(When The Going Gets Tough...)
A Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 9), Cycle B; July 9, 2000
Lectionary Preaching Texts: Ezekiel 2:1-5 & Mark 6:1-13
Rev. Justin K. Fisher
St. Matthew United Methodist Church
Anderson, Indiana
Summer is upon us. It's been hot and steamy outside. Getting to church is an effort for most of us. We say, "sure do hope the pastor isn't preaching 'fire and brimstone' this morning! And nothin' too controversial either. Get in and get out and make sure the AC is on full blast." Ever feel this way? That le is giving us all we care to "chew on" and then some? That we're doing good just to get here, let alone be in a state of worship? That doing the good gets harder and harder and the bad is overwhelming? That in the race for life, we're getting left way behind and never appreciated for our efforts? Let's face it. Life is difficult. The "good guys" don't always win, at least by human standards. God never promised us a "rose garden". And even when we're in the right, we've all experienced the truism that being right does not always make us popular, or understood, or appreciated. Sometimes it just makes us miserable.He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you...I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me... Whether they hear or not, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them... (from Ezekiel, Chapter 2)Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." He 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. (Mark 6:4-6)
SUCCESS is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed. (Emily Dickinson)
The Fourth of July holiday has now come and gone...With fireworks, picnics and flag waving, we joyfully rang in the 224th anniversary of our nation last week. Sadly we tend to revise history a bit. Over the years we've attributed god-like characteristics to the founders of our country. But they weren't gods, were they? Signing the Declaration of Independence was not a painless act of heroism. They paid the price. Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships
swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties
to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKean was so hounded by the
British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served
in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions
were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or
soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer,
Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." (from the Internet: submitted by Charley Knowles and Gordon Barg, among others) But less we underestimate the cost of such a statement, let us remember that these men and their families paid the price for being right. And it was a hefty cost. They must have felt like failures.
Now none of us has had to bear the cost of founding a new nation, although more than a few of us were called upon to defend our country's freedom in times of war. But whether we are veterans or not, we all know the price of standing up for our convictions when others are not just against us, but defiantly so. It's lonely out there. The parent who keeps a curfew on her teenagers in the face of his friends who have no curfew finds herself in a lonely place. The man at work who blows the whistle on unjust and illegal actions of his employer or fellow employees finds himself alienated. The youth who stands up and says "I don't smoke" in the face of a cloud of witnesses who do, finds himself excluded from the group's favor. The politician who refuses to take soft campaign money, and stands by his conviction, stands alone. And it's lonely out there. Sometimes our kids bend and break their curfews. The boss at work threatens to fire us. The youth gives in and enjoys smoking. The politician eventually accepts some softer money. More often than not, we feel like failures. And we are.
Failure is a word that strikes fear in the heart of everybody. Our society has become so success oriented that we have very little tolerance for failure. We glamorize the Michael Jordan's and the Tiger Woods' of the world, and ridicule misfits and also-rans like you and me. If you live long and attempt much, you will run up against failure. People fail every day. They suffer from failed relationships, failed marriages, failure at work and failure in health. Most of us can identify with failure, and we know from experience that failure is hard to cope with in a world like ours. When we fail at something, most of think of it as the ultimate and irreversible tragedy of all time. We see it as the one aspect of life from which there is no reprieve and no reversal. We are lonely fighting and discouraged by failing. (from "The Sacrament of Failure", a sermon by Rev. Mickey Anders, 1st Christian Church, Pikeville, KY, for June 25, 2000, from the Internet: www.deaconsil.com, for July 9, 2000)
I know. I speak from deep experience. While I love pastoring here, I know my time with you is fleeting (good Methodist that I am)... And so, I'm always looking ahead. This past winter I had the chance of a lifetime. After months of scrutiny and investigation, of jumping through "hoops", and submitting my sermons and thoughts and history of ministry to a search committee, I was invited to be one of two final candidates for the position of senior pastor of an international, English-speaking church in Hong Kong. What an honor to be selected out of more than seventy candidates! They even invited us to come over for a week (for free)! Of course we did. I polished up my sermon and my shoes, slicked back what little hair I have left, prayed fervently that this was what God wanted me to do (I knew it was...), and off we went. Now all along the search committee had told me (and the other candidate) that one of us wasn't going to be invited to return as pastor. I knew it in my head, but in my heart I was sure I was the candidate for them. In the end, I wasn't. I failed to get the job. Now, lest you think I've risen above this momentary glitch in my ministry, let me add that I have nursed not being invited for most of these past five months. I was certainly as qualified as the other candidate, certainly as faithful, certainly as called, but still ... not accepted. I failed to meet their expectations. And that is a lonely, failing feeling. While I'm still saddened by the experience of not being selected, I'm learning some biblical wisdom that both Ezekiel and Jesus perfected...
