We could all have such perfect houses if people didn’t use them. The most beautiful and perfect rooms you will ever see are the ones in furniture displays at the store or maybe in a museum someplace, and the reason they are so perfect is that nobody uses them.
But in the real world houses are imperfect, a little chaotic, a bit shabby here and there, and that’s because people, real, messy, lively flesh-and-blood people use them.
I will take you mentally upstairs in my house to the room which my son used for eighteen or so years. If you want evidence of rooms that are less than perfect, here is a prime case.
This room contains battered furniture, boy furniture. It is not exactly designer label. As one of my friends puts it, the furniture is not so much early American as it is early orange crate. It is battered and scratched from being assaulted with boots and from suffering the slings and arrows, not of outrageous fortune, but of Boy Scout paraphernalia and of the business end of a pocketknife. A long way from mint condition. A long way from perfect. .
And then there is the floor in that room. You cannot help but notice the floor when you walk in. Over here there is a dark, inky looking stain. It is inky looking because it is ink; that is from when we were going through our "I think I want to do architectural drawing" phase.
Over there is another stain, this one sort of greenish, though obviously an effort has been made to rub it around and sort of disperse the color; this one comes from the chemistry set that every boy has to have, and every chemistry set ever made has at least one recipe for something that explodes, and we found it. We found it all over the floor.
Then over yonder there is another stain. I will spare you the gruesome details about how that got there, except simply to say that we do have a dog and at one time she was a not-too-well-trained puppy. Does that tell you enough? We have a throw rug over that stain.
But you know, the stains don’t especially bother me. The stains I can ignore or cover over with little rugs, and I can forget about them. What I cannot forget about are the rough spots, the holes and gouges and burrs and cracks, the rough spots, the sharp spots.
Walk with me in your imagination into that room, this time without your shoes on, and you will discover what I mean. Over here there is a series of little holes; these are down below a spot on the wall where there still hangs a dart board. Obviously not all the darts made it to their ultimate destination. And if you put your tender feet on that spot, you will feel just a little something, not too bad, but it will be felt.
Now over in another place there is a dip and a dent. Just a trough mashing down a part of the floor. How in the world would a hardwood floor get such a deep depression in it? Well, I asked that question and got a pretty evasive answer, if I remember correctly, but it seems to have something to do with learning to lift weights and to bench press; beginner’s tough luck, I think.
And if you were to follow me all over that room in those stocking feet, I can assure you you would soon be sitting down pulling out splinters, you would be asking for a Band-Aid to repair the puncture wound from the nail heads that stick up, and you ladies would be lecturing me about another pair of hose ruined because they got caught on a rough place.
There is only one way I am going to be able to get that hardwood floor in shape, and that is to sand it down and refinish it. I could cover it with something, I could put another coat of shellac on it, I could even putty some of the worst places, but nothing will ever bring it up to the perfect beauty that a hardwood floor can offer except for one thing: to sand it.
To sand it, be abrasive with it, cut it back, put the tools on it and be harsh with it: that is the only way it can become what it ought to be.
And that is the only way you and I can become what God needs us to be as leaders in His church and His Kingdom. He finds us imperfect, incomplete, full of holes and scarred with rough places, and it is going to take an irritant, it is going to take sanding and scraping and some smoothing-down times before we can be all that He intends us to be.
I want to speak with you this morning about leadership, about the kind of leadership roles each of us can play and needs to play in the Kingdom. Now I am not speaking only to those of you who are leaders in the church; I am also thinking about and speaking to those who are leaders in the home and in the community, in business and in government, in whatever arena you choose. And I think we need to remember that everyone of us is somebody’s leader at one time or another. That’s right: every one of us is somebody’ s leader at one time or another, in one way or another. There is somebody whom you influence, there is somebody who is looking to you for cues. And so I am not just speaking to those who are in church leadership but in fact to all of us in whatever leadership roles we may exercise.
In all the cases, the message is the same. We’ve got some rough places, and what we will need is an irritant, an abrasion, to smooth them down. We’ve got some imperfections, and in the providence of God we will need to put ourselves into a wearing down process, a refining process, so that we can be what He has called us to be.
The Apostle Paul does a striking thing in the latter part of the second Corinthian letter. He describes, first of all, something intensely personal, something which he has evidently considered to be very private up to now. Fourteen years before this writing, he says, he was caught up in a vision and says that he was somehow transported into the very presence of God. He cannot even tell us what that was like, but obviously it became a powerful factor in his life, something he held close to his heart.
But then he goes on with his confessions. He says that shortly after he had this tremendous experience, he was also given a "thorn in the flesh". What exactly that was we do not know, whether a physical illness or a spiritual problem like depression or anxiety; some wag has even suggested that the thorn in the flesh was his mother-in-law! But here was an irritant. Here was something that nagged him. Here was something he did not enjoy having around; it was sharp, it was painful, it was irritating, it was abrasive. But, says Paul, even though I prayed repeatedly for this thorn in the flesh to be taken away from me, it was not, for God said, "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness."
In other words, the floor needed to be sanded, and perfection was never going to come without abrasion. The leadership of which Paul was capable was not going to be there without something sharp, jabbing him in the side and honing him, pushing him, nagging at him.
Will you notice with me that if Paul had not had this thorn in the flesh, this irritant, this floor sander, this abrasive …if he had not had this thorn in the flesh, he says, he would have been too high, too elated, too caught up in his privileges. He would never have been human enough to be a real leader.
