Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The First Sunday After Christmas
December 31, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
The Sacrament of Failure
2 Corinthians 12:1-10
Next Sunday we will gather seven days into the new year, and I wonder how many of us will have already broken a resolution. Graeter’s Ice Cream will have waved as we drove by and we will have just had to stop. A cigarette will have called out our name, wanting to take us by the hand, and we will have accepted the invitation. Or we will have exchanged a morning of prayer for ten more minutes of pillow time. Hopefully not.
The Reality of Failure
Resolutions tell us something interesting about ourselves. The very fact that we make New Year’s resolutions is an acknowledgment of a past failure and a need to change. Either we have really messed up or we have simply looked at our lives and said, “I can do better. I need to do better.”
The truth is: we all have our failures. Sometimes the failure is of our own doing. Sometimes we share the failure with others. Sometimes a venture fails because we stood on principles of ethics, and in reality was no failure at all, but a grand triumph of integrity. Still the truth remains: we all to one degree or another fail. And it’s important to know how to respond to our failures - how to let go of a failure and move on. To deny the reality of failure is to court disaster.
We live in a world that demands success. We are taught to hide our failures or blame them on someone else. But if we are going to speak honestly about our world and our lives we must acknowledge our failures. We must come to terms with our failures and their consequences. And we must find the strength in God’s grace to move on.
The Sacrament of Failure: Four Gifts
The title of the sermon this morning is “The Sacrament of Failure.” To speak of sacrament is to speak of something as a means of grace. Baptism and Holy Communion are two actions readily agreed upon as sacraments in many Christian traditions. Through those acts we are being offered an experience of God’s grace. Today I want to talk about failure as something that happens in our lives through which we are offered an experience of God’s grace. I want to share some gifts that failure can bring to our lives.
There are some gifts found in Paul’s words to the Corinthians we read a few moments ago. Many guesses have been made regarding Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Personally, I’m glad we don’t know. Because it allows us to substitute our own thorns into Paul’s words. Today, let’s imagine that Paul’s thorn was the guilt of failure. And let us listen to his experience and perhaps find the gifts he discovered.
Failure’s Gift of Humanity
One of the first gifts that can come to us through our failure is the freedom to join the human race and accept our own humanity. In his writings, Paul went so far as to call himself the chief of sinners. He knew his own failures. We all fail. But we do not all acknowledge our failures, at least to the degree that we should.
There are those who refuse to acknowledge their failures - (You’ve met them, haven’t you?) - they always seem to appear slick, inauthentic, even judgmental of others.
Then there are those who use the phrase “I’m only human” as an excuse for careless failure and reckless behavior and the refusal to be held accountable.
And then there are those who have never been able to admit “I’m only human.” Perhaps their parents or faith community did not allow them to fail or make mistakes without showering them with shame, and they were left with no other choice than to live always trying to rise above their own humanity. What a tragic way to grow up, and what a damaging way to continue to live.
For those who have been able to come face to face with their failures and embrace their humanity, there is most often an open-heartedness and compassion about them that isn’t possible without facing the truth about themselves.
God knows we’re human. God is not surprised by our mistakes, and God wants to take those mistakes and use them in our lives to help others. For when we have tasted the bitter wine of defeat and failure and perhaps even embarrassment, we are better able to identify with those around us. I know I have enough failure in my own life for such identification.
If you’ve been through a divorce you know the insufferable grief and depth of pain of those presently going through a divorce and can extend the grace and understanding they need. If you have failed in a career or business venture you can offer support and encouragement to others who have failed in a similar way. If you have fought the battle with drugs or alcohol you can empower others who face the same struggle in ways no one else can.
Only those who admit their failures can help heal others. Henri Nouwen called them “wounded healers.” Only wounded healers can carry the healing balms of God to a broken world. In acknowledging our failures we are set free to join the human family and be healers to one another.
Failure’s Gift of Community
When we come face to face with our failures, not only are we free to accept our own humanity, but we also have the opportunity to realize, perhaps for the first time, our own need for community.
One writer put it this way: “When we cannot live with [and own up to] our failures, we limit the intimacy in our lives” (Oriah Mountain Dreamer). How many times have you heard someone tell of some great accomplishment and then felt closer to them? I don’t know about you, but as I listen to them I feel a distance as I begin to think about my own failures. There is no intimacy. No sense of community is experienced.
In our scripture reading this morning Paul begins by reminding us that nothing is to be gained by tooting your own horn. Community and a sense of connectedness will surely not be gained.
