One wonders how many congregations would hire someone like Paul, who touts his weakness in personal presence, his penchant to find or stir up trouble, his run-ins with the law, and his lack of the skills so often most valued today in a preacher, namely, good oral form, verbal eloquence, powerful delivery, and meaningful gestures. I suspect that all too often we evaluate our ministers using Corinthian, not Pauline, criteria. In doing so, we too, have bought into the world's dominant vision of what it means to be wise, powerful and of great worth and have, like the Corinthians, made void the preaching of the cross. The wisdom of the cross is a message not about strength instead of weakness, but in fact about power through weakness, through self-sacrificial behavior, through reliance on God's power to work through us. It is not about our human power to manipulate a situation. Until we learn the meaing of the words "when I was weak, then I was strong," until we learn what it means to be empty of self and full of Christ, we will continue to misread Paul's theology of leadership, status, power and wisdom. Until then, the 'church' will continue to play the game of power politics with ministry, an all too human and too Corinthian game indeed.
Order of Worship, January 6 2013
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