Embracing Weakness; Affirming God's Strength

Today I have the privilege of speaking in chapel.  Over the past three weeks our services have focused on the "Maladjustment of Jesus" a theme that stemmed from Martin Luther King, Jr's speech at Bethel in 1960.  Each week we tried to focus on a different aspect of Jesus and how that would applicable to college students, something useful that they could take and practice in their lives.  The order of the services was as follows: 1: Maladjustment to Busyness, 2: Maladjustment to Injustice, 3: Maladjustment to Weakness, also referred to as failure or incompetence.
I spoke today on the final subject, using the experiences of the past several weeks to relate to Peter's denial of Jesus found in Mark 14:66-72.  Please remember when reading this that it was meant to be heard, not read and if you have any questions or comments don't hesitate to ask.  I might be willing to read it again to a group of people.
First I want to include the Call to Worship which was perfect for the service.

L: Only when we admit we are lost

P: can we be led.
L: Only when we acknowledge our weakness 

P: can we be given strength. 

L: Only when we are empty 

P: can we be filled. 

All: We are lost. We are weak. We are empty. 

L: Come Lord Jesus, hear our prayer. Amen.

            There are times in our lives when our failures, our weaknesses, our faults, even if we have no control over them, begin to control our lives.  We forget the things we are competent or good at, the things we do well.  We don’t listen to those around us, reassuring us of our strengths.  Instead we focus on this failure and work to become competent in it on our own.  We seek the strength inside ourselves, strength that may not be there, and we fail. 

            I’ve tried to solve my problems, my issues on my own and that path led to darkness.  Darkness seemingly so impenetrable, so complete, so black that death appeared to be the only release.  This darkness, this despair, this feeling of utter, complete, never ending loneliness drove me deeper, believing that only I could help myself.  I failed to reach out to those around me and that failure nearly cost me everything.

            While Peter’s failure in this text saved his life, it was, in many ways, similar to mine.  When he denied Jesus the first time Peter pushed away, isolating himself from everything and everyone he know to be loving and right.  I am positive that at this particular moment Peter felt completely alone.  That loneliness led to his second denial.  This seems to be contradictory, but when you reach that point, that complete utter despair, the loneliness consumes you.  All that you want is to be alone.  Peter experienced this.  Yes, he was with people but who among us has never felt alone in a crowd, I wager none.  These people were complete strangers.  They did not know him.  They did know how conflicted his soul was.  Finally his desperation and need to live led to his third denial.  “He began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know this man you are taking about.”

            Here in Peter, I see myself, adamantly telling everyone who asks, “I’m fine,” hoping both that they would pursue the issue so I could express how I really was, and that they would leave it alone because it was easier to keep everything inside then to make myself vulnerable to others.  I rejected others attempts to reach out and know me, to love me, and that was the biggest mistake I have ever made.  It is my biggest failure.  This failure was one that I couldn’t control, but one none the less.  I failed to show others what I was truly going through, how conflicted my soul was.  I failed to acknowledge to myself the real depth of the darkness.  That I could not keep that spark, that tiniest of hopes alive on my own.

            Peter failed to speak the truth, to stand up and reach out to those he had trusted and to whom he had given his life.  Peter’s failure was to speak up, speak out, just as mine.  But before Peter could become conscious of his failure he had to be reminded, he had to receive help from others.  The crow of the rooster was the help he needed to understand his faults and come to the realization that he needed help to overcome this failure.

            My rooster crow came just over two weeks ago as I sat on a bridge, surrounded by darkness, unable to reach out, unable to recognize that I Needed to reach out.  But unlike Peter, my rooster was calling for the next 48 hours, really, even longer than that.  It will, it must last for my entire life.  During that call, that point of realization, I wanted to run away like Peter, to weep from my own grief and loneliness.  I could not trust anyone because I felt as though I had let them down and they, in turn, had betrayed me.  I cursed and swore.  I asked God why.  Why was I going through this?  Why did I feel so utterly alone, like the spark and finally gone out.  I was in a place that was supposed to help me, that was supposed to keep me safe but I felt as though the people there were looking right through me.

            Just as these feelings were starting to take a permanent hold on me, I had been abandoned by everyone I loved; there came a glimmer of hope from an unlikely place.  A man was there who had a story just like mine.  Over the next several days I thought about and processed what it meant to be me.  I realized that this issue, this problem, this failure or weakness; while I could not control it and though it was no fault of my own, it was a part of me and one that I would experience again.  I learned that I am not alone in this weakness and I have a plan for the next time it tries to sneak up on me.

            While I do not love this weakness, I now know that it is a part of me.  One that I will never be able to completely shake.  I have embraced it and welcomed it into me completely because I cannot be complete while rejecting a part of myself.  As I was writing this during church on Sunday we sang a hymn that stood out to me.  The lyrics of the refrain are “I will arise and go to Jesus, he will embrace me in his arms.  In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are ten thousand charms.”  Why do you think this stood out to me?  And now I say to God, “Here I am, complete.  Take all of me, strength and weakness.”  And God replies, “You didn’t even have to ask.”