There is no false humility here with Paul. He doesn’t say, “Oh, I’m nothing but one big failure. I can’t do anything right.” No, he says, “If I chose to boast I could and I would be speaking the truth, but I refrain from it so that no one will think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me.” In other words, he says, “Let my words and actions speak for themselves. I will not boast about them. I will not provide you a list of all the good deeds I have done.” Boasting and self-centeredness are destructive of community and intimacy.
Paul does however speak of the successes of others. And he says, “I will boast for them.” But as for himself Paul says he will boast only in his weakness. For then, God’s strength will shine through. In boasting about our weaknesses and in sharing our failures, a sense of intimacy and connectedness with others is established and deepened.
Perhaps we all need to make it a New Year’s resolution to share a personal failure with someone. Maybe do it at least once a month, or once a week, or if you’re really stuck on yourself, once a day. Do it for the sake of community and relationship building. Don’t do it in the name of false humility or for the sake of beating yourself up. Some of you beat yourself up so badly you may need to go easy with this little exercise. But those of us who perhaps think a little too highly of ourselves - we can help those who beat themselves up; they could use a good dose of someone else’s failures. It may help relieve some of their shame.
This need to admit failure for the sake of community is one of the reasons we sometimes participate in corporate prayers of confession - we need to admit and need to hear that we all fail. Even in our personal relationships confession and apology can help restore intimacy. Failing and sharing those failures with others can bring community and intimacy to our very human lives in ways little else can. Acknowledging our own humanity and admitting our personal failures will remind us that we all need to go easy on each other. Perhaps it will cause us to relate more tenderly with one another. Because we’re all broken. Eugene O’Neill said, “We are born broken. We live by mending. The grace of God is glue.”
Failure’s Gift of Grace
And grace, a full awareness of God’s forgiveness and restoration, is perhaps the greatest gift failure can bring to our lives. When we come face to face with our failures we open the door for grace to come and live deep within our soul. Through failure we learn, perhaps for the first time, what it means to believe in grace - the grace of others, the grace of God.
Paul prayed over and over again for God to remove his thorn, his weakness. And God’s response was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Failure can be a means through which grace comes flooding into our lives. A true sacrament.
One writer said, “The inability to admit failure robs us of the chance to learn. We must be willing to make mistakes, and we must be willing to own our mistakes in order to learn from them.”
There is no joy in perfectionism; we will never get it all right. We learn and we grow only by trying, failing, receiving correction and grace, and trying again.
We are who we are. And who we are is a compilation of all our successes and all our failures. If we had not failed at certain points of our lives, even the great big failures, we would not have had the opportunity to be as wise and as gracious as we are as a result of those failures. We all have our failures: parenting errors, wrong choices, career mistakes. But we are who we are. And we learn.
In our world we do not often feel free to acknowledge our failures, and because of that we are missing out on what it means to be human. We fail to allow God to do God’s great work of grace in the midst of our failures. Steve Young, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, was once asked by Larry King if he ever prayed to win. He said no, he didn’t think God was that concerned about who won a football game. But he did say that he felt God’s purposes came about through losing as much as by winning.
He sounds like Paul in our text for today where Paul talks about how God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. In a world where strength and power and success are held in high esteem, even in the world of the church, God wants our failures and our weakness, and he wants to take them and use them as sacraments, instruments of grace.
The failure to admit failure is perhaps the greatest failure we can make. Because without our admission of failure we will be unable to embrace our humanity, our need for community, and the experience of grace. It is at the point of failure where God’s grace enters in. As Flannery O’Connor put it: “You accept grace the quickest when you have the least” (Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979, 241). And at the point of failure, failure met by grace, that’s the place where true community can begin.
Failure’s Gift of Strength
The irony of Paul’s weakness, the irony of any failure, is that we can come out stronger because we’ve learned to live in God’s strength. And so, there is failure’s gift of strength. Our failures may bring difficult consequences. But what is most important is what we do in light of our failures. Will we in our shame give up and go into hiding? Or will we dare to enter life again? Will we open ourselves to God’s strength in the midst of our weakness and embrace life?
Native American poet, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, penned these inspiring words:
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive . . .
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
(I want to know) if you have been opened by life’s betrayal
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or . . . fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own . . .
(I want to know) if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human . . .
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty everyday,
and if you (see) your life (in) God’s presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout . . . “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done . . .
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
(Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation, Harper San Francisco, 1999, 1-2)
Four gifts of failure: humanity, community, grace, and strength. It’s not easy to accept grace for our failures and find the strength to move on, especially when our failures have embarrassed us or hurt those we love. But let me ask you this: What are your failures doing to you now, this very day? Are they paralyzing you? Have they got you locked up in a prison of shame? God doesn’t want you living in paralysis or shame. God wants to take your failures and make them sacraments of grace. Will you allow God to do that holy work, beginning today?
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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