"Stand Tall Against the Fear of Failure and Disgrace"
Sermon Transcript for August 10, 2003Scripture Reading: Matthew 14:20-34
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
I want to begin by sharing a Bible story with you. We won’t be turning to a particular place in the Bible. Instead I’m going to paraphrase a little bit which sometimes I refer to as Dan’s fractured Bible tales. This is from the Gospel of Matthew, from Chapter 14 and you can check the facts later if you want to. The story begins right after the Apostles have witnessed an amazing miracle. They’ve seen Jesus’ power in a way that just was so profound it left them awe struck. He had just fed 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. And as soon as the meal was finished Jesus had sent them off in a boat to sail back across the Sea of Galilee. And he was going to remain behind and dismiss the people and spend some time in prayer. It must have been later in the evening because as they took off out across the waters, the skies darkened and the great storm came and they were caught in the middle of the sea with a terrible storm raging. The winds were blowing, the waves were churning all around the boat, and the lightning was flashing. It must have been terrifying. In fact that was brought home to me yesterday because around 3:30 p.m. or so yesterday afternoon, Laura and the kids decided to go for a walk. If you were here in Franklin, you already know what happened. They were about half way wherever they were going and the bottom fell out of the sky, the rain drenched them, the lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, the wind blew. They tell me a tree branch even fell down near them. Now Ruthie and Nathan don’t do storms and I was really worried for them. In fact, I got in the van and searched all over town for them and couldn’t find them. And I got in touch with the story that we are looking at right now because I began to realize what it must have felt like to be caught in that boat in the middle of the storm. The surroundings are all too familiar, but when the sky turns black and the tree limbs turn upside down and the wind is blowing and thunder and lightning are all around you, it’s easy to feel lost and hopeless.
And so there they were in the darkness and they saw something they could not comprehend. There was someone walking across the stormy waters toward them. And the Apostles were afraid. And rightly so! But their interpretation was odd. They decided that there was a ghost walking towards them until the person coming towards them said, “Take courage; it’s me!” Immediately they recognized it was the Lord Jesus and Peter, without hesitation and with great boldness, said, “Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you and I will.” And Jesus said, “Come on!” And so Peter stepped out of the boat. Now I want you to really consider how unthinkable that is. Have you ever stepped out of a boat? I have--sometimes on purpose; sometimes by accident. The same thing happens every time—down you go under the water. And I was in calm waters for me. Peter stepped out of the boat and walked on the water with Jesus. And then he began to realize what he was doing. And when he began to focus on his own human accomplishment, he began to sink in the water and to drown. And that’s when Jesus reached out to him. Peter looked up to Him. And He said, “Faint heart, give me your hand.” And He lifted Peter up out of the stormy waters and he walked with the Lord on the water. And though the Scripture doesn’t say it specifically, we know that Jesus and Peter must have walked arm and arm back toward the boat, got in the boat, and the storm calmed and on they went. And the Apostles praised him saying, “This is the Lord.”
Now, you need to know Peter was not putting Jesus to the test. He knew better than that. It was an act of faith! As soon as he recognized the sound of the Lord’s voice he said, “By golly, that’s the Lord and if he wants me to I can walk across the water to him.” What an incredible act of faith! Peter did that a lot you know. He had faith first and thought second. Wouldn’t that be a nice quality to have? You know, we are way too hard on Peter. And we certainly had a tendency to misunderstand this story because the only thing Peter did in the way of failing was to focus on himself. He realized that he was a human with many weaknesses and that’s when he began to falter. And when he saw that he was walking on raging waters, that’s when he began to sink. But listen to what he did, because this is anther credit to Peter. He looked to Jesus when he was drowning. He reached for Jesus. He knew who could save him. He knew whose power ultimately would restore him. So I guess we can learn from that that to maintain faith in difficult situations one must keep their focus directly on Jesus. We start out with good intentions just like Peter. We do it all the time. Sometimes our faith falters too. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we have failed. Especially not if we turn to the only one that can help us—who is Christ!
