“Free To Fail”
Scripture Reading: Mark 6:1-13
Sermon Transcript for July 9, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
The message for last week was the “Freedom to Believe or Not”. We do have that freedom in this country. We are free to worship as we will or as we choose not to. That’s a great freedom to have. It’s really what the basis of independence means. But in the Christian faith, the freedom to believe is also the freedom to trust—to trust that what God tells us is right and correct. Today is the second part of that freedom theme. I want us to talk about the “Freedom to Fail”. The freedom to fail sounds like a strange thing when we mention that we are working with the great God Almighty and with Jesus Christ, His Son and our Savior, incarnation of God Himself in our presence, in our midst. But I would like for you to think of something today related to who we are as Christians: 1) we are called perfection, but we are not and I’ll explain that in a little bit, and 2) we are called to fail doing the right thing. In fact, it is better for us to fail doing the right thing than it is to fail to do anything at all. Sometimes the message comes across incorrectly. And if you follow Jesus Christ, you have to do everything exactly right, do it perfectly the first time. Never make a mistake. Don’t break those commandments. All of the other ways of interpretation crap.
We looked last week at part of the 5th chapter of Mark and we looked, specifically, at the healing of the little girl, Jairus’ daughter and also the woman who had been ill for twelve years. I’m referring to the first part of that chapter where Jesus stills the storm, that power of nature, and also heals a boy in a cemetery called Demoniac. Power over nature power over demons, power over illness and even death—a four by four! That’s better than Barry Bonds by any day! It’s better than any baseball player for sure because if you could hit over 300, you’re considered a leader and a champion. But four for four, but of course it is Jesus, isn’t it? Why else? Could not it possibly be the perfect one never to make a mistake, never to fail, never to have rejection? Because isn’t that what failure really part of it is, rejection by our own selves, against ourselves for whatever we don’t won’t or what someone else claims that we don’t want blaming us for that? No, in fact if we listen to Jesus’ words and Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect therefore as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. And we hear that and we say, “But how can I be perfect?” So we shy away from taking risks?--because if you take risks you might fail. Better to take the easy, safe route.
Jesus further makes the point about perfection, about being right all the time, when a young man comes to Him in Matthew 19 and says, “I have followed all of the commandments, I have been pretty much perfect as far as the rules go, but what more do I need to have eternal life?” And Jesus says, “Sell all you own and follow me”. He couldn’t take that step. That would feel like failure to him. He’d been successful so far, but now Jesus is telling him to give up something, to lose it instead. Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell”. That is a response. “And then come and follow me”. But he turned away sad.
Doing it right! You know the old statement, “Do it, just do it!” Well, do it right is the Christian motto. Let’s read though from the Scripture for this morning, from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6:1-13, in two parts, one about the prophet without honor, Jesus in His own hometown. Now when you go back home, homecoming is a time for celebration, right? That’s when you go back and everybody cheers you as a hero or a heroine and it’s an opportunity then at that point to really kind of bask in the glory. And then also the direction following that will be a statement of Jesus giving of what we are to do, how we are to step out in faith. “Jesus left there and went to his hometown accompanied by His disciples. When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard Him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given Him making even God’s miracles? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son, brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at Him.” And I’m talking vernacular, “They got a little ‘uppity’!” He left town and came back a hero is a little bit more than what we can bear. “Jesus said to them, ‘Only in His hometown, among His relatives in His own house, is a prophet without honor. He could not do any miracles there.” What a travesty. He, Jesus, could not do any miracles there “except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them. And He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village calling the Twelve to Him. He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were His instructions—take nothing for the journey except a snack. No bread, no bag, no money in your belts or sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them. They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.”
