Dr. Ron Sumners
April 5, 2009
There is a time to think about failure. It is something that we all have known. Realizing our inadequacy or our ineffectiveness can be a terrible anguish.
Our society deems that it is terrible to fail. A person’s esteem can go into a tail-spin when they fail. Failure becomes like a scar on our ego. It can take extensive spiritual surgery to remove that scar. We assume that everyone sees it and knows about it because it is so fresh and noticeable to us.
I have a scar on my face. Actually, I have several scars on my face. I had a skin cancer that had to be removed a few years ago. My assumption for a long time was that people immediately saw the scar and speculated about it. Was I in an accident, or a knife fight? I found out that most people did not even notice it unless I pointed it out. They assumed it was just one of the numerous age lines on my face!
The same is true for the internal scars. They are so ever-present to us that we assume they are obvious to everyone.
Our failures center on several different aspects of our natures. We set high goals for ourselves and when we miss these goals, it can hurt.
Have you ever been video-taped? It can be a crusher for the ego! A man in a former church videoed me as I led the Christmas Eve service. I saw myself on the screen and it wasn’t at all the handsome, slim, debonair, young pastor I saw in the mirror. It was some short, rotund, little guy I didn’t even know.
The most painful failures come in relationships. We could all make a long list of the times and places of these failures: husbands and wives, parents and children; the people we work with. The failure of relationship reaches a climax when it comes to God. Often our faith has been inadequate, and we have heard the rooster crow, and wept like Peter for our failure.
Yes, most all of us know what it is to fail God. If you do not – it may be because you are not spiritually enough in tune with God to recognize it when it happens! If I were to stand here today and recite all the times I have failed as a Christian and as a pastor, it would take much longer than the time allotted for the sermon.
In a success oriented culture, to fail is unpardonable. So, we become experts at making excuses. Someone else is to blame. We will not, and maybe cannot accept the fact that we all fail sometimes at something. Some of us fail a lot at most everything! We blame the circumstances. We blame others. We blame our parents. We get defensive because we are threatened and we sabotage our present relationships because we will not accept responsibility for ourselves. This leads to depression, and depression robs life of its joy.
Today, after my negative talk about failure, I want to tell you that failure can be a sacrament. Let me explain what I mean.
A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. It is a symbol with extraordinary meaning. Rings are the symbols of marriage. They are more than just golden ornaments. They represent something very important. The bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper represent the sacrifice of Jesus. They are more than just juice and bread. We don’t use the terminology any more, but old Baptists used to speak of “taking the sacrament” when they ate the Lord’s Supper. It was a way of saying that these elements are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace!
The supreme symbolic service in the church, Easter, centers in what appeared to be a failure. The cross was a symbol of defeat and failure. That is certainly the way that the disciples saw it. The two disciples, as they returned to Emmaus said, “We had hoped that he was the Messiah.” Hope was gone. Jesus had failed – or so it seemed that Friday and Saturday. Their hopes were crushed. The chief priests and rulers of Israel saw the cross as a symbol of victory over this troublesome young rabbi. Their hope vanished with the resurrection!
There is something built into our way of life which makes us blind to the sacrament of failure. We are officially optimistic and success oriented. Our system condemns us to activity, success, profit and progress. It invades the church and the ministry just like it invades every other area of our lives. I doubt that many churches would be happy to have their pastor be like any of the Biblical prophets. Many labored for years with no response! When we preachers fail and get frustrated, we try to move to a different place, or the church determines to move us to a different place! You, too, are victim to the same thing no matter what your line of work.
Success is a “goddess” and it is the supreme idol in a materialistic culture. I have been here almost sixteen years. I feel that there is still a positive reaction to having me as pastor despite my obvious absence and shortcomings in the past year and a half. Would that be so if we had not grown through the years? I seriously doubt it. I would have been gone long ago and the church would have sought a man who would cause the church to grow. Please don’t hear that as a negative or derogatory to you and me – just realistic!
We can get so one-sided in a point of view, that “the survival of the fittest” is the full expression of our theology! The battle cry today, even in the church is, “Let’s kick the weak ones aside so we can move ahead!” Those who weep are seen as simply those who have no stamina. We can’t waste our time on them. The pain of the world only leaves us thankful that we have escaped; no compassion for the wounded by the road. The suffering of others does not elicit compassion, but is rather, a nuisance to our convenience! Love is no longer an act of compassion and will, but only a sexual urge and act.
The goddess of success completely contradicts what we find at the core of our Christian Faith. There we see a God who suffers on a cross. If the church today, misses the compassion that put Jesus on the cross; if the church strides from mountain top to mountain top in resplendent victory; forgetting those who lie wounded along life’s road, it is more in step with the times than it is with the Gospel!