I was preparing for the sermon and as usual visited some of my favorite resources including Matthew Henry’s commentary. Now Matthew Henry was a 17th century puritan and you are probably wondering what he could possible have to say to us contemporary people. Well, I want to read you his words about this particular story from the Bible because they are as relevant today as they were almost 400 years ago when they were written.
“Special supports are promised, and are to be expected, but only in spiritual pursuits; nor can we ever come to Jesus, unless we are upheld by his power. Christ encouraged Peter to come, not only that he might walk upon the water, and so know his Lord’s power, but that he might know his own weakness. And the Lord often lets his servants have their choice, to humble and prove them, and to show the greatness of his power and grace. When we look off from Christ, and look at the greatness of opposing difficulties, we shall begin to fall; but when we call to him, he will stretch out his arm and save us. Christ is the great Savior; those who would be saved, must come to him, and cry to him, for salvation; we are never brought to this, till we find ourselves sinking: the sense of need drives us to him.”
Those words are as true today as when they were written. Let us pray, “Precious God as we come before you now, we pray that you will speak your word to us. Bless your sermon now. Test the hearts of your people. Help us to face our fears in a way that brings you glory. Amen.”
Today we are talking about “Standing Tall in the Face of Our Fears of Disgrace and Failure”. Now I have learned that mistakes are effective teachers. And that if we will listen to the lessons we learn, if we will observe what came from those mistakes, we will become wise. I want to share another story of another bible character with you because his story is so relevant to us as we consider this whole fear of failure and disgrace. His name is John Mark. He’s better known to us as Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark. He was a good learner who just needed some encouragement and patience. As a young person from a wealthy family in Jerusalem, he had sat and listened many times to the teachings of the Apostles. In particular he had heard from Peter. Scripture tells us that they were often guests of Mark’s mother. And he had become a believer under their teaching. And so bold was he that he wanted to join with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey to Antioch. And Mark did travel with them. The Scripture tells us that missionary life was apparently a little more than Mark could take on that first trip. And so we are told that when they reached Perga, in Pamphylia, Mark returned to Jerusalem. And we are told that even though we don’t have a lot of details, we are told that this was a pretty upsetting thing to the Apostle Paul. He was not happy with Mark for having done this. He saw it as desertion. And we know that Paul was harshly judging Mark because later on when they were preparing for their second missionary journey he absolutely refused to have John Mark come with them. And this went against the recommendation of his good friend Barnabas. You remember Barnabas! We talked about him a couple of weeks ago. Do you know what Barnabas means? --Son of encouragement. Barnabas was the one, you might recall, who stood up for the Apostle Paul when no one else would. He was the one who told the people of the church that Paul had been converted. Now remember, Paul had been a persecutor of the church up to that point. He had been known to have been instrumental in the deaths of many Christians. And it was Barnabas who stuck up for him. And now Barnabas was sticking up for John Mark and Paul would have nothing to do with it. So that Scripture tells us that Paul and Barnabas when their separate ways over this decision.
Now Barnabas and Paul must have been dear friends for they traveled together. Paul owed so much to Barnabas. They had been brothers in ministry. This had to be traumatic. Yet it was worth it to Barnabas because he saw potential in John Mark. You remember that John Mark was the one who sort of vaguely referred to, in one of the gospels, as the youth who ran from the Garden of Gethsemane naked because he was so afraid of the consequences of being seen with Jesus. Mark was young. He was a little immature. But we find out, as we read through the New Testament, that he was with Peter, he was with Paul and Barnabas, and late in his ministry we hear the Apostle Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy asking for Mark to be brought to his side. He says, “Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful to me in my ministry.” What changed? How is it that this young Mark who was not highly thought of by Paul became someone he wanted by his side near the end of his days? Maybe Barnabas was right about him. Maybe Paul recognized that.
