There is a distinguished British gentleman by the name of Sir Oliver Franks. He had been a professor of philosophy at Oxford, and president of a couple of different colleges during the turbulent years of the 1960s and following. He had also been the chairmen of a major bank. As if this resume was not enough, Sir Oliver Franks also served for a time as the British Ambassador to the U.S., perhaps his most demanding post of all. He held this post in the all-important years immediately following the Second World War, at the time when the Cold War was beginning and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up.
As Ambassaor, Sir Franks 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 was the confidant of some of the most powerful people in the world. He frequently needed to get urgent, important, and top secret messages back and forth between Washington and London. It was far too risky to make telephone calls; the line was almost certainly bugged, even in that day and age. 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 and completely 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.
In our scripture reading this morning, what Paul is saying in effect, is that there is no chance of anyone confusing the content of the envelope with the very ordinary and unremarkable envelope itself. The messenger, or the vessel that carries the message, is not important; what matters, vitally and urgently, is the message itself. “We have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us.”
Paul has written this second letter to the Corinthians because they have started to question his authority. Wandering preachers and prophets were quite common in the world at this time, and apparently some outspoken Jewish preachers had made their way to Corinth claiming Paul and those like him had no authority to say the things they were saying. And the Corinthians believed these folks. In essence, they began to see Paul as if they have been looking at the very plain enveloped – at Paul’s own public figure, his speaking style, and at the fact that he is in and out of trouble, weakness, and now seemingly near death – and they have concluded that there is nothing at all remarkable about him. And there’s nothing remarkable about him, then that must mean there is nothing noteworthy about the message he brings. He ought to look more important than that, surely, if he really is a messenger with a message from the living God!
So here, in our reading this morning, Paul is saying to the Corinthians, “No. You’re missing the point.” Precisely because of the vital importance of God’s message, the messenger must be dispensable. It’s like putting important documents in a plain envelope or treasure into clay pots or earthenware jars; they are fragile, breakable, disposable, but the treasure is what matters. If it were any other way, the jars, the messengers, might regard themselves as important. And so Paul begins this description of what life is like for a genuine apostle.
Now remember, Paul’s ultimate goal here is to defend his authority, but he goes about doing that in quite an unusual way. Rather than lifting himself up, reciting his resume, and pointing to his long list of rather impressive accomplishments, Paul moves in the opposite direction. He marginalizes his own authority, but he does it in such a way that at the same time he cleverly marginalizes his rivals’ authority as well. Paul points out the danger of factionalism and warns against the kind of prideful rhetoric that leads to division, and he emphasizes humility and mutual respect. In other words, Paul stresses the importance of community, most specifically a unified community, which equalizes all. In making this argument, Paul not only offers wise advice to a young and already divided community, he also lays the foundation where his words can be heeded; not because he holds any important position, but because we are a community and we need to listen to each other.
Still, though, Paul knows that this does not fully answer the doubts of the Corinthians. If he were worthy of listening to, truly an apostle of God, really what he claimed, then wouldn’t God make things easier for him, granting him greater success, more advantage, less suffering, and fewer setbacks? These are the questions on the minds and lips of the Corinthian church. And so Paul’s response continues: it is precisely his weakness that validates his authority. It is in such fragile clay jars that the treasure is carried. The suffering, rejection, and struggle that all seem to diminish him as a human leader actually serve to reveal the extraordinary power of God! Paul’s authority is not a personal lordship, but that of a slave “for Jesus’ sake.”
“We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord…we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed. We always carry Jesus’ death around in our bodies so that Jesus’ life can also be seen in our bodies.” Even as Paul describes the life of an apostle, he draws us in with him. We are all here not to proclaim ourselves, but to proclaim Christ. Precisely because we are so ordinary, we, like Paul have the authority to proclaim the good news of a risen Savior! God has shined his light into the darkness of all our lives. We are all fragile and temporary like clay pots; we all experience hardships, and set-backs, and suffering. But each of us also carries an important message; a message that endures the test of time, a message that speaks hope even in the midst of suffering, a message that brings life even in the face of death. We are a part of that, even as Paul was! How very humbling and amazing all at the same time!
There is a story of a water bearer in India who had two large pots, each hung on either end of a pole which he carried across his shoulders. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water in his master’s house.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you."
"Why?" asked the bearer. "What are you ashamed of?"
"I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master’s house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts," the pot said. The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, "As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path." Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some.
But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure. The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”
Each of us has our own unique flaws. We're all cracked pots. We’re all simply human, weak and fragile, bending and breaking far too easily. But Paul’s word to us today is that God’s message is far stronger that our weakness. If we allow it, Christ will use our flaws to grace his Father’s table. The good news of Christ Jesus is much greater than all the hardships and missteps of this life. So great is this message, in fact, that it makes something wonderful out of something so messed up. Our faith in Jesus Christ does not mean we will never experience adversity, but rather that such adversity will grant us the opportunity to discover and come to trust that by God’s grace, light is always brighter than the darkness, life stronger than death, and what resides in our broken bodies is the glory of a resurrection waiting to burst forth.
