Fail Better Next Time
SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
I am a late comer to the stories of Christianity. All through my childhood – and still sometimes – I find myself puzzled by references to stories and references to this particular scripture or that one. It may seem an odd malady for one who has served in the ministry for 25 years – possibly even thought a bit disgraceful, but it is the case. With my storyteller’s ear, though, and when I listen well, I can hear stories that speak to my condition, as the Quakers would say. Palm Sunday is one of those stories that capture my attention.
The broad outlines of the story are indeed compelling: this is the day that Jesus makes a triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As was foretold in the Jewish scriptures – at least that is what some would say – the messiah was coming into his glory. Crowds gather all around, cheering and weeping and throwing down palm fronds and their cloaks, making the way for Jesus to travel, smoothing his path, as it were. This is what is done, you see, in that time, when someone of worth and note comes in to town. After he arrives, then begins the time of teaching, as the stories spill out through the week, as he upends the tables in the temple, offers riddles and metaphor to all who will listen to him. So begins the week in triumph.
At least that’s the broad outline of the story. Once you get into the details it gets a bit more complicated.
For example, on that donkey – in one version there’s a foal as well – on that donkey there are tattered cloaks and robes placed there by his disciples to make the ride more comfortable, and I imagine him bumping along on the back of an untamed animal. The trotting would make his teeth snap together and would rattle his bones. The donkey might be a bit spooked by the cloaks laid on the ground, and the panicked beast would care little for the man weighing on his back. It’s not a triumphant picture, that, with the dust thrown up from the hoofs, as the small beast – stolen, in fact from his rightful owner – lurches along. It is not the picture of a man coming into his glory, but rather the picture of a man who is trying to make some sort of mark.
And then there’s the crazy talk and the crazy behaviour. Jesus calls for justice and righteousness, and we know what happens to those who demand such things: they are treated with suspicion, they are watched, they are not trusted. Prophet after prophet throughout the Hebrew scriptures face unbelieving, if not totally hostile crowds. Jesus made enemies with his pronouncements and perplexed and confused people. If you pay heed to what the gospellers recorded, then there are also not very veiled references to his own death and to his return. It was crazy talk, I tell you.
The night in the bordello is perhaps the last of the betrayals and craziness for Judas, who complains bitterly that Jesus has forgotten the needs of the poor, who is angry at the squandering of resources.
Even on this day when Jesus enters the city, we know the rest of the story and his sure defeat. You can’t tell about Palm Sunday without knowing that Maundy Thursday is coming when the soldiers will take him and he will be betrayed by those who claim to love him. You can’t tell about Palm Sunday without knowing that on Friday he will be brutally executed, hung on a cross, the breath pressed out of him as he faces his final abandonment. Even God seems to have turned away.
This is not religion for the faint of heart. This is not a story to tell children before bed. This is enough to make you want look for some religion that has a cheerier disposition and that does not demand that the ultimate price be paid. After all, what kind of God is it that asks that of a son? What kind of God needs a sacrificial lamb? What kind of God would design a world that has woven into the very fabric this kind of loss and pain and heartbreak and betrayal and bitter, bitter loneliness? What kind of God?
I’ve never been one to believe in a God who has woven the fabric of the world just so, who planned that this would be the way to bring something that resembled healing and wholeness to the shattered world. If anything, I suppose that in the story of this week, this passion story there is as clear as it can be for us all to see a picture of the defeat and failure of what we love and trust and believe to be so.
This isn’t a story about the little bumps and bruises of life. This isn’t about the disappointments that come to us all from time to time. We’ve all been disappointed and hurt sometimes, but this is that step further: when there seems to be nothing but dust and loss, nothing more than fear and this is about that moment when hope feels like it has gone. The story of this week is about when it has all failed.
And we’ve all failed. Not just in the small moments and the little things. Yes, there was that souffle that didn’t rise, or the disastrous try at painting. There was the job that went awry, or the relationship that ended because we didn’t try enough. Those aren’t the matter here. Holy week with its triumph and teaching ends with betrayal, abandonment and death. And in it we see ourselves because we have been there, too. When all the righteousness has been stripped away, and we are left with ourselves, knowing that we have failed to do what we meant, failed to live as we had promised we would, failed not only others, but our own hearts.
Everything that matters most in our lives, everything that is most important will fail at last. Our own courage and capacity for love. The love of another when we need it most. Fairness and justice will dissolved down to a bunch of pretty words scattered to the wind meaning nothing. We will all fail at it.
Entering into this week of Passiontide is no journey for the faint of heart. But even though it seems a journey in darkness that has no light in it, and even though the sureness of failure and defeat seems good reason to simply turn back, to curl back into bed, keep the curtains drawn and forget the whole thing, even though confronting our own failings and losses can tear at our hearts, all is not lost. Listening to an interview with Cornell West some weeks ago, he said what we need to hear, what we need to know on this journey through the week on the journey through our lives. He said, ‘fail better next time.’ Fail better next time.
Yes. Courage will fail. Our love will fail. But we can fail better next time.
What is most important in this world is fragile and difficult:
loving each other well and truly in all its many dimensions,
practicing kindness in every act,
lifting up the downtrodden,
remembering what is good and worthy,
serving justice
and all those items on your list, too, that are written on your heart,
etched into your life.
It is difficult and fragile and we will fail at it all – sometimes disastrously. But we can – we must – fail better next time. For if we abandon this enterprise of being human and living deeply and authentically, then failure is complete. We must seek to fail better next time.
I cannot pretend that this is easy or simple. It is without doubt the work of a lifetime. And that work of a lifetime starts by our willingness to fail better next time.
Anne Lamott angles at this in our reading this morning. Chewing gum – of all things – to relieve the pain in her throat after her surgery, she discovers that the pain lessens, and she is able to come back to her life again. The muscles which tightened and cramped around the wound were for protection, but eventually no longer serve to ease the pain, but instead prolong and perhaps increase it. She says:
I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds – the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both – to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. . . . In some cases we don’t even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us.. . . They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way.
Fail better next time. Take the chance. Keep at it. Though Lamott in this case writes about writing, it is all about how we come to our lives, too. She says:
Your day’s work might turn out to have been a mess. So what? [Kurt] Vonnegut said, “When I write, I feel like an armless and legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” So go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. . . .
What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.
That’s the real brightness in this week of terror and loss and failure and disappointment: it is by stepping into life with all our heart and taking the risk, we learn who we are and why we are here. Again and again we have to learn it, and sometimes even, fail better. Make big scrawls and messes. And fail better next time. Just don’t stop trying.
Phillip Appleman says it best for me. In the darkness and loss, in the failure, still I can make that resolution:
Resolved: this year
I'm going to break my losing streak,
I'm going to stay alert, reach out,
speak when not spoken to,
read the minds of people in the streets.
I'm going to practice every day,
stay in training, and be moderate
in all things.
All things but love.
Fail better next time, and keep at it. And love immoderately and without end. Love better next time.
So may it be for us all.