What a powerful image! Jesus, the Christ, Son of the ever-living God, Savior of the world, can not even be accepted. He failed in His own home town! Now of course you can pick up on that one verse that said that Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith, so you can shift the blame to them. And maybe that’s appropriate in one case. But I want us to focus on the fact that what Jesus is saying to us today is, “You follow me and you will not be perfect all of the time. You will fail. There will be things that will go against what you think they ought to be and how they ought to be.” Paul, in the Second Letter to the Corinth church, in the twelfth chapter, makes the following kinds of statements because Paul begins to realize, who himself was at one time the perfect image of the great leader, he did it all, he had it all, he was a perfect leader. But then he met Jesus and he was changed so that he began to see his life differently. And he says, quoting Jesus, “My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore,” Paul says, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest upon me. That is why for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
So what I propose for you today, based upon Jesus’ failure in His own home town, the inability for Him to perform miracles there, and Paul’s awareness that he is second to Jesus, not equal to in the doing-it-right all of the time. But in fact, his weaknesses become a place for God to shine forth. In the United Methodist Church and most of the body of Christ, we recognize two key sacraments—the sacrament of Baptism, when you stand before the public and you profess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and receive an anointing of water in representation of God’s cleansing of your life and accepting you in that way; and the sacrament of communion where we come forth and we profess faith in Jesus Christ and also profess our failures and our sinfulness and receive forgiveness and recognition of that through the bread and the drink. Those are the two sacraments most accepted. The Orthodox Church adds five more to those, but for the purpose today, I am going to step out in sort of in a classic way of going a little bit too far, I want us to add a third sacrament to our church. I’ll call it the sacrament of failure. It is a blessed thing to fail when you are doing the right thing in the name of Jesus Christ!
See, what this meant to the disciples when Jesus was rejected in His home town, was that the doors of that synagogue were closed to them. The doors of His friends and family’s homes were rejecting Him saying, “Well who is this come-uppetance young kid?--Just a young man going around and doing these things claiming that he is God’s son.” And they closed the door of the synagogue. But in that way, the world’s doors were open for they went then from village to village spreading the good news and performing good works in the name of Christ.
When John Wesley, who was in the pulpit of the Church of England, preaching faithfully and then wanted to preach that word outside of the pulpit and the rules of that day were you can’t do that, you can’t step outside of this box. You can’t go over here and do those things. “John Wesley, stay back in the pulpit. Don’t go outside.” But he felt called by God to step out and in the church’s definition, he failed. But you see what happened? A movement started out of that faith and that commitment and it became what we call Methodism for today. John Wesley was rejected. He failed; but he succeeded because in his journey, he turned his life over to Jesus Christ.
The early disciples saw that night began to recognize, that as they, in their weaknesses, turned over the opportunity for God to work in them. Instead of declaring that they had to be perfect in a human sense, they were perfect in the faith of accepting God in their lives. Not that they would always succeed in human terms or even a daily way. But the disciples and the followers of John Wesley’s thinking and found that Jesus Christ had gone out away from the safe haven and sanctuary and had gone to Chattanooga, Mexico, and Arbono Boulevard United Methodist church youth are going to Martin, Kentucky. They are stepping out; they are going to Uganda to the backstreets and the alleys and the main streets and the backwaters of life because that’s what it means to recognize that you go out in the strength of Jesus Christ.
The sacrament of failure raises up that as an opportunity to see that through our failures and our mistakes even God can work good through that. Mark implies and carries out to the Roman world that the church is going to make mistakes. And so the early church and our church today needs to accept the responsibility of failing gracefully, of stepping out in an effort to do what we believe is right or what God is calling us, even if it may end in failure. This church, I’m sure in the past, has been one that has taken steps. I’ve seen its history and you would say, “Well, it was successful in every venture it made.” I hope that’s not true. Will we be successful in every venture that we take or will we be in faith stepping out sometimes beyond where we can see what we can see, where we have to trust that God is leading the step? And even if we fall or fail along the way, God will pick us up and move us forward.
That’s what it meant to the disciples and that’s what it means to the church. Now what does it mean to you and me—the sacrament of failure? What it means for me personally is that you and I should not develop a failure fixation believing that once we’ve made one mistake in an area or maybe two or three that we quit or give up. Once failure becomes a repeat pattern, success is feared more than failure. There are some people who are afraid to be successful because they have grown so use to failure. But remember, Jesus says, “My grace is enough for you. But where there is your weakness my power is shown more completely.”
As a District Superintendent I was blessed and cursed by the opportunity to watch some churches take on this mode of failure to the point. And this one I want to share with you, not by naming the church, but I watched the leadership of that church turn in on itself where before it had been a small but vital, active church doing things well in the community and witnessing to Jesus Christ. But something went terribly wrong in their life as a church and it began to have failure. And then, therefore, came blame and judgment. And who’s to blame? And they blamed each other and even blamed new people that came in the church. It became so convoluted that they basically destroyed themselves. And unfortunately and painfully, that church finally closed. It was no longer vital as a fellowship of Jesus Christ. They forgot that if they fail, they need to turn to the source greater than themselves instead of turn in on themselves. We should not develop a failure fixation and avoid doing something for fear of that failure.
