The first time I proclaimed the Gospel as a deacon, it was in Spanish.

In worship, proclaiming the Gospel is the most visible role of a deacon. Carrying out the Gospel book and reading it among the people symbolizes the call to the church to carry out into the world the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, by our elbows, breaking in all around us.

A few short days after the church charged me with this responsibility at my ordination, I left on a mission trip to El Salvador. Due to a tropical storm that changed our Sunday plans at the last minute, we ended up visiting a church in the projects of San Salvador. Padre Juan Pablo asked if I wanted to vest and participate in the service, and I was honored to say yes. He asked if I had an English Bible, but I only had a prayer book, so the only Gospel was in Spanish.

Have I mentioned that I don’t speak Spanish? Up to that point on trip, I had been struggling to recall the far reaches of my high school Spanish and the pinnacle of my linguistic prowess had been conjuring “¿Donde está la cerveza?”For me to read the Gospel in Spanish would redefine ‘proclaiming’ into something more akin to a commercial for an adult Spanish version of “Hooked on Phonics.”

When I was ordained, I worried about many things, but the ability to speak well was not one of them. Speaking in public, interpreting Scripture, writing – most ways of communicating with words are my strengths, and frankly, I wasn’t interested in reading the Gospel if I was not going to do it well.

And my reticence went far deeper than an inability to speak.  That day, June 26, marked 8 months since my father was killed in a car accident.  With that anniversary, as with many others, I carried an exhaustion deep in my bones that I had learned came with the hills and valleys of grief.

Oh, and one more thing – let’s just say that this was the day that the unfamiliar water of El Salvador started to do its stereotypical work on my digestive system.

I was weary and had no words. I decided I had nothing to give, and thought the best thing would be to have someone else fulfill my responsibility, the thing I have been called and charged to do, because he would do it better.  In the sacristy, I told Juan Pablo that he should read the Gospel, since it was in his language. 

He replied, “But you are a deacon.  It is your job.”

So, with a foggy mind and rumbling stomach, letter by letter, syllable by syllable, I sounded out words which I did not know and presumed no one else could understand. 

But they did. The Gospel was proclaimed. Bread was broken and shared. And there in San Salvador, when I thought I was too weak to bother, I lived out the call I had been given in the church. And I’ve come to believe that was probably a good place to start – abundantly aware of how weak and frail I was – a truth that is rarely pleasant as we experience it, but is where we find grace, where we meet God together.

Today’s Gospel passage is actually two stories. First, Jesus returns and preaches in his hometown. The stories just before this tell of the incredible healing work he is doing in other towns, and how in each place the people are amazed by him. When he arrives home, where they watched him grow up and have known him for a long time, people cannot believe that this man who they thought was ordinary could be anything special. We often wonder what Jesus was like as a boy, all those years in between the his birth and the beginning of his ministry. This passage gives us an indication that there may not have been anything overwhelmingly remarkable about him – or at least the town had not seen it.

In their disbelief, they could not see that God has come among them and is willing to do incredible things in their midst because they cannot imagine that God could be present in this man they consider ordinary. God didn’t join us in someone immeasurably talented and skillful, someone we consider perfect, someone most of us could not relate to – God joined us in someone who passed as a carpenter, as one of us.

Then Jesus sends out his disciples to continue his work – to continue healing people and proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God is among us. He tells them to take nothing with them – that what they need will be provided wherever they need to go.

Many years later, the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians about his life as a disciple out on the road, healing and sharing the  the good news. We get a rare glimpse into the personal life of this man about whom we know relatively little. Even this passage is somewhat vague, but conveys something true for us all.

Through the last chapter, Paul has listed what he could boast about – he has a great heritage, education, ability, and experience to be a great apostle of Jesus. But this is not where he finds the strength of his ministry. Despite being able to heal others and tell them about this Jesus who healed people no one could have imagined, Paul admits that he has been afflicted with something, and that all of his prayer has not brought him relief.