Listen to him, "’To keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan -- that’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it -- a thorn was given me in the flesh to harass me." And once again, he says, "to keep me from being too elated."
One of our problems as maturing Christians is that we get to the place sometimes where we believe we have arrived and that therefore we are above it all, we are above the little people, we are above association with sinners. We lose touch with real life. We come across to the lost and lonely of this world as untouchable and elite and just mighty fine folks.
But Paul sees that this imperfection, this abrasion, this hurting thing, whatever it was, is a constant reminder of his incompleteness. And with this he can avoid being too caught up in an irrelevant spirituality. With this thorn in the flesh, this abrasion, painful as it may be, he can remember that he too is human. He can identify with a hurting humanity.
During this coming year I anticipate that some of you, maybe many of you, will come face to face with your limitations. You will find out that the tasks you are called upon to do, whether in the church or in your home or on your job, wherever they are …you will find out that these tasks demand more of you than you have.
And for you that will be an abrasion. That will be a thorn in the flesh.
If you are at all like me, you will not enjoy acknowledging a weakness. I don’t like to admit to a limitation. In fact, when you ask me to do something I don’t think I can do well, I’d rather not do it at all than do it poorly. Mrs. Bishop will testify that I put up quite a little fuss about singing in that quartet at Christmas time.
But the issue in authentic leadership is not looking good; it is helping people. The issue in authentic leadership is not being above the crowd, but down there with them, helping them, identifying with them. The issue in genuine, deeply Christian, worthwhile leadership is not cultivating an image; it is being human enough to be heard. If you and I will start by acknowledging that we are limited, that we are human, and that we are incomplete, then we are on our way to being polished to hardwood and being made useful to our God.
But first, there is going to be a thorn in the flesh. There is going to be a nagging humanity that just won’t go away. There is going to be that sharp, jagged, abrasive, irritating something that just keeps on working at us and honing us down until we become what God has intended.
Sanding the floors.
But then notice with me also that Paul discovered that his weakness was a channel for strength. As paradoxical and contradictory as that sounds, it is true. His weakness becomes a channel for strength, because as he experiences the thorn in the flesh, as he encounters something chipping away at the rough edges of his leadership, he also experiences the grace of God.
"Three times I besought the Lord about this, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
You and I need to recognize that whenever we attempt to lead something or to accomplish something, we cannot do it alone. None of us is powerful enough to accomplish what needs to be accomplished all alone. We need each other, and most of all, we need the intervention of the Spirit of God.
In all honesty, the more I try to serve here and the more I try to be present to people when they are hurting, the more I know that I do not really have anything much to offer. I do not know the magic words to say. You ask me into your homes when someone dies, and I can almost read it in your eyes, "Tell me, pastor, that it’s going to be all right. Make the hurt go away.” And I try … oh how I agonize over what I am going to say and after I leave your home, I replay everything I did say and wonder if it was enough.
But the truth is that it will never be enough, because I am weak and insufficient. And the only way in which it will be enough is if I permit the spirit of the Living God to work with me and with you, and to enter into that moment, and it never ceases to astonish me that the prayer we have together and the exchange that we share does help. It does make a difference. And it is not I who do it, but Christ … sanding the floors, continuing to hone me, continuing to abrade me, and above it all, telling me that the pain of growth is something I am going to have to endure, so that grace can work. And if grace works, then out of my weakness the perfect strength of God will come.
One of our deacons, tongue half in cheek, has taken to calling me "our fearless leader". Well, I’ll tell you, despite the speed with which I flew here today, there is no big red S on my undershirt! I am not fear less. And I am not without anxiety. Neither I nor any other Christian leader is without those times of deep concern and fear: am I sufficient for all that needs to be done?
But God … but God … "My grace is sufficient …for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Sanding the floors, abrasive on the foundations of our lives, so that the rough spots are removed and the sheer beauty and perfection of what God intended is renewed. But it will not happen until we open ourselves up to the surprises He can work through us.
About a year ago my wife and another driver attempted to occupy the same space up here at the Blair Road-Piney Branch intersection, and her car ended up in car heaven, I guess. At least the insurance people called it totaled. And so we took the settlement money, which of course was not enough to buy a new car, and we sought out a used car. Now that’s always a risky business, and they don’t say a whole lot about warranties when you get a used car. So I was a little anxious, but thought I had found a good one.
Imagine my dismay, when after only a month or so of using it, the car developed a groaning, clunking, growling noise in the front end. I feared the worst. I just knew that it was going to cost megabucks and that worst of all I would have to tell my wife, well, all that stuff I told you about knowing what I’m doing when I buy a car, all that noise about being sure that this one was mechanically all right …I was looking at having to go home and admit that I was talking through my hat.
So off to the garage, leave the car, and return that afternoon to get the verdict. Said the mechanic, "Well, we found the trouble. Someone drove through some dirt and debris, and some of that filth got on your brakes and on the joints and gears in your front wheel drive system." He went on quickly to say, "We just took some cleanser and some sandpaper and polished all that away."
Well, some of my anxiety was relieved. At least they didn’t tell me I was driving a worthless lemon. And so I took a deep breath and said, "How much will that cost?"
"Oh," he said. "No charge."
"A thorn was given to me in the flesh to harass me, to keep me from being too elated …’My grace (no charge) is sufficient, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
