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.”
Paul speaks of an affliction that he experienced while ministering in the province of Asia.
Asia referred to the Roman senatorial province of which Ephesus was the provincial capital.
Scholars have tried to work out what happened to Paul. There are lots of possibilities.
It could have been the mob that rose up against Paul in Ephesus when his preaching convinces the people to denounce idols. The local silversmith Demetrius is upset about the business he loses because of Paul and a riot ensues.
It could have been a flare up of some kind of illness that Paul struggled with that was near fatal. Paul refers later in the letter to his “thorn in the flesh.”
It could refer to a time of imprisonment, or opposition from his fellow Jews, or the breakdown in relationship between Paul and his fellow beloved Christians in the Corinthian church.
The point is that we don’t know. But given all the options it is no surprise that Paul has found himself despairing. We know that what Paul faced was severe and that it pushed Paul beyond his natural abilities to a point where he despaired of life itself.
The message translation puts it in a real and very raw way, saying:
“We felt like we’d been sent to death row, that it was all over for us.”
Paul isn’t writing for sympathy. He has a point to make.
He goes on to say this about the experience. Again, from the message:
“As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he’s the God who raises the dead!”[2]
2 Cor 1:9 – The Character of God
(2 Cor 1:9 “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” (On screen) )
Here we find the centre of Paul’s point in this section – the call not to rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
Paul, when overwhelmed found at the very brink of death the God who brings resurrection life.
Paul comes to the end of himself to discover this.
He finds God at the other end of his despair.
But not just any God.
The God he finds there is the God who raises the dead.
Last week we examined the centrality of the cross in Paul’s thinking, this week we examine another central theme that Paul brings in: the resurrection. God is defined as the God who raises the dead.
Paul’s belief is grounded first and foremost of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In the Easter story just when despair sets in, when things can get no worse, God turns events around. Jesus is resurrected and the trajectory of the whole story changes. This event sits at the heart of our faith and it changes everything.
Paul doesn’t discover the depths of this resurrection event until he himself peers into the pit of despair. He argues that it is in his very lowest moment that he experiences the deepest reliance on the God who raises the dead.
This for me is such an important point that Paul makes. It is at the heart of his argument in this letter.
The Corinthians value strength, success, and status.
Paul glories in his weakness and despair because at the edge of his own weakness he finds God’s strength. At the verge of death he meets the God who raises the dead.
This is all very counter-intuitive for us too.
One of the most influential philosophers of our modern world is Friedrich Nietzsche. He despised Christianity for various reasons, but one of the central ones was its views on weakness.
In one of his writings he says:
What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness.
What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.[3]
Paul’s view is the very opposite.
Nietzsche articulates a human striving without limits. He exhorts the strong and the powerful and derides weakness. Lived out in real ways this philosophy scorns the care of the vulnerable, the sick, and the weak.
Nietzsche reflects the original hubris that we see in the story of the fall in Genesis. Adam and Eve don’t simply disobey God – they overreach. They claim their own independence and seek to do what is right in their own eyes. They rely on their own strength, not realizing their own limits as creatures. They try to take the role of the Creator, to be like God.
Hear me clearly – I’m not beating up on Adam and Eve. The point of reading the story of the Fall is not so that we might express shock and horror at their own drama, but rather for it to be held up to us as a mirror. We can be like them too.
And so can Paul, and that’s why it takes him going to the brink to move from self-reliance to relying on God.
Paul says when we find our fragility, when we realize our limitations and when we hit the wall – there the God of resurrection power is waiting for us.
Paul invites us to move from self-reliance and our own limits to trust in a God with no limits, the God who raises the dead. One commentator puts it beautifully:
“Christian discipline means, for an apostle and for the church as a whole, a progressive weakening of man’s instinctive self-confidence, and of the self-despair to which this leads, and the growth of radical confidence in God.”[4]
Radical confidence in God – this is the invitation in this passage for us this morning.
Paul grounds this confidence in what God has done in Jesus’ resurrection. Paul isn’t just articulating a nice thought or some wishy washy hope. He grounds his thinking in the Easter story – an event that is attested to by eyewitnesses, and Paul’s own encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Paul appeals to his experience and says:
2 Cor 1:10 “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”
Paul points out his own experience but he does so by using evocative language from the Hebrew Scriptures. The language of God as “deliverer” is used by David in his song of thanksgiving in 2 Samuel 22:
“David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. 2 He said: The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, 3my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation…”
We see this language employed time and again in the Psalms.[5]
The whole story of the Exodus is the story of God delivering the people, rescuing them from slavery in Egypt.
Paul views God as the deliverer – the one who has rescued, is rescuing, and will rescue.
Paul is confident in God the deliverer.
The logical conclusion of this confidence in God, not in his own strength or power leads Paul to issue an appeal to the Corinthians in verse 11. Paul says:
2 Cor 1:11 “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
Paul appeals to the prayers of many, to intercessory prayer for help.
Paul takes prayer so very seriously because it appeals to the God who can raise the dead.
Intercession is powerful because it calls on God, not self-reliance. It creates a space in which we turn to God and call on his power to do something that is beyond what we can do.
This is just so incredibly challenging to me.
When I find myself at the end of myself my gut instinct is to dig in harder, to find a bit more gas in the tank or to look for my own solution. My first instinct isn’t always to pray, or to ask others to pray for me.
Paul in his request challenges the community at Corinth to pray for him. We too are challenged to be a people who take prayer very seriously.
To pray like this isn’t for us to relinquish all of our responsibility to act. This isn’t an either or.
What Paul emphasizes is God’s action first and foremost.
God’s people pray and act – but in that order. Our actions are to follow what God is doing.
When we feel overwhelmed, instead of paddling harder or ducking for cover – we are called to pray. This is an active way of expressing our trust and confidence in the God who can rescue us.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the-way-we-think-and-behave
[2] 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 from the Message Bible Translation (Eugene Peterson)
[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#CritReliMora
[4] C.K. Barrett “Black’s New Testament Commentary: 2 Corinthians”
[5] Key passages - (2 Sam 22:2; see Pss 18:2–6; 40:17; 70:5; 72:12; 91:15; 140:7; 144:2; see also Pss 32; 38; 116). Also the whole Exodus story.