"A Tear in the Fabric"
Sermon Presented March 25, 2007
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
5th Sunday of Lent
It's often difficult to pick up the pieces following a failure. For me, failure represents a tear in the fabric of my life. The damage can be repaired, but the tear will always be visible - at least to me! For a person who always had the desire to be perfect - or at least have people believe that I'm perfect - failure was unacceptable! I don't recall my successes like I remember my failures! I can easily relate my academic failures, moral failures, social failures, marriage failure, parental failures, judgment failures, and professional failures. Because I now have a better self-understanding, thankfully, I process failures much better than before.
We all fail at things we wish we could succeed at, and our dread of failure is proportional to our worship of success. However, it's our response to our failures that determines our future. When we make a grade that is less than desirable, we can discover what we should have learned but didn't. When we drink too much at a party, we can learn the hazards of too much alcohol. When we lose a job, we can learn what skills we need to improve or what we need to avoid in our next employment; and maybe we learn to seek a job in another field. When we have a health crisis, we can learn how to better care for ourselves. When our credit card balance gets out of control, we can learn to do without things we previously thought were necessary or that we deserved.
But we don't always learn from our failures. Sometimes we blame others or avoid examining our own responsibility in our failures. And sometimes after careful examination, we understand that the failure wasn't our fault.
This morning we are continuing our Lenten series on Brokenness - a series that resulted from you choosing the sermon topics, and today's topic is "failure". Our text is actually last Sunday's Gospel text. I chose it because it shows what I consider failures by all three characters - a father and his two sons. This may be the most familiar story that Jesus told his followers. It's found in Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. (Read text.)
Now that you've heard the text, you may want to challenge me on my premise that all three characters experienced failure because we usually consider that the father in the story represents God. It may be that what I consider the father's failure is actually his great wisdom.
The father entrusts his younger son with his inheritance before he is ready to accept that responsibility. Upon hearing his son's request for the money, he gives his son the freedom to use all of his inheritance any way he wants - no strings attached. This seems like a failure of judgment to me.
Next we examine the failure of the younger son - which is easy to discern. He fails to manage his inheritance wisely, squandering it in reckless and immoral living. He is irresponsible, and pleasure is his only goal.
The older son - the good son also fails. He fails to love his father and his younger brother. He's angry with his father for giving the inheritance to his brother and for welcoming him home with a party. He's angry with his brother because of his lifestyle. Celebrating another's joy is against his principles. His is a failure of attitude.
How does each person in the story meet his failure? The father continues to love and wait for his son's return. He forgives him, and showers him with love and gifts. The younger son comes to his senses, admits his failure, and goes home to seek his father's forgiveness. The older son refuses to forgive or to love, as he harshly and jealously judges both his brother and his father. He's the only one who's unhappy at the conclusion of the story. The fabric of the lives of this family has been ripped, and the repair does not come quickly or easily.
When I see a tear in a piece of fabric, my first response is to discard it. However, my mother mended everything, even socks! (How many recall the darning needle and light bulb?) I congratulate designers and marketing strategists who can sell garments to young people with holes in them. I'm sure they laugh all the way to the bank! However, even with a patch or re-weaving or appliqué or stitching, the tear is evident to the wearer - if not to others who see it. Thank God our lives can be mended and not discarded after our failures, but even though mended, the memories remain.
One of the greatest 20th century writers in the area of spirituality was Thomas Kelly- a man who believed he was the picture of failure. This perception stemmed largely from his unsuccessful attempt to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard and his inability to obtain a teaching position at an institution he considered first-rate. Although he already had a Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary, Harvard had the most influential group of philosophers in the Western world and he wanted a Ph.D. from Harvard. He slaved day and night to finish his dissertation at Harvard in late 1934, suffering a severe nervous breakdown. He finished the dissertation but had to leave for a teaching position in Hawaii before he could take his oral examination. In 1937, when he returned to the mainland to teach at Haverford, he finally took the orals. His mind blanked and the result was a disaster. Not only did he fail the exam, but his performance was deemed so poor that he was told that he could never come up for the degree again.
His world caved in on him. Years of struggle, a heavy weight of debt, the continual uprooting of his family, and his own broken health were all results of seeking that degree. His wife feared another nervous breakdown or worse yet, suicide.
No one knows what happened in the following weeks, but sometime during the months of November or December of 1937, he experienced God's presence in a powerful way. In the depth of his misery he learned how to listen to the interior voice of God. Stripped of his defenses and human self-justification, he was ready to accept the outright gift of God's love, and he committed himself to God's leading.
The next summer he traveled to Germany representing the American Friends Service Committee. (Kelly was a Quaker.) On that trip, he described "an increased sense of being laid hold on by a Power, a gentle, loving, but awful Power. And it makes one know the reality of God at work in the world." Returning to the U.S., he resumed his life as professor, husband and father, and his prior struggles along with a heightened sense of God's presence provided the basis for his spiritual writing that made him famous." (Weavings, pp. 44-46.) He received success that he never could have known were it not for his failures.
Sometimes we need to be patient as we wait to emerge from our failure. Sometimes we need to seek psychological or spiritual help or career counseling. The father in our text was patient and saw his son return home. Thomas Kelly waited and unexpectedly found God and a new focus for his life. Often our first movement from the mire of failure is to listen to the inner voice of God or to God speaking through another. When all seemed lost, the younger son came to his senses and realized he needed to go home. That understanding came from within.
Sometimes we fail because we set unrealistic goals for ourselves, and sometimes we allow others to set our goals for us. Unrealistic goals for marriage, career, parenting, school, job performance, or friendships can plunge us into a sense of hopelessness and failure when we experience no success. When we pursue unrealistic goals or try to live up to the dreams of others, we will come face to face with failure.
One way to work through failure is to practice healthy reflection. This is a two-pronged process because it requires us to enter into the thoughts, feelings, and realities of our failure, and yet to distance or detach from it. We must acknowledge our failure without becoming trapped by it. Reflection helps us remain responsible - able to respond to the practical, emotional, and spiritual demands of failure by helping us sort through the truths and untruths we may hear from others.
Reflecting on our failure offers us the opportunity to look at important questions: Who am I? What are my gifts? How do I want to live my life? Maybe we have an unrealistic view of our gifts or our ability to use these gifts professionally. As we reflect, we face the need to love ourselves, which often includes struggling with envy or jealousy toward others whose lives seem easier and more successful than our own. If you have never compared yourself to another, you are a rare person.
Reflection is both a solitary and a communal act. Communally it may take the form of friendship, spiritual direction, pastoral counseling, therapy, or even reading and responding to that reading. Sharing our experiences of failure with those who know and love us provides care and encouragement in a barren time. It also provides a reality check to discriminate between real and perceived failures. (Ibid. p. 13)
As we reflect - as we listen to God in prayer - we encounter God intimately and become more aware of God's love for and acceptance of us. Sometimes we come to understand that we haven't actually failed, but that the results are incomplete. It's important not to look for a quick fix but to know that God works through the circumstances we are in - yes, even things we fail - to make us a better person or to lead us into a new direction.
Failure, real or perceived, taps into our fears that we are not acceptable, worthy, valuable, or lovable. The challenge of failure is to remain faithful in the midst of those fears. This doesn't mean we should ignore, discount, repress, or deny failure or our feelings about it, but it means we should open ourselves up even further, so we may readily receive God's love and healing compassion.
Neither failure nor success is inherently good or evil; either can result in growth, stagnation, or regression. Our life's challenge is to allow God to help us mend the tears in the fabric of our lives so that we can move forward toward new horizons. Life can be great on the other side of failure.
