The Wilderness: Failure
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
March 25, 2007
Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14
Isaiah 43:16 Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.Philippians 3:4. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
I. BEGINNING
So. What do you all do for a living?
I ask that because this is Washington, I’ve just met you, and that’s the question that I’m supposed to ask. Have you noticed that? At a dinner party or other social function, invariably, the first question you’ll be asked in this town after your name is, “So, what do you do?”
It’s kind of obnoxious. But such a thing is not unusual. Every place has its icebreaker question. In New York City they ask you “Where do you live?” The two questions are not unrelated–both are measurements of worth. In New York, where you live is important, in D.C., what you do is. I suppose that’s what you get in a city populated by overachievers. A focus on achievement.
And don’t pretend it doesn’t matter. It does. Your conversational value is high if you hold some important job on the Hill or in a law firm. And, of course, within those arenas there are degrees of impressiveness. Senators outrank representatives. Nationally known representatives outrank less known ones. Double-named law firms outrank ones with more names: Arnold & Porter, Covington & Burling, Hogan & Hartson will always outrank Schilling Wakefield Beckett Clement & Matsuzaka. And so on. The hierarchy of impressiveness is vast and known to everyone.
In Washington, as often in life, we are judged by our accomplishments. And where we work is a sign of what we’ve accomplished.
II. THE WILDERNESS OF FAILURE
Because of this, we are very driven to succeed. It’s a cliché but for many of us, “failure is not an option.” In fact, failure is for a great many people a “wilderness” experience. It is a place where people can feel completely cut off from one another and from God.
We all know this feeling. Perhaps it was the first time you get an assignment or a test back from your teacher with a big red ‘F’ on it. Or maybe it was a business venture that you had that lost much more money than it made. Perhaps, it was a creative endeavor–painting, writing music–that no one wanted to see or listen to. Perhaps it was a relationship that once seemed so full of promise is now in tatters and you’re left wondering how everything could have gone so wrong.
It’s a crushing feeling. You’ve poured your heart and soul into something and you’re left standing there looking into the void. Your plans did not work out as expected. You did not succeed. You failed.
It’s something we don’t like to talk about, individually or collectively. Just think of the debate about the course of the War : the only thing worse politically than being branded a traitor is being branded ‘defeatist’–the charge that is leveled against many who wish to withdraw. Those folks, in turn, charge that the current course of action will only lead to greater failure, and thus, a change of course is warranted to mitigate the losses.
The last thing anyone wants to be associated with is failure.
A. Meritocracy
I wonder if we’re not cursed a little bit by our own mythology in this country. We imagine ourselves to be different than the countries of the “Old World”–Europe and their traditions of aristocracy and class patronage. Success in America, we claim, is based on hard work, on stick-to-itiveness, on Yankee ingenuity and the Protestant Work Ethic. That hasn’t always been true: for a long time, it didn’t matter how hard you worked if you were a woman, or black, or some other disadvantaged group. But to the extent that our ideals of success through merit were not being met, society needed to change.
I wonder, would our attitudes toward failure be different were we not telling ourselves that the true worth of a person is in their successes? In other places, people were valued on their social standing, not on whether they had accomplished anything. But not here. In fact, most of the disdain that we heap on the idle rich is not because they’re rich–it’s because they’re idle. Donald Trump is obnoxious, but he goes to work. Paris Hilton is deemed more obnoxious because she doesn’t seem to do anything except be famous. And we like to reward accomplishment in this country.
B. Wilderness
And so when we fail, we find ourselves on the outside of where society tells us we ought to be. Objects of ridicule and scorn. When I was a kid, there were a lot of jokes about an actor named MacLean Stevenson, who played Col. Henry Blake on M*A*S*H. The jokes all centered around the fact that after leaving M*A*S*H he had made one terrible TV show after another. A series of bombs that make his name the punchline of a running joke in Hollywood for a long time.
We don’t want to wind up there. Especially the men among us. Men, to a greater degree than women, tend to self-identify with their work. Our work isn’t just what we do, it’s who we are. When we fail at a job we have failed at being ourselves. Our very identity is called into question. It can be devastating. The loss of a job can feel like a loss of self.
There is no doubt: failure is a Wilderness experience.
III. GOD’S SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
Against this backdrop, what does our faith have to tell us?
A. Post-it Notes: Not all failures are failures
Well, first of all it is helpful to remember that not all failures are failures. There is a phenomenon that is referred to as the “successful failure”–that is, something that failed to achieve its original objective, but accomplished another.
Spencer Silver was a researcher at 3M who was trying to come up with an adhesive glue, had failed. He could not get it “sticky enough”. A researcher from another department, named Art Fry, came across Silver’s “failed” adhesive and thought it would be the perfect thing to make a bookmark for his hymnal, since other bookmarks kept falling out. The Post-It note was born.
It would be a hard thing to argue that the Post-It(TM) note had been a failure. [1]
One famous ‘successful failure’ was the Apollo 13 mission. One commentator noted:
As an aborted mission, Apollo 13 must officially be classed as a failure, the first in 22 manned flights. But, in another sense, as a brilliant demonstration of the human spirit triumphing under almost unbearable stress, it is the most successful failure in the annals of space flight.[2]
But what about those things that are not so easily transformed into successes? What about those things that seem destined to remain one thing, and one thing only: failures?
B. St. Paul
As hard as it is to imagine, St. Paul was not destined to be the major figure in the Church that he has become. We look at Paul’s career and marvel: a number of churches founded by him throughout Asia Minor, almost a third of the New Testament written by him, several books written in response to him. And yet, Paul’s success was not assured: least of all to Paul.
