Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Pentecost 14: July 9, 2006
Paradise Road
The Rev. Melissa Skelton

From Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Writer Willie Morris once described a drive he took with author Eudora Welty through the spooky overgrown back roads of Yazoo County near her home in Jackson, Mississippi. This is how Morris describes it: “At the crest of a…hill, a narrower and darker byway intersected the one on which we were traveling. (I took a look at the road sign) and (then) I said to Ms.Welty, “Eudora, I’m going to make a left and drive down Paradise Road.” And (without skipping a beat) Eudora replied, “We’d be fools if we didn’t.”

Well, you and I are no fools. We, like Morris and Eudora and like Paul, our patron, will always go down Paradise Road when given a chance. For we, like they, yearn for paradise, whether we believe we’ve tasted it before or whether we believe we’ve never tasted it. We are wired to yearn for Paradise, the fabled place of God’s original blessing or our life’s destination in union with God.

And so a little a bout the word “paradise:” The word “paradise” comes from a Persian word meaning the wall that encloses a cultivated garden or orchard. Ancient peoples like many of us here in Seattle loved maintaining arbors and orchards and enclosed gardens that were a kind of respite and a world apart from the hubbub of life. The Greeks borrowed the word “paradise” from the Persians who used it in the early Greek translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden. The word was then picked up by New Testament writers to signify a place or a state of union with God.

In this morning’s passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, we find out that Paul’s mystical experiences of union with God were not limited to what many call his conversion, his experience of blinding light and transformation along the Damascus road. We find out in this morning’s passage that he has had another powerful experience of union with God. In his letter to the Corinthians, he speaks of this experience (at first describing it as if it had happened to someone else) to reassert his authority as an apostle and teacher in the face of those in Corinth who have challenged his person and his teaching.

But in the midst of seeking to assert his authority by virtue of the mystical experience he’s had, he runs into another equally compelling truth about his life—something chronically distracting and uncomfortable in him keeps holding him back from experiencing union with God. This “thorn in the flesh” as Paul calls it, is always there, is always preventing him from the spiritual perfection and the closeness to God he longs for.

Lots of ink has been spilled on what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. One modern commentator has counted more than 200 different interpretations of the phrase. The explanations can be grouped into three major categories. Some believe that Paul's affliction was some kind of personal anxiety or spiritual torment. Others believe the "thorn in the flesh" was the persecution that Paul experienced. Finally (and this is the majority opinion) many scholars believe that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was some kind of chronic physical illness or mental disability—possibly epilepsy.

At the wedding reception yesterday, I took a crack at finding out what others might identify as their “thorns in the flesh.” I told them that today was going to be thorn-in-the-flesh Sunday, and that it would be helpful for me to know what the considered their particular thorn in the flesh to be. Some gave ready answers: “My arrogance” one person said. “ A chronic low-level anxiety” said another. “My headaches” said a third. A few others were not so quick on the draw. “I’m an introvert and need more time,” one said while another flashed one of those “I know it and you don’t” smiles and declined to answer. What I noticed was that no one asked for a definition of the term. All seemed to be understand the phrase to mean any physical, psychological or personal tendency that chronically came between them and intimacy with God.

The yearning for experiences of union with God in a kind of walled of paradise. The physical, psychological and personal tendencies that are always with us that get in the way of our union with God.

What perspective does Paul offer us as a way of sorting through these two things?

For Paul, our chronic physical and mental tendencies to get off track in our relationship with God are not just imperfections about which to get impatient with ourselves. Instead, they are the real openings for our ongoing conversion. This is because they help us realize that spiritual life in the end is not about our ability to propel ourselves toward union with God. It is instead all about being grasped by the mystery of God’s grace, a grace that makes itself known to us when we experience ourselves as the weakest, as the most in need of something or someone outside ourselves.

For Paul, a person of great pride and accomplishment, this was true breakthrough theology in that it transformed what he believed were personal weaknesses into the very stuff of an encounter with God.

And so Paul’s insight changes the way we come to understand what paradise—union with God—is for us here and now. Here and now, it’s not so much a destination or fixed state of being.  It is not the walled garden of the ancients apart from, the hubbub of life. Rather, it’s more like Willie Morris’s and Eudora’s road—that narrow, leafy byway that they took on that day, made all the more memorable and satisfying because they took it together. Paradise Road—a road that itself is Paradise because we do not travel it alone, a road made memorable and satisfying by the presence of a companion who has traveled all the wrong turns before us and is able to fill in where our capacity falls short. Paradise Road—not extraordinary because of the scenery along the way but because of the relationship and interdependence of the two who travel it together.

At the end of our Gospel for today, Jesus sends the disciples out two-by-two to bring a taste of the kingdom to people who need it. He tells them to take no bread, no bag, no money and no extra clothes. What they will have on their journey is each other, the generosity extended to them by those enlivened by their words and the authority Jesus himself has given them. We can be sure that those sent out, just like us and just like Paul, were not perfect, that each also carried his own thorn in the flesh as some additional baggage for the journey. But this baggage was made lighter by God’s grace that always welcomes an opportunity to do heavy lifting and that preceded them and was with them as their companion.

For paradise is not just the mythical garden whose loss we carry within us. It is not just the destination we long for. By God’s grace, it is here in spite of and because of our weakness. Or as Thomas Merton expressed it: “Here is the unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand it.”