Even the memory of the cross seldom includes the terrible suffering it caused. The symbol of Christian hope, the cross, may sometimes be used as a religious aid to move us toward success. I have heard people say in the last few years that we need a cross in the sanctuary. I agree. But I must ask the question, why? The response, I fear, from many would be that the huge, mega churches all have a large very noticeable cross on display.
The fact is that we can never be set free from the prison house of sin without the realization that Jesus died on the cross and that it was there that He endured our suffering! It seemed like failure, but from it, God worked a miracle and glorious victory.
Only when we understand that failure may end up as a sacrament do we grasp what the Gospel declares: there is victory in Jesus in all circumstances of life!
Jesus did not die a natural death, but a violent one, hanging among thieves on a cross. He died with the cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” It was a Roman soldier who responded to the cry, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” He did not see a conqueror hero. He saw a man forsaken by His disciples, feeling forsaken by God. It was after he heard Jesus’ cry that he believed. Maybe he knew what it was to feel “God-forsaken.” Maybe you do too!
Jesus took the sin of the world upon Himself. He died condemned, unclean, and shamed. He was not just playing a role; it was reality. When He died, a hardened, heathen soldier proclaimed who He was and is. So, we need to discover that failure may become a sacrament, a symbol of the grace that raises a sinner from the grave!
Jesus glorified His sacrifice through resurrection. He made it possible for every believer to rise from the ashes. What we need when we fail is some Easter morning thinking! Whenever Jesus spoke of His rejection, suffering and death, He promised a third day resurrection. He was dead, crucified and buried. The tomb was sealed. But then came the third day! And even if your life looks like a total failure, if you place it in the hands of God, there will be a third day for you too!
Jesus was rejected in His hometown of Nazareth. In spite of all the miraculous things that He did, the people in Nazareth said, “This is just Mary and Joseph’s son. He is just a carpenter.” They could not see God in the familiar or ordinary. What a tragic mistake.
Some people have an experience like Isaiah’s. They go to the Temple and there they see the Lord high and lifted up. But it is even more likely that we see God as we lie broken by the side of life’s road. We’ve failed, our dreams shattered, but in that moment, God becomes more real than ever before.
Jesus was also rejected in Jerusalem by the elders and the chief priests. Even one of His disciples betrayed Him and another denied Him. The people cried out in derision as He hung on the cross, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
To all these, Jesus was a failure. He was not what they expected or wanted. Even the disciples fled from the cross. They felt cheated and duped. They thought He was the Messiah, but He obviously was not.
Jesus did not fail because He was lazy and did not do His work. Jesus did not fail because He refused to relate to the people or love them or serve them. His failure came because men did not want what He had to offer. That is still the case today. His “failure” became the means for our salvation.
What did Jesus do with failure?
He did not quit when things became difficult. Neither should we! We do not have the right to brush people aside because they are not like us or do not understand us. We don’t have the right to close the door on people even if they have closed the door on us.
Our mistakes may become the raw material with which we build a new life. Failure can be the source of a new dependence on God. There is no failure so great that a Christian cannot rise from it. There is no defeat so final that he cannot convert it into victory!
It is pride and arrogance that makes us feel we must atone for our failures. We can’t do that.
But, if we surrender our failure to God, we can be resurrected to live in freedom and victory.
We are very much like lumps of clay. Sometimes we are hard and brittle with little shape or beauty. But, if we are moldable clay, there is always the Potter who can remake us. If we are surrendered and willing, He will fashion us into a fit vessel for the filling of His spirit.
So many failures are repeated because we try to play God rather than trust God’s love to help us pick up the broken pieces. He will work in our lives, even in our failure, to give us life; abundant life!
The wonderful thing about Jesus’ failure was that it ended in resurrection. He told His disciples that He would be handed over to men and be killed and rise on the third day. They did not understand what the teaching meant.
In Isaiah 26:17, there is a passage which expresses a deep sense of failure, “We gave birth to nothing. We have won no victory for the land; we have accomplished nothing.” But in the next statement the mood changes completely, “Those of our people who have died will live again! Their bodies will come back to life. All those sleeping in their graves will wake up and sing for joy. As the sparkling dew refreshes the earth, so the Lord will revive those who have long been dead.”
The Biblical answer to failure is the Resurrection!
Lloyd Ogilvie has said we must allow the fear of ultimate failure to fear us from the fear of failure. That means that if our purpose in life is to know the Lord and live with Him forever, the only real failure is to miss that! The only real victory; the only real success is eternal life; all else is failure.
Failure is a sacrament when it makes us tender and teaches us how to accept others. It is a sacrament when through it we come to know God’s forgiveness and the joy of a second chance.
Those of us, who know failure, find it hard to be judgmental and critical. We can have compassion for others and help them. The best witnesses to Christ’s saving love are sinners who have experienced His grace. People find it hard to relate to “saints”, but they can come to know the Savior through one who has failed and been forgiven.
Comments