He spends a fair amount of time in his letters defending himself and his teaching. He was not one of the original apostles–he didn’t know Jesus during his earthly ministry. He came late to the early Christian movement. And so, he constantly faced opposition from those who would claim that Paul lacked the authority to teach what he was teaching.
And so, Paul would often list his credentials to make sure that his readers understood he was teaching with authority. And yet, what is so fascinating from our perspective is how dismissive Paul was of his own accomplishments :
Phil. 3:4. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” Rubbish. This is how Paul describes his credentialing and accomplishments according to human standards.
Paul would defend his apostleship but never from a human perspective. Read some of his words from the letter to the Galatians :
Gal. 1:11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; 12 for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Paul makes it clear at the outset that his ministry is not the result of human teaching but was received through a revelation of Jesus Christ
Gal. 1:13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. 14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
Here, Paul makes careful pains to demonstrate that having received his revelation, he didn’t confer with any human being, but instead went to Arabia.
Three years later he would visit with Peter and James, Jesus’ brother. Fourteen years later he would go to Jerusalem with Barnabas and describes in detail how he did not submit to those who opposed him nor did he give any greater authority to those who were the ‘ acknowledged leaders’.
On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
He concludes by saying that it was James and Peter and John who recognized Paul’s authority as coming directly from God.
For Paul, authority, gain, and success, are not defined by humanity, but by God.
C. A ‘Failed’ Messiah
And God’s definitions are not our own.
Some years ago, I was writing a paper on how questions of Christology factored into Jewish-Christian dialogue. One Jewish writer talked about a Jewish re-appraisal of Jesus and that it was no longer necessary to consider Jesus a “false” messiah from the Jewish viewpoint, but more properly a “failed” messiah. One might even consider him a preparatory figure for the Davidic Messiah. [3]
An understanding of this claim is rooted in the reasons why Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah : the unredeemed nature of the world. Jewish understanding and expectation of the messiah would be that he would bring peace, restore Israel, and usher in the restoration of the Creation. This has not happened, and thus they reason, Jesus of Nazareth, whoever else he may have been, cannot be the Messiah. Christians, when they are honest about it, acknowledge that they are still waiting for Jesus to do all those things, but expect that he will upon his return.
But in many ways, even that sounds like we’re hedging our bets.
D. My Thoughts are Not your Thoughts
But here we remember that the ways of God are not the same as our ways. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD” writes the prophet Isaiah. What we might define as a successful messiah is not how God might define it.
There was nothing expected about the Cross and the Empty Tomb. The early church had to go through a lot of reflection and reinterpretation of what Jesus’ messiahship must have meant. And without losing any hope in the fulfillment of the promises that they had been expecting, they began to understand that God was not moving in history with awesome displays of power, but with humility. Christ does not achieve his goals by leading the Heavenly Host against Rome, but rather in the transformative power of self-sacrificial love by dying upon the cross.
That, my friends, is not how the world judges success. That would appear to be a failure. But the Church came to understand it differently. John’s gospel refers to the crucifixion not as defeat but as glory. There are few who would view an ignominious death via Roman capital punishment as “glorious”.
It is the kind of inversion that we read about in Isaiah:
“Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.
…
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
(Isaiah 53:1-12 NRSV).
The one whom we held ‘of no account’ shall be allotted a ‘portion with the great.’
V. END
We move through this world and we attempt to make our way in it. We take up labor and we strive to accomplish our tasks. We begin projects and attempt to see them through. We enter into courses of study and hope to succeed. And we will not always succeed. We will fail.
There may be times when you feel that you are a failure. There will be many times when you will feel that your inability to succeed at something or other has placed you on the outside. A difficult feeling when the culture places such importance on success. And harder still when some elements of the church begin to equate material success with God’s blessing. (That’s a-whole-nother sermon on its own). In the face of those challenges you may feel that you have failed God, that you’re a failure.
You’re not.
The cross of Christ shows us that the wisdom of the world is folly. Paul is right: what others regard as gain he regards as loss. The world’s gain is not God’s. The world’s successes are not those of God. And the world’s failures are not those of God.
Whether we succeed at business, or school, or love, or play, is not what makes us right in the eyes of God. What makes us right in the eyes of God is the fact that God loves us. We are successes because of that.
The Gospel is meant to be good news: the Good News that in spite of our failings, our falling short, God loves us and seeks us. God does not give up on us.
And further, God gives us the grace to succeed where it’s important–in loving God and loving one another. These are the measures of Christian success–measures that we are aided in by God.
God doesn’t guarantee that we will be free of failures in our lives. We won’t be. What God promises is that God meets us in those wildernesses, that God loves us in spite of how the world may judge us, and that God will give us the grace to love others in return.
Here we are in the Wilderness of Lent, a wilderness that symbolizes all the wildernesses we go through. As we contemplate this wilderness experience, we may yet reflect on another wilderness experience: that of the Children of Israel. Just before Moses turned over leadership to Joshua, before the Israelites were to cross over to the Promised Land, he gave him words of encouragement that apply to us as we worry about our own wilderness of failure. He said:
“Be strong and bold… It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deut. 31:7-8)
Notes
[1] http://www.inventhelp.com/articles-for-inventors-art-fry.asp
[2] http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/Academy/History/APOLLO-13/mission-report.html, excerpting W. David Compton, Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions (Washington, D.C.: NASA SP-4214, 1989), pp. 386-93.
[3] Byron L. Sherwin “‘Who Do You Say That I Am?’ (Mark 8:29): A New Jewish View of Jesus.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 31, no. 3-4 (1994): 255-67
