Sermon

Mark 6:1-13

 

The Sacrament of Failure

Check out these helpful resources
Biblical Commentary
Children’s Sermons
Hymn Lists

Mark 6:1-13

 

The Sacrament of Failure

Dr. Mickey Anders

In 1961, the Swedish warship Vasa broke the surface of the water after 333 years on the bottom of the sea.  Divers had discovered the ancient wooden vessel just a few years before.  When it was built in 1628, the Vasa was a marvel of the latest technology.  It was the atomic bomb of its day, the biggest and mightiest of warships with two decks and 64 massive cannons.  The Swedish king was in a desperate fight with Poland and was eager to have the new weapon involved in the war.

On Sunday, August 10, 1628, the beaches around Stockholm were filled with spectators and foreign diplomats eager to watch the maiden voyage of the mightiest ship ever built.  The voyage was to be an act of propaganda for the ambitious Swedish king.

The Vasa set her sails, fired a salute and made her way into the harbor.  But after only a few minutes of sailing the ship began to heel over.  She righted herself slightly, and then heeled over again.  Then to everyone’s horror and disbelief, the glorious and mighty warship suddenly sank killing about fifty of the 150 people aboard.

Many people wondered why the Vasa sank.  Deep down in the Vasa several tons of stone were stored as ballast to give the ship stability, but it was not enough to counterweight the guns, the upper hull, masts and sails of the ship.  As it turned out the plans used for building the Vasa were intended for small ships with only one gun deck.  Because the Vasa had two gun decks with heavy artillery higher on the ship than ever before, the standard calculations did not apply.  When the ship began to heel over, water poured through the open lower gun ports and quickly sank the ship.  (From the web site for the Vasa Museum, www.vasamuseet.se, June 17, 2000)

So now they have raised the Vasa and made it into a museum.  Modern day Swedish children can see this ancient vessel that was supposed to be the most glorious warship of its day, but instead it became the biggest failure of the day.  I think it is wonderful that there is such a museum — a museum to failure.

Can you imagine how embarrassing this episode was for everybody involved?  It was a horribly public failure.  But then, many of us can understand because we have known failures that were almost as public as this one.

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.

 

SermonWriter logo3

A SUBSCRIBER SAYS: “I love to bounce off your ideas, as well as using them.”

TRY SERMONWRITER!
A thousand sparks to inspire you — and your congregation!

GET YOUR FOUR FREE SAMPLES!
Click here for more information

 

Several years ago I was watching a program on television that filmed several young people placed in a house together for six weeks.  One of the girls made the candid remark, “I have never failed at anything I have ever tried to do.”  It was one of those sentences that makes you stop while you are crossing the room and ask, “What did she say?”  I think I will never forget her honest confidence as she said it.  Maybe it caught my ear because of my own struggles with failure.  But I remember thinking, “Yeah, I was young once too.”

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.

I find it very interesting that in our passage for today Jesus both experienced failure himself and expected his disciples to fail.  In my 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, “‘Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ They were offended 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 rejection, prompting him to utter his famous line, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his 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, “Whoever will not receive you nor hear you, as you depart from there, shake off the dust that is under your feet for 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.

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).

A news report on television gave a profile of George Bush, Jr. It talked about the influence of his father.  The report pointed out that the greatest impact that the former president had on his son was helping him to overcome a fear of failure.  One of the reasons George Bush, Jr. is running for president is that he is not afraid to fail.

Jesus tells his disciples that they should not fear failure either.  He says to shake off the dust and go on.

1) Failure can lead to better things

Sometimes our highest hopes are destroyed so that we can be prepared for better things.  The failure of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly.  The passing of the bud is the blooming of the rose.  The death of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat.  Someone has said that plants grow best in the darkness of night just before dawn.  Our failures can be the door to a new success.

The name of John James Audubon is forever associated with the magnificent paintings he made of the birds of North America.  No one else has so accurately painted the birds and the natural environment in which they were found.  It might not have happened had he not gone bankrupt in business!  In 1808, he opened a store in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was after he went bankrupt in 1819 that he began traveling and painting birds.  We are all richer because of his business failure (Ministers Manual 1991, p. 320).

Shake off the dust and go on.

2) Failure can be creative

Sometimes we get stuck it a rut and it takes failure to jolt us out the routine so that we can be truly creative.  An adventurous life requires risk-taking.  Great courage is needed to face real change.  A great failure can be the influence that enables us to risk and change.

When we listen to the exalting music of Handel’s Messiah, we usually assume it was surely written by a man at the pinnacle of his success, but that is not the case.  In fact, it was written after he had suffered a stroke.  It was written while Handel lived in poverty amid bleak surroundings.  He had suffered through a particularly deep night of gloom and despair over his failure as a musician, and the next morning he unleashed his creative genius in a musical score that continues to thrill and inspire us generations later (Peter Rhea Jones, Ministers Manual 1991, p. 58).

Shake off the dust and go on.

3) Failure can be failure for Christ

Sometimes failure comes our way when we are doing everything in our power to serve Christ.  Some modern theologies promise health, wealth and success if we will only follow Christ.  But he promised that his disciples would experience the same kind of rejection that he experienced.  Let us never forget that almost everyone of the first twelve suffered martyrdom for Christ.  Failure is good when the failure is for Christ’s sake.

David Brainerd, eighteenth-century missionary to the American Indians, failed magnificently for Christ.  While Christianity for his contemporaries was a dull habit, it was for him an acute fever.  He went among Indians and preached and lived.  He was not put off by the task of converting them to the ways of Jesus.  He was sick and often without food.  He endured hardship and little success.  He converted only thirty or forty Indians.  His ministry knew nothing of the kind of success in numbers that other missionaries knew, but his writings and influence have lingered and continue to inspire people to a deeper commitment and a deeper spirituality.

He left the American forest only when he knew he was dying.  David Brainerd died in the home of Jonathan Edwards, having burned himself up for Christ.  His was a beautiful life, lived with a magnificent purpose.  Here was a case of failure that was good. (Peter Rhea Jones, Ministers Manual 1991, p. 58).

Shake off the dust and go on.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat” (From Knute Larson, “Dancing With Defeat,” Leadership, Fall 1993, 104-107).

Failure is not the end of the world.  Failure is not a debilitating disease that ruins us for eternity.  In fact, we should not be afraid to fail.  We should expect failure at times.  Then exercise Jesus’ ritual of failure – shake the dust and go on.

(I am indebted to Homiletics, July 3, 1994 for the idea of this sermon.)
—————–
Note:
This service was a particularly moving one for me.  I used a “welcome” mat for the children’s sermon and talked about the purpose of the mat =to welcome, to provide a place to wipe your feet, and then told about Jesus’ instructions to shake the dust off your feet.  Then the children enjoyed wiping their feet on the mat.

At the end of this sermon, I used the “welcome” mat as a part of the invitation.  I invited anyone who wanted to exercise the sacrament of failure to come forward during the invitation and symbolically wipe their feet of any failure in their life.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2000, Mickey Anders. Used by permission.