I want to stop here and remind you to read Scripture as often as you can. If you ever give up Scripture on account of TV it is because you are not familiar with Scripture because there is nothing on TV that is better than this stuff. Scripture is good! The only thing it requires is imagination. You see, the authors of the various texts of our Bible, they had a point to make. They had something they wanted to tell us. And so they were counting on us to use our imagination. And I can assure you that as you read these stories that I am alluding to, you will find people in them that you can identify with. You will find people who were very real and in many ways are very real even now. I say that because I can identify with Mark. The story of Mark is not all that different from my own. I had grown up carrying an awful burden of self-doubt and pain. And by the time I had graduated from high school, I was pretty convinced that I would never amount to anything. I masked it well; and I often put myself in situations that had potential to bring out my potential, but I always failed. In fact, I came to believe that I was a failure. And over the years of my late teens and early twenties, I made a series of bad decisions. I did things that I figured were failures. And I feel as though I brought disgrace to people that I loved and respected. Now I have to say in the grand scheme of things they weren’t that colorful, but they were definitely not consistent with my upbringing and with the values that my family held. I left behind wounded people because my pain overflowed and spilled on to others. And the truth is, if it hadn’t of been for a couple of “Barnabai”, you remember Barnabai are what I call people who are great encouragers like Barnabas. If it hadn’t of been for a couple of them, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t still be at the dead-end street or at rock bottom right now.
The first of them was this fellow I told you about just a little while ago, Joe Gambill. I worked with him in a truck dealership. I was in the Parts Department and he was in the Sales Department. Now where I worked everybody arrived at success the same way. You started at the bottom and you worked your way up and you had to walk over other people to succeed. If you were strong you survived; you made more money, you were more likely to be called upon by the customers. And if you were weak, you were chewed up and spit out. It was a rough crowd and I really didn’t fit in. I found out something that I didn’t understand at the time and that is even when you think you are an adult you are still in development, you still are a work in progress and the things that happen to you have a way of affecting you in a way you think and feel about yourself. And at that point in my life I never felt like more of a failure, a disgrace. It was as low as I could go. And Joe kept coming around. I don’t know, he just saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. He’d come back from the Sales Department. He said our coffee was better back in the Parts Department, but it was really just for the excuse to come back and encourage me. And sometimes he would invite me to come up to his office and we would talk. And he’d tell me about all of his dreams and ambitions and things he was going to do even while he worked this job. He asked me if I had dreams and ambitions like that. I didn’t. He seemed to recognize that I had kind of a knack for working with computers. And so he told me that was something he did as a hobby. And he helped me buy my first computer. He helped me set up a database of all of my customers and all the calls that I made and all the sales that I’d made. And he kind of helped me turn this job that I hated and considered my punishment for failure in to something fun. It didn’t make me love the job but it sure made the time pass better. And I began to get a little bit of confidence. So Joe kind of helped me recognize that I had intellectual capability. He helped me recognize that I had some sort of potential. And thanks to Joe, I started looking around for better opportunities within the trucking industry. And for me that was going to be a dead-end street, but it gave me the opportunity to try new things. It gave me the confidence to try a few new things. And with Joe’s encouragement I eventually moved from sweeping floors and selling parts over the counter to selling outside and meeting with people. I remember Joe saying, “It’s a good thing you are doing the outside sales job because it’s a people thing and you do well with people.” And he helped me find that quality in myself. And eventually he encouraged me to become a truck salesman, which is quite an act of faith because you just get paid straight commission for that. But with Joe’s help, I believed in myself and I didn’t do too badly. But I had a long way to go.
And that is when I met another Barnabas who came in to my life. As consequences of some of the decisions that I had made regarding my career and the life that I had begun with Laura and the children coming along, we moved to Corydon, Indiana. We started attending the Old Capital United Methodist Church and the pastor there was Mike Beck. And darn if he wasn’t another Barnabas who seemed to see a potential in me that I could not see in myself! He seemed to see gifts that I couldn’t see. That’s something that Mike does really well; in fact, that is his greatest gift. If I could step aside for just a second, I just want to say that we are all really blessed to have a man of God like Mike working here. It is his gift to see qualities in all of us that we may not know are there and then to help bring them out. It’s a unique fellow who would let his junior stand up here and preach as often as I do. Mike brought out the potential with me, got me involved with ministry at Old Capital. He eventually got me on the staff as a part-time minister of outreach because he too saw that I liked people and that that was something I enjoyed was to encourage others and to be some kind of help to other people. And eventually he had the courage to tell me that he felt I might have a call to ministry. It takes courage to tell another person that because if you are wrong, think about the consequences. But he was right about me! I did have a call to ministry; I do have a call to ministry! And like an ugly old caterpillar, I came out a butterfly. And in the last six or seven years, I have seen myself change in ways that I could not have imagined. It is nothing short of miraculous.
