Strength Through Weakness: Matthew 25:31-40
[The date and place of this sermon are unknown, but the late Dr. Paul Sonnack is remembered by many. Pietisten thanks Paul's widow, Evelyn Sonnack, for providing this manuscript.— Ed.]
The Abuse of Power
By imprinting on humankind the image of his own likeness, God gave us some faint resemblance of that self-determining power by which he creates the world. It is precisely this that is heavenly in us, and it is this that is satanic. Satan abused angelic power to be his own god, and we have abused our godlike power to play our own game.
The Rudiments of Power. Our abuse of power is nowhere more seen than in our insuperable virtue, or more felt than in our synthetic kindness. Speech and thought are the beginnings of power, for even where there is no power to act, there is the power to lie, to fabricate, to invent, to deceive ourselves and others. By this, both true religion and false religion are most sharply tested, and the rudiments of power awaken suspicion.
Power Full-Blown. If the mere rudiments of power, the simple possession of conscious thought, awaken suspicion, what shall we say of power full-blown? As for political power, who credits the public smile of public people? They are no worse as persons than we, but that official capacity ties them to servicing the great machines of power. Whatever face they present, we sense that we are only numbers in their arithmetic. From time to time, of course, there are states persons who carry their people in their hearts and pray for them as devotedly as they govern them.
But credit will not easily be obtained for this kindness; the possession of power may not corrupt a ruler's action, but it will poison our appreciation. A political figure does well if he or she is accounted the least among necessary evils.
The Hatred of Power. The wide misuse of human power has the sad effect that power, however lovingly used, is usually hated. To confer benefits is surely more godlike than to ask for them; yet our hearts go out more easily to begging children than they do to generous masters. Mishandling the scepter of God has resulted in such tyranny toward one another, that we become incapable of loving God's personal government of us or of feeling the caress of an almighty kindness.
Are not God's creating hands always upon us? Do we draw a single breath but by God's mercy? Has God not given us one another and the world to delight us? Yet God's infinite kindness is lost behind the mask of power. Overwhelmed by omnipotent, we miss the heart of love. How can I matter to God? It seems folly to imagine God like myself, to credit God with eyes into which I could look. Could God's heart ever beat for my sorrows or joys? Could God could hold out a hand to me? Even if we allow the childlike metaphor of a hand, that hand must be cupped to hold the entire universe, and I am only a speck on the star-dust of the world.
Power and the Heart of Love
The maker of the world is born a begging child. He begs for milk, and does not know that it is milk for which he begs. Though we will not lift our hands to pull the love of God down to us, God reaches out to pull human compassion down upon his cradle. So the weakness of God proves stronger than humans, and the folly of God proves wiser than humans.
Love is the strongest instrument of the omnipotent God for accomplishing the tasks God cares most dearly to perform. God brings love to bear on human pride by weakness, not by strength, by need and not by bounty.
As Jesus grew in stature, he grew in grace and unfolded the exercise of a power which was love in action. He could beg; he asked the Samaritan woman for water. There would be the day when he would ask the soldiers for vinegar. But he could give far more. So pure was his heart, so single in its union with the fatherly love, that he did not need to rein in his power or measure the force of his beneficent actions. He vindicated the humble and rebuked the proud without restraint. His love was like a fire. For all his humility, his tradesman's hands, his common dress, his Galilean speech, he unfolded weakness into power.
There were more in those days who were struck with awe and admiration than touched with kindness. For even when power is the development of love, it may amaze us more than it warms us. But God's wisdom was not to be baffled; it took refuge once more in a folly; his power had its way by sinking back into weakness.
The cross closed the scene which the manger opened; the powerlessness of infancy was crowned by the powerlessness of defeat, the unconscious agony of birth by a conscious agony of death. For God will be loved, whatever it may cost; and when God had expanded the flower of glory in his human life, God crushed it into a handful of bruised petals for fear that power and wonder might stand between God's kindness and our affections.
Strength Through Weakness
We must love God. It is our maker's command. Yet what has love to do with "must?" Love is free; duty cannot drive it. Yet we must love God. There is no resisting such love once we see God's face and feel the touches of God's hands.
The power of God perplexes us, but God's weakness is still all anniversary. about us; it is the means by which God moves our response. Our virtues seldom illustrate God's actions more than they darken them, Human weakness speaks for God's humiliation. Christ is every sufferer; whatever hand pulls at us is the hand which clutched at Mary and would have clutched at the friends standing around bis cross had it not been for the nails.
If we would but see from how many eyes the weakness of God looks into our own, we would not have time to ask, "Where is the God of love?"
According to his own words, Christ left two sorts of deputies in the world, two sorts of human substitutes for himself besides the one divine, invisible deputy, the Holy Ghost, who is the soul of all the love we have. The deputies of flesh and blood are the deputies of his power and the deputies of his weakness. The deputies of his power are his apostolic ministers, to whom he says, "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me." They speak his word, they pronounce his pardon, they give his body and his blood. The deputies of his weakness are the little and the needy. Of these he says, "He who receives one such in my name, receives me."
Neither sort of deputy represents Chris by virtue of his or her merits. The infirmity of the ministers binders the word; yet faith, through all our folly, can hear the voice of Jesus.
The weak, the poor, are not always amiable. Yet faith can see the passion of Christ in all, and faith is the gift of that greater and better deputy, the Holy Ghost who will not fail us, the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit whom Jesus was born to bring us.
By God's inspiration, then, we receive Christ in both sorts of human deputies. But most endearing, most revealing, most present to us at all times perhaps, are the deputies of God' s weakness. These are the deputies through whom God receives our meager gifts, and God's gratitude, unlike ours, is undying.
When the nations shall stand before the eternal Shepherd, he shall say to those whom he guides toward his right hand: "You have my Father's blessing; come, enter and possess the kingdom that has been ready for you since the world was made. For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked you clothed me, when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me."
And when they deny that they ever did him such services, he will answer, "Anything you did for one of my brothers or sisters here, however humble, you did for me."
In such, then, is our God to be found, and here eternal life is to be found; and we can turn our backs on idols.