The Freedom to Fail

Brad Sullivan

Last Epiphany, Year A

February 26, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Matthew 17:1-9

The Freedom to Fail

“Man glows on top of mountain, disciples respond stupidly” I think that’s pretty much what the newspaper headline would read for the transfiguration.  The article would follow:

Itinerant preacher and Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, stunned his disciples yesterday when, in a remarkable lack of his characteristic humility, Jesus began glowing on top of a mountain, revealing himself as God, and then asking his Father for a mic drop, as a bright cloud covered the terrified disciples and God’s voice declared Jesus to be his son. 

The article would go on and probably miss a lot of the grace that was going on with the Transfiguration, the newspaper reporter totally transfixed by the majesty and awe.  To be fair, I’ve been transfixed by the majesty and awe of the Transfiguration many times.  Jesus’ full divinity shining in and through his full humanity, it really is pretty darn spectacular, and at the same time, to be honest, having preached about the Transfiguration at least one out of every two Sundays the story comes to us each year for the past eleven years, the excitement and splendor of Jesus glowing on top of the mountain just wasn’t speaking to me this time.  What struck me about the Transfiguration this time around was not the majesty and awe of God, but the grace of God. 

The disciples were terrified, right, face down in the dirt, trembling with fear, and Jesus saw his disciples and with the gentle touch of a mother or father comforting a frightened child, Jesus leaned over them and said, “It’s ok, you can get up now.  You don’t have to be afraid.”

I’d never noticed before this week that Jesus touched his disciples, that gentle, comforting, loving gesture, but there it was, a touch full of compassion and understanding, a touch full of grace.  That touch is how Jesus responded to his disciples when they were overcome by sheer terror at the majesty and awesomeness of God.

Like the disciples, I too have experienced sheer terror, the day after my son was born.  First there was immense love, joy, excitement, majesty, awe, wonder at my son’s birth…all of that followed by sheer terror when the nurses let us know that they weren’t continue to help us with the baby boy, but we actually had to take him home and care for him ourselves.  “Can’t we just make a booth for him here and come visit?” 

My point is that when my first son was born, I had a strong sense of awe at the responsibility of having helped to create a new human person and then the responsibility of caring for, loving, and nurturing that person.  I did not feel ready for it, and amidst the joy, and wonder, and absolute love of holding my baby boy for the first time, I also found myself on my knees, face down in the dirt, feeling completely unworthy of such a task.  So, I think I get some of what the disciples were going through up on the mountain, and then amidst the awe and wonder, excitement and joy, as well as terror and feeling totally inadequate and unworthy, Jesus touched them and me and said, “Get up and do not be afraid.”  “It’s ok that y’all are terrified.  It’s ok that you’re feeling totally inadequate to the task.  I’m here.  I’m with you.  Keep listening to me, as my dad just said.  Get up, and do not be afraid.”

For all of us in all of those times in our lives when we’re driven to our knees by how inadequate we are, Jesus touches us on the shoulder and says, “Get up, and do not be afraid.  You may well not be up to the task, and that’s ok.”  In that gentle touch, in those words, get up and do not be afraid, Jesus has given us the freedom to fail.  He’s given us the freedom to follow him, to strive, to mess up, and to fail, face down in the dirt, fail. 

I read an article in the most recent New Yorker about children’s author Mo Willems.  His books are some of our family’s favorites, and the article talked about his how his books

reveal a preoccupation with failure, even an alliance with it.  In ‘Elephants Cannot Dance!,’ they can’t; in ‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!,’ Pigeon, despite all his pleading and cajoling, never does.  Willems told [The New Yorker], ‘At “Sesame Street,” they would give us these workshops about the importance of failure, but then in our skits all the characters had to be great at what they did, everything had to work out.  That drove me crazy.’

The article went on a bit about artists understanding the importance of failure, and I was struck by Willems’ understanding of children needing to learn not only the important lessons that come with failure, but also that it is ok to fail, otherwise our worth is predicated upon our success.  You remember that time in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus told his disciples that they had to succeed in everything they did if they wanted to be worthy of him and his Father?  Yeah, me neither.

The freedom to fail means the freedom to risk, the freedom to strive, the freedom to dare greatly, and to end up face down in the dirt, to be met by Jesus’ gentle touch saying, “It’s ok.  Get up, and do not be afraid.”

The freedom to fail that Jesus has given us also means Jesus has given us the freedom to follow him as his disciples and to join our lives with his, continuing his movement in the world, living and bringing about his Kingdom of love.  Following in Jesus’ way, the heart of Jesus that begins to grow in us saying, “I want to offer that love and freedom to fail to others.  I want to offer that healing, gentle touch to others.  I see people down on their knees - some in fear, some having been beaten down there by life, some with heavy burdens on their backs so they can no longer stand.  I want to offer them that gentle touch of Jesus so they too can be healed, live without that fear or anything else driving them to their knees so that they can stand and be not afraid and know the love of being loved.

Sometimes this is in big work, offering food and shelter to folks in need.  Folks come by here fairly regularly asking for help with money or food, sometimes the same people come fairly regularly.  One instinct we can have is to wonder, “What’s going on?  Why aren’t you getting things together that you keep having to come back here?”  That’s an instinct I have, an instinct that I wrestle with.  Jesus’ freedom to fail, however, says something very different.  Jesus’ freedom to fail sees someone face down in the dirt and offers them neither judgment nor ridicule, but a gentle touch and the words, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

We don’t always know the right thing to do, but following Jesus, when we see people face down in the dirt, we offer them grace and love, rather than judgment and criticism.  This can also come in really simple ways.  I was in a doctors’ office several months ago with, I don’t know, one of our kids, and I struck up a conversation with a mother in the waiting room.  We quickly began talking about the challenges of parenting and the stresses of our children, and about five minutes in, you’d have thought raising kids was the worst thing in the world.  Apparently we needed to get that off of our chests. 

Then I thought, “where’s the grace of Jesus in all this?”  Where’s that gentle touch saying, “get up and do not be afraid.”  So during a lull in the conversation, I asked, “tell me about a recent moment of grace with your kids.”  The whole conversation shifted.  We began talking about how fantastic our little buggers are, how much we love our kids, even though they often are little buggers, and we even began talking about our mutual faith in Jesus.  Realize, we had just met, but that one simple question, “tell me about a recent moment of grace with your kids,” that question was the gentle touch of Jesus, lifting our heads out of the dirt and allowing us not to be hidden by our failures as parents, but engaged with one another such that we could even risk sharing our faith, in a doctors’ office.  It was a small moment, but it was the Kingdom of God being lived out, two people recognizing their mutual brokenness, connecting through the grace and gentle touch of Jesus, and then being healed even in that moment, being reconciled within themselves and with another person.  With that small moment of Jesus touching us and saying “get up and do not be afraid,” we each got to be a little bit more fully human, a little bit more reconciled to God, to the other, and to ourselves. 

That is life in the Kingdom of God.  That’s life in the Jesus movement, where Jesus has given us the freedom to fail, the freedom to risk for the sake of reconciliation and love.  Jesus has given us the freedom to receive his gentle touch and to offer that gentle touch of Jesus to others, saying, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”