Loneliness, however deep, does not mean we have failed in God's eyes, nor been abandoned by Him. In our scripture lessons this morning both Ezekiel and Jesus found themselves alone, yet neither one gave into his loneliness. God's will was done, especially through what appeared to be failures of each one. Rev. Barry Robinson describes Ezekiel not only as a failure, but, worse yet, as one of the strangest birds Israel ever produced. He continues: "Given to seeing visions weirder than anything you are ever likely to see on The X-Files, he was also called to be both priest and prophet to his people during the most devastating time in their history. Six short years after he began preaching to them in the year 593 B.C., the holy city of Jerusalem was captured and destroyed and every last person in Israel was carried off in chains to exile in Babylon. What is worse, Ezekiel saw it coming and told people. He told them it was God's way of punishing them for being so thick-skulled and hard-hearted (3.7). Predictably, they refused to listen." (from "Keeping The Faith In Babylon", a sermon by Rev. Barry Robinson for July 9, 2000, from the Internet: www.deaconsil.com, for July 9, 2000) And they didn't change their ways. Ezekiel was miserable.
Miserable or not, the Israelites didn't believe Ezekiel, of course, even when the Babylonians were setting fire to their homes and hacking down the carved pillars in their beautiful temple. They stubbornly denied the truth about themselves the whole time they were dragged off, kicking and screaming to Babylon. And it was not until there, years later, with no temple to attend and no sacred rituals permitted to them that they began meeting in Ezekiel's house(8.1), where this bug-eyed prophet also learned how to become their priest. Softened up by the experience of desolation they could no longer deny, they began, for the first time, to listen to this old friend who had never given up on them and who reminded them of the God who had no intention of giving up on them either. It took time, but God used this "sacrament of failure" to bring His people closer together.
And now to Jesus.... Did he ever fail at anything? Depends on who you ask. Rev. Mickey Anders writes that he finds it very interesting that in the Gospel for today Jesus both experienced failure himself and expected his disciples to fail. In his Bible, this paragraph is subtitled, "The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth." In the last part of this passage, Jesus gives his disciples instructions about what to do when they are rejected. Jesus has been moving from one success to another in his ministry. As Mark leads up to this point, we have witnessed some of Jesus' most amazing miracles - the stilling of the storm, the healing of the demon possessed man, and the restoration of Jairus' little daughter to life. Now, searching for some rest, Jesus journeys back to his own hometown of Nazareth.
At his home synagogue, Jesus begins to teach. And he earns a response, but hardly like that in other places. As in other places, the people are astonished at his teaching, but this time they are astonishingly appalled at his message and manner. "How dare this local boy, Jesus, assume such authority?" they ask. And verse three says, "'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him."
This is actually the third time that Jesus had tasted a glimpse of failure in his ministry. In Mark 3:21, his own family labeled him crazy and tried to restrain him. In Mark 3:31, his mother and brothers and sisters try again to remove him from his teaching ministry. Here in his home town, he meets with out and out reject èion, prompting him to utter his famous line, “Prophets are not without hor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”"
Then Jesus turns to commission his disciples for the beginning of their missionary activity. He tells the disciples that it is time for them to begin their ministry, going two by two into the countryside preaching and casting out unclean spirits. He advises them to travel lightly taking nothing but a staff. They are to carry no bread, no bag, and no money in their belts. They are to wear sandals and not even take an extra tunic.
But in verse 11, Jesus prepares them for failure when he says, "If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Jesus makes it clear that they will not be insulated from failure just because they are going in his name. In fact, Jesus knows that failure will be a real possibility, so he provides his disciples with a sacrament of failure - shaking the dust off their feet.
Jesus' inauguration of a "sacrament of failure" does not mean that he is sending the disciples out to fail. Rather, he is showing them how to carry on in the face of failure. Nobody likes to hear they are going to have to face failure in life. But understanding how Jesus provided all Christians with a sacrament of failure can empower all of us to carry on when we fail. On its beautiful side, failure strengthens us, it causes us to be creative, it forces us to evaluate and reach out. Failure is a teacher who grows along with us.
In his book A Theology of Failure, John Narrone says, "A theology which takes failure seriously does not encourage fatalism, passivity, indifference to the world; rather it affirms that the man who cannot freely lay down his life is one whose ideals and values are already compromised." (John Narrone, A Theology of Failure [New York: Paulist Press, 1974], 11).
In the name of both Ezekiel and Jesus, I'd like to initiate a "sacrament of failure" for all of us today. Lord knows we fail ourselves and him and each other on a regular basis. We're not really very good disciples and worse servants. Yet, we're all He's got, and, frankly, we're all He wants. John Narrone is right. If we do not take our failures seriously, we will become indifferent to the world. When we try our best and still that seems far off fm what is needed, we are reminded that we are not the beginning nor ending of success. We have been faithful, just as faithful as God was to all of us when he allowed his son to lay down his life. In either case, our ideals and values, based on the blood of Christ, have not been compromised. In a time when everything and everybody seems compromised, I hold on to my failures in Christ as a sign of my commitment. How about you?
Now is the time to examine where you are failing, where I am failing.
In truth, there is a little bit of Ezekiel in all of us; and, perhaps,
we reflect a little of Christ's perfection too when we learn that faithfulness
in failure leads on to success. Let's take a few moments and pray
about our failures right now. And then let's get up and go, for,
as Ezekiel says, "Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are
a rebellious house), they sh Ãall know that there was a prophet among them."
Does the world know at about you? Does it know it about me?