The Sacrament of Failure, Leonard Sweet, Premiered 04 July 2021, LenTalk #68

About this sermon

Lectionary Passages 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 Psalm 48 Ezekiel 2:1-5 Psalm 123 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13 For the Theology Today essay "The Nerve of Failure," where I argue that the reason why the church is suffering from a failure of nerve is that it doesn't have the nerve of failure, see https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057367703400202. For how the biblical drama doesn't hide failures but features them, see chapter 8 in Alan Jamieson, “Growth and Grace In and Beyond Failure,” Journeying in Faith (SPCK, 2004), 87-95. Here are some excerpts: “A cursory look reminds us that Adam and Eve failed to keep the one thing God asked of them. Cain murdered his brother. Noah got drunk acted improperly and then cursed his sons. Noah’s sons built the tower of Babel. Abraham lied to the Egyptians and called his wife his sister, causing her to be taken in to Pharaoh’s harem. Lot was involved in incest. Esau and Jacob quarreled over their rights as sons. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. The book of Genesis is full of immorality, deceit and self-promotion. After the enslavement in Egypt, Moses killed, the people complained and made idols to foreign gods and initially refused to cross into the Promised Land. The people’s first King (Saul) was a disaster. He was jealous and tried to kill David on a number of occasions and was completely self-absorbed. David, the next in life for the throne, although he had many wives and concubines, seduced another man’s wife and then tried to co er up his failure by killing her husband. Solomon built a wonderful temple but fell victim to his own success and failed God. The tribes of Israel failed to get along and split the kingdom in two. Of the list of kings fo the two kingdoms the vast majority followed pagan gods and treated their own people poorly. Yet if we go to a passage like Hebrews 11, which lists the heroes and heroines of the faith, we find many of the same people who had failed God repeatedly. Adulterers, murderers, prostitutes, liars and drunkards—they are all there, these heroes nad heroines of the faith. The very people who would receive a cool welcome at church today. The new Testament is little better. Judas betrayed Jesus to the authorities. Peter denied Jesus to the people gathered around the fire. All the disciples ran and hid as Jesus was tried and executed. Paul began by persecuting the Church. Then he and Barnabas squabbled and had to separate. He had to point out the failures of Peter and the other followers who were afraid of public opinion, and yet Paul, recognizing his own weakness and failure, introduced himself as the least of all the apostles; one not even worthy to be called an apostle. When we look at the early Church we find failure as a common theme. Read through the letters to the Corinthians and you will see everything imaginable including immorality ‘so terrible that not even the heathen would be guilty of it.’” (87-88) p. 92: “The stark reality is that each of us at some point in the journey will fail. I don’t mean a little hiccup that everyone could understand and which could be talked about politely over scones in a home-group discussion. I don’t mean the failures we admit to as modern Christians-----that we aren’t reading our Bibles as often as we would like, or some equally inane slip-up. I mean fail in a way we desperately want to hide. Fail in a way that we are embarrassed. When this happens, we too face the choice: either to try and hide and pretend nothing happened by putting on masks to cover our reality; simply to give up on trying to live Christian lives and walk away; or the initially very difficult and courageous option to face up to what we have done. In the end these are the only options. The biblical option is clear. The Bible doesn’t try to sanitize or sweep under the carpet people’s failures, no matter how embarrassing they might have been. It seems the Bible deals with failure in such an upfront and honest way for two reasons. First, it reminds us that the biblical characters, like us, are very ordinary people. People that we, because of their failures and weaknesses, can identify with. Second, because, the agenda of the Bible is to show how God is at work and not to make individuals within it look great. If there is some truth in these points, what does it say about our approach to failure? What does it say about our approach to others who have failed? Do we have a theology of failure? [he quotes now from Richard Holloway, Dancing on the Edge: Faith in a Post-Christian Age, p. 58] 'The central claim of Christianity is that we are accepted in our sinfulness, forgiven and understood as we are, with all our moral confusions, both of intellect and will, understood when we do not do what is right . . . God knew, understands, forgives and offers us the divine love, the divine mercy . . . that’s why it is good news and not good advice.'" #leonardsweet LeonardSweet, #failure #sacrament