Clay Jars And Why We Don’t Get To Be Superheroes

When I was younger, I remember praying for miraculous powers like the Bible heroes I had read about. It would be great to have such healing powers that my shadow could fall on someone and they would be completely made whole, not just healed but also able to recover from lifelong disabilities. It would be amazing to walk through life with the certainty of safety that a venomous snake could bite me and it wouldn’t even cause swelling around the wound. And there are countless other examples. Imagine crossing a river by smacking the water with your jacket and watching the water split apart. Imagine your supply of baking ingredients never running low.  Imagine having the strength to rip an ancient city gate off its hinges and carry the door away.

Obviously, it would be good to have these super powers for their primary purpose of actually doing things with them. I would just have to hope that the power wouldn’t go to my head. Hopefully, I would use such powers to help people, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I would also probably show off quite a bit. But there is also a secondary purpose these powers would play. What better confirmation of faith than powers that could only be explained by the presence of God? Sometimes, in a world intellectually dominated by skepticism, materialism, and empiricism, it is hard to believe in the very existence of God, let alone God’s personal love and favor to us. Since the industrial revolution, humanity has thought about the universe in industrial terms. Particles and rules of motion can make sense of everything we see. The prevailing attitude of the universe is cold indifference, not love and compassion. However, if we had miraculous powers to heal and provide, we could demonstrate that the universe is not heartless. God meets us at the very center of life, and gives us the power we need to make ourselves and others whole.

So, why don’t we have miraculous powers like the apostles and prophets of the Old Testament had? If it would not only confirm our faith, but also help other people with their material needs, why doesn’t God cause more miracles among the faithful today?

In 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul writes “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” He goes on to explain how human fragility impacts his ministry. Paul and his ministry partners may have worked miracles, but they still faced challenges. They got hungry and thirsty. They were perplexed and saw no way forward in difficult situations. They made mistakes and had regrets. Their ministry was thoroughly human, even though their message was divine. The same is true for us today. Our human bodies, our minds, our weaknesses are the clay jars that hold the treasure of the Gospel. 

And Paul is clear about why this treasure must be carried in clay jars. If the ministry were perfect, if every apostle and missionary was a superhero, then their powers would distract from the message. If every martyr of the church had been seen as a demigod, then Jesus would just be one hero among many, the founder of a movement of equally powerful people. Furthermore, Christians would trust in their own miraculous powers rather than in God. To be truly human and in proper relationship with God is to acknowledge our frailty before God. Our only hope of being powerful derives from the power God gives us, which often is seen through apparently mundane acts of courage and love. Of course, we could still feel that with miraculous super powers, but would we? How long could we continue being stronger than the world’s strongest men without starting to think that we were just strong?

Maybe you would think that we couldn’t possibly take such miracles for granted. Surely, if we really had the power to stall the sun in the sky or predict the future with perfect accuracy, we wouldn’t be able to ignore God’s power in our lives, but look at all the work of God in ordinary life that we ignore. The world is sustained day by day, only through the power of God. Spring comes again and again, reminding us of the hope of new life. We see the miracle of new life as babies are born, the miracle of love conquering hate as long standing feuds are put aside in moments of tear-filled reconciliation as well as when social progress is made to overcome long standing injustices. How many amazing things have we ignored because they seem like they are just natural or the results of human effort? How do we know that we would not dismiss miracles as luck or coincidence? 

But regardless of whether we give credit to God or take credit for ourselves, if our ministry were based on super powers, we would no longer be carrying treasure in clay jars. We would no longer be humans sharing a story of God’s love and grace and power in the lives of ordinary people, we would be superheroes letting the powers of our faith outshine the message we are bearing. To be human is to be fragile and trust in God’s grace and guidance through our lives. If we had the powers of the prophets, people wouldn’t see us as fragile, and people would be more interested in our powers than our true treasure.

It would be nice to confirm our faith by having world changing abilities rooted in our faith. It would be nice to be able to heal and care for people in ways that would leave them awestruck at our faith. And yet, we don’t need superpowers to do that. It is enough to approach people with genuine love and listening, proclaiming to them a message of hope that the world will not give them, offering them our time and energy and genuinely caring for them. In fact, it is perhaps better for our mission of sharing the good news with all the world to be holding it in clay jars. Anyone could believe in God if God were actively working miracles through them, but when we believe even in our fragility, when we trust God even when we are perplexed and see no way forward, then the people around us can know that we are moved not by magic but by the treasure we bear, the promises of God. And if we can be so moved, to trust God even in our weakness and times of despair, then this promise really can be for the whole world, which isn’t filled with super powers but weak and broken people just like us.