And in this place, unable to get rid of this thorn in his flesh, knowing that he cannot control the pain he feels, vulnerable to all the suffering of this world – there he says that he is strong. There is the strength of his ministry.

As he prays, he hears from God, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.” What an incredible thing to hear. For us all to hear.

I think it’s something we need to hear today. So often since we’ve come to St. Paul’s, we hear how things used to be. And we have heard about the pain over the years, and we regret that we are not now where we were back then. Sometimes that has been a reason to despair, to struggle to believe that we can do anything more than hang on. Sometimes it is hard to believe that we have much left to give. Sometimes the challenges and obstacles seem so daunting that we wonder what ministry the church could have today.

And not just as a church – I think many of us struggle with what we have to offer for ministry. We each have our own weaknesses, our own struggles, and we are sure God cannot use us because of them.

But ministry has never been about what we have to give. It has never been about our wonderful abilities, our own strength.

Shortly after my dad died, only a few months before I was to be ordained, I was struggling with the ways my mind and body had changed, not just exhaustion that I had never experienced before, but memory loss and difficulty doing tasks that had always been easy. The priest at my parents’ church sent me an article that asked the question, “Are you weak enough to be a priest?” While it was addressed to priests, I believe that this question is for all of us – for we are all called to ministry when we are baptized.

The author goes on to define weakness as a ‘liability to suffering’. I think a better word might be vulnerability. It is the knowledge that we cannot fix and control everything. We know this deeply – we can work and manage everything about our lives and the lives of those we love, but at the end of the day, our world can be shattered in a moment in any number of ways that fill our imaginations. But most of the time we try to manage all that we can and ignore the underlying cause of the anxiety we cannot shake. And even the things we try to manage – there is always something that we can’t make turn out like we want, whether family, or friends, or work. And we feel weak and afraid to ever let others know how deeply we are struggling.

But we all struggle. We all have weaknesses, and knowing that – knowing our limits, being honest about our vulnerability is precisely where we find the heart of life as disciples of Christ. Here we find grace that is sufficient. Pure grace – undeserved and freely given. In our world where we never feel there is enough – enough sleep, enough time, enough money – we will find that there is always enough grace.

Here we find God’s power made perfect in our weakness. In the Greek, perfect actually means ‘whole’ or ‘having reached full maturity’ rather than our static idea of perfection. God’s power is made whole and complete where we know ourselves as human – as creatures wonderfully made and vulnerable to the changes and chances of this life.

It is our weaknesses, our vulnerability, that makes us know we were not meant to live alone. We are not meant to be independent – we were made to live deeply in relationship with God and each other. We were made to need each other. And so only in our weakness, in our limits, in our need, do we see the beauty of the interdependence of life together, of the fellowship of God which we are welcomed into.

Together we are called into ministry as a church. It is not the ministry of any one of us, or of the clergy – it’s our ministry as a church. We are all called to go out, just as the disciples were. And it will take all of us – all of us together with our gifts and strengths, with our limits and weakness. Because we were made to do this together.

We worship a God who, as Philippians says, “made himself nothing”, a God who joined us in every weakness and pain. We gather around this table to remember that is our story – that in his broken body and shed blood, we are made whole. In his greatest weakness, he showed his greatest strength – restoring us to life in God and with each other.

It is here that we bring, as the old language says, our selves, our souls and bodies – just as they are, broken and weak, and in this bread and wine, we are nourished and fed for ministry. Here in Christ’s broken body, we are given the strength we need for the ministry to which we have been called.

Like the disciples, we are all sent to proclaim the Gospel into the world. Each of our ministries will be in different ways, but we are certainly all called. Even when we are sure we have nothing to give, especially when we are sure we have nothing to offer – we are called to go, to carry the good news that God is among us, that the kingdom of God is at hand, right by our elbows, breaking in all around us and that all are welcome to be part of it.

You have been called. Whatever you fear, God’s grace will be sufficient. Wherever we are weak, God’s power will be shown in its perfection.

You have been called. Will you go?