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From April 8, 2007 Forever Changed Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24, John 20: 1-18 What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? A friend loved to pose this question. When he asked, I never knew quite how to respond. Partly because I wasn't sure why he asked it. Did he think I was holding back, not risking? Or was it that he wanted me to turn the question back on him? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? I confess something: I didn't much care this question then and I still don't. Why? Because it indulges our egos, implying we possess a power that I do not believe we have. No matter how lofty our dreams, no matter how determined our efforts, we cannot ensure our own success. Not even Jesus had such a guarantee. You remember Good Friday of course. Jesus' suffering and death remind us that failure was real even for the Son of God. Looking at the last week of Jesus' life with worldly eyes, with pre-Easter morning eyes, Jesus' failures rise up like mountains, sealing his fate. You remember them. Jesus failed to bring about the revolution of love that his palm-strewn entrance into Jerusalem heralded. Once inside the gates of the Holy City, Jesus failed to convince the religious authorities that his was a God-endorsed mission. When he was arrested and his death sentence was handed down, innocent Jesus failed to inspire the faithful to rise up and demand justice. Jesus failed to save himself. Of course - and this is obvious - Jesus' failures were not his alone. They were compounded by the failures of so many, even those closest to him, the ones who so desperately wanted him to succeed. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Life is laced with the prospect of failure. Even when intentions are noble. Even when the heart spills over with nothing but love. Even when we are innocent, earnest, and God-sent. No matter how fully we dream of success, no matter how doggedly we work for it, we get no guarantees in life. Sure, we may insist to ourselves and others that failure is not an option but it finds us nonetheless. Life hands out no guarantees. Failure is an ever-present possibility. The sweethearts planning a wedding know this. As certain as they are that love will see them through and their covenant will endure, a marriage may not survive what tests it. A couple yearning to conceive a child may not. The wise investment flops. The sure thing turns out to be a dud. Even for good and godly people there are no guarantees. Things can go wrong and do. You and I know very well that Good Friday didn't just occur once. It happens all the time - and in our lives, too! And when it does we weep, we wail, we wait in the tomb asking painful and unanswerable questions: Why? Why me? When will the stone be rolled way? Will God deliver me? Resurrect me? These questions are real. And agonizing. And yet God does not abandon us. God does not leave us in the tomb. God does not leave us failed and forsaken. This bright Easter morning we remember, we celebrate, we claim and proclaim the truth that Good Friday is not the end of the story. Not by a long shot. At Easter we sing and shout and praise God because God did not and does not and will not let the story end in failure, in Good Friday. The failures we find, the ones that find us, the disappointments, the betrayals, the deadly blows life metes out - all of these, in God's hands, can and will be transformed into a victory of love. Thinking about my friend's question, it strikes me that Easter invites us to live into a different and more life-giving question than the one he was fond of asking. The question isn't what would you do if you knew you could not fail. For people of faith, for resurrection people like you and me, Easter invites us to ask: what would you do if you knew God could not fail? The empty tomb and the Risen Christ are God's assurance and assertion that nothing, nothing, nothing is more powerful than God's love. Not failure. Not the betrayal or abandonment of friends. Not the Pilates of this world. Not the crowd that mocks us and calls for death. Not the cruelty along the Way of Sorrows, the Via Dolorosa. Not even the cross and death itself. Easter's proclamation, its provocation even, is this: The power of God's love is mightier than any failure. Any failure we encounter. Any failure we endure. Any failure we engender. God can and does and will bring life out of our dead-ends and tomb-times. As our psalmist reminds us this morning, "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." What would you do if you knew God could not fail? What would you do if you knew God would not fail you? Remember that Easter's joy is founded on something other than one man's dream, one man's persistence, one man's insistence that he succeed. Remember that Jesus didn't study his options and then enact the ones he thought guaranteed success. Jesus was able to risk it all, he was able to do what he did and say what he said and love who he loved because he knew that with God all things are possible. God does not fail, God prevails. Jesus risked everything on his bold conviction that even if he failed, God would not, could not fail. Would not, could not fail him or the human family. This is what enabled Jesus to go into Jerusalem armed with nothing but a heart full of God. This is what gave him the strength to send the Temple tables crashing down and gave him the capacity to go toe to toe with the Roman and religious authorities. This is what made it possible for him to consistently speak the truth in love. Jesus did not have any holy advantage, here. He was just as human as we are, just as vulnerable. What Jesus had was an abiding conviction that no matter what the world dished up and dealt out, no matter who fell away or betrayed him, God would be with him, and in spite and because of the worst of the worst that befell him, God's love would ultimately prevail. Its power would be victorious. All this Jesus was willing to stake his life on. And did. Even before the apostle Paul wrote it, Jesus experienced it: "For I am convinced," penned Paul, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. No threat. No circumstance. No failure. No nothing. God cannot and will not fail us. This is what keeps us alive in dark times, in times when our fears rise up, in times that seem so bleak that truly there seems no way out. This is what brings us back from the brink when everything seems lost. It's what brings us back from the dead and resurrects us. This is what enables us to take huge risks and live without the burden of believing that we are alone in our efforts and therefore it falls to us to be successful in our pursuits. What would you do if you knew God could not fail? What would you do if you knew God could not fail? I love imagining what would happen today, tomorrow, next year, in ten years if Christians around the world asked themselves this questions and then stepped forward in faith. What would you do if you knew God could not fail? What would you do if you knew God could not fail? Easter invites us to find out. And then sing out, sing out the Easter that finds its way into our lives. Amen. © 2007 Rev. Karen Winkel United Church of Paducah (UCC) |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
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