And it has everything to do with encouragement of the Barnabai in my life. And you know, that’s when my story and Marks come back together again. Because, you see, what we eventually got out of John Mark’s journey is the Gospel of Mark, which most scholars believe is the first of the Gospels. In any event, he introduced us to Jesus, the human. Now we sing Jesus’ praises this morning as we began our songs of praise because we recognize this great immense God-like quality that is Christ the Lord. But as we face our failings, as we face our humanness, it gives us great comfort to know that Jesus was like us in every way human. And who better than John Mark to explain that to us! A person who had to face his own failings and yet persevered to become another of the great founders of our faith.
The other day I was listening to Wynonna Judd on Good Morning America. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with her. She’s a country singer and her story is pretty colorful. Talk about somebody who’s had some failures and disgrace; and unlike most of us, had them published and broadcast for all the world to see. But she was saying that she felt that her life was turning around. She’d returned to the roots of her faith. And she sang this song called “Rock Bottom” and I resonated with some of the lyrics. I want to share a few of them with you now. She said, “A dead end street is just a place to turn around.” She said, “Anyway, rock bottom is good solid ground.” And she said, “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.”
What if we are in those places in our lives, what we’ve really done is reached a place to turn around? What if rock bottom really is good solid ground and from there the only place to go is up? And when you look up who do you see but Jesus reaching down to you saying, “Faint heart, give me your hand.” What if you need to have everything taken away so that you try because you have nothing to lose? Once upon a time I considered myself a failure and I considered everything I did consequence of failures. But I realize now that they were just course adjustments. I realize now that all the while I was floundering in a stormy sea, I was looking on the horizon for the Lord and the Lord reached out for me and invited me to walk across the waters with Him. Not that I didn’t sink a few times along the way and I suspect I will again. But all the while all I have to do is look for Him and reach for Him and I’ll be okay.
And at this moment, I want to be a Barnabas to you because among us I know today there is somebody, maybe several, who feel they have hit rock bottom. I know that you don’t think much of yourself and I just want to remind you, you are a work in progress. Whether you are 99 or whether you are 9, you are a work in progress. And God intends to do something wonderful through you if you will just recognize your human weakness and reach for Him. I believe you have tremendous potential and I believe that around you are “Barnabai” who want to be along side of you and encourage you. The most Christ-like thing about Joe and Mike in my life was the sacrifices they made for my sake. Someone needs encouragement and if it ‘s not you than may you need to be their Barnabas. Understand that it may cost you! But I can’t think of anything more Christ-like that you can do. Christ loved you so much He gave His life for you. He gave up His glory for you. He suffered like you, for you.
Let’s take a few minutes now as we close to spend a little time with God. Let’s each in our own way confess our weakness and ask God to give us new strength. As I mentioned earlier, the alter is a place we go to especially at a time when we want to feel God’s presence. So again, I invite you to come to the alter if you need to. Who knows, if might be that for you that is your stepping out of the boat. It will be a little embarrassing maybe, but it really shouldn’t be. This is a time of worship. It is a time between ourselves and God so if you feel a need, do it! We’ll wait; we’ll pray. Spend some time right now forgiving yourself for failures, planning to be a Barnabas for someone who needs encouragement. Who knows what they’ll become thanks to you and what God does through you.
“Oh God, hear the prayers of your people. Help them to be an encourager. Help them to be encouraged. Help them to realize they are not failures, just kids under construction. They have promise, a possibility waiting to blossom into something that brings you glory. Lord, may we all be people that make you smile and beam with pride. Fill our hearts with joy, Lord, so that we carry the song of joy in our hearts and are a sign of your renewal and redemption. Amen.”
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