Paul says in Corinthians 3:13, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, for the prize, of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.” And I would add to that “whether you fail or not”. We need to replace the failure cycle in people’s lives, in this congregation or any congregation, with confession, receiving forgiveness and beginning a new cycle and trying it again or trying it differently this time whichever may be appropriate. Churches and people who buried their failures usually will find that they come back and haunt them later like demons in their lives. So we need to face our failures, confess them openly and honestly, maybe to one or another or as a church when that happens. But not for blames sake, but for correction sake and find a way to do it even better or different and most importantly, and where did we leave God out of this so that Christ’s power may rest on me as Paul says.
I want to tell you a personal story of my own. There was a time, and it won’t mean that I am away from failure; I still think I make failures and make mistakes all the time. But this one was so strong in my life; it actually drove me into a kind of mild depression. I didn’t know what depression meant. And now I do understand that it’s almost like a failure cycle and it freezes you up because you are afraid to do anything further. I think I really did fail in one sense and some of it was really out of my control. But I took responsibility for it. But through prayer and Joyce’s love and support and medication and letting go of my sense of control and my desire to believe or to think that I was ultimately responsible for everything, and that means when you turn around in your weakness and say, “God, this is truly is your church. I am here to do as much as I can under your direction and leadership.” And I let that go and I believe I went through a time of healing and not perfection but doing everything right after that. With less worry about failure, more of a desire even as I get older to say, “Well, who am I going to disappoint if I try something and it doesn’t work? Why do I have to worry about whether others might think I am a failure?”
See, one of the points of this sacrament of failure for us is that we need to turn things back over to God’s hands. When you play God that means you think you are in charge. That’s when you believe you have all the outcomes based upon what you do. What arrogant power that is on our parts! We must trust God and God’s gracious, remedial love.
I heard the illustration by Lloyd Ogleby when he talked about having to let failures go in his life. He was fixated with trying to correct everything and if it went wrong, you’d go back and keep fixing it and keep fixing it and keep fixing it until you get it right. And he talked a little bit like, and I recognize that there are two doors behind me here, you may not see it but there’s one and there is the other. That it’s like he was pounding on that door saying, “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to be in charge of this.” And God has opened this door over here and said, “Lloyd, come over here. This is where I want you to go now. Let me take care of that failure. I’ll work that one. It’s now time for you to let go and let me give you an open door through which you can go.”
We do need to allow the fear of ultimate failure to free us from this immediate fear of failure. You see the ultimate failure is to not accept the power of God in Christ in our lives. For the purpose of our life is to truly know our Lord and to be shaped in the image of Christ and to grow in Him so that we might fit more and more of ourselves over to God and claim less and less of power for our lives and more of God’s power in our life. What it can mean through us is that we become then examples to others who are struggling with failure and the embarrassment of failure. Believe in what God has done with your failures. Believe that God will be capable of even working through your failures and maybe bringing successes you may not see.
One of the sadder things is to watch pastors who work hard in church trying to be faithful in all that they do. And they plant so many seeds and they see nothing happen. And then they are moved to another church; they accept another appointment. And all of a sudden, the one following them gets to see new lives come to Christ. They feel as if they failed. They forgot the old rule is: You do your part and God will bring success. Some of us are planters, some of us are waterers, some of us are the harvesters, but it is all God who is working through us.
So in addition to the sacrament of baptism and sacrament of communion, and by the way, I do not expect this to go through General Conference next time that there will be a new sacrament of failure, but at least in our way of thinking, let us free each other from the failures that are weighing us down. I want you to think about these three questions for your own mind. Are you holding yourself back from doing something that is right by the ghost of failure in your past? Are you holding yourself back for fear of future failure but you believe is what God is calling you to do that is right? Are you holding others back because of their failure and blaming them for their failures instead of helping us all to see each failure as an opportunity to recognize our weaknesses and to seek God’s strength. I would rather fail doing what is right than to fail doing anything at all.
Let’s join together in prayer, “Lord, sometimes we are harder on ourselves than you are on us. It is your grace that frees us. Free us to believe and free us from the tyranny of failure so that we might fail in good faith. Yes, we are to do the best that we can. We are to always to take on the call and do it as fully as possible with all of His grace that you have given us. But help us to recognize no matter how blessed a plan we may put together, it may bring about a blessed failure that will drive us to our knees seeking your help, calling upon your power and strength through our weakness. This we ask in the name of Christ our Lord, Amen.”
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman