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"Where once were fear and darkness
the sun begins to rise..."
Lord, may Your light shine upon us now; in Jesus' name.
This is a piece of paper I'd rather not have received.*
It's headed: "Statement of Failure to Pass Test of Competence to Drive". Yes; the first time I took my driving test, I failed!
Failure. It's amazingly easy to fail at something, but failure is never easy to receive in ourselves, is it? Whether it's your driving test or a school or college exam, or the failure of a relationship or the feeling that you've failed in your job or even in sport or some other hobby - failure can happen so easily and yet it's not easy to receive its consequences for ourselves and our lives. And the higher our hopes and expectations of success, the lower we feel when it all goes 'pear-shaped'.
Today, the Church calendar commemorates the Birth of John the Baptist. John almost seems born to be the Patron Saint of Failures. Such a promising start in life - with a birth heralded by a visit of the angel Gabriel to his father; the longed-for child of adoring parents who gave him a name which means "The Lord is gracious". His father, in verses that we didn't hear read just now but which we sang a moment ago in the Gospel Canticle - his father Zechariah hailed his son as "a prophet of the Most High", the one appointed to prepare the way of the Lord. Luke's gospel told us that the awe-inspiring circumstances of John's birth were such that his parents' friends and neighbours and indeed, everyone in the surrounding community, was talking about this baby with a buzz of excitement. "What then is this child going to be?' Surely, the Lord's hand is with him; his life's going to be one big success story.
And yes; Luke goes on to tell us how this child, born through God's tender mercy, "grew and became strong in spirit", living an ascetic life in the desert as he prepared for his public ministry. And if we read on in the gospels, they tell us that the adult John did, indeed, hit the head-lines, initially for all the right reasons; he became a celebrity. The word of God came to John, says Luke 3:2; he was genuinely God's prophet. And people flocked to him at first - even though his preaching of a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins was uncomfortable and
uncompromising. "You brood of vipers", he said to the crowds who came to him - and they loved it. "Tell us what to do", they pleaded - and still John the Baptist pulled no punches. He gave people strong simple commands to show them what to do if they really meant business with God. "If you own two coats - give one of them away. If you have more than enough to eat - don't hoard it or waste it, but share it." He even dared to confront tax collectors and soldiers: no more getting rich at the expense of others; no more unnecessary use of brute force, no abuse of power to satisfy personal greed.
Of course, John was not just a moral reformer; his mission wasn't simply about getting men and women to repent of the petty injustices which turn society sour. His job was to proclaim the coming of the Christ, the true King of Israel; and part of that process involved pointing out the evils of the current king of the Jews - Herod, who had committed adultery with his brother's wife. The Lord's anointed would never do something like that, said John the Baptist. And we know what happened next. Herod locked John in prison, where the Baptiser began to wonder why he had bothered. Jesus didn't seem to be doing the sort of things that John had expected of the Messiah. He hadn't overthrown Herod in a powerful coup, and liberated his prisoners (including John) from jail. Jesus just didn't seem to be the great King to whom even the mighty leaders of the Roman Empire would pay homage. Disappointment, doubt and disillusionment appeared to overwhelm John. He died in what, outwardly at least, looked like abject failure and utter humiliation: his severed head presented on a plate to a sluttish princess at a drunken dinner-party.
Failure. So what does faith have to say in the face of failure? When the world says, "You've failed. You have been evicted from the Big Brother house. You're a total shambles; you're fired. You are the weakest link. Goodbye." When the world says, "You reject, you messed up again" (or words to that effect but best not repeated in church) - what then does God say?
Well, let's think back to our first reading. "Before this faith came," wrote Paul to the Galatians, "we were held prisoners by the law..." (3: 23). The struggle to keep every detail of the Jewish legal tradition couldn't but end in feelings of imprisonment to failure.
In school exams, like GCSEs, you don't have to achieve
100 % to have passed. Even a solid 80% can gain you an A*.
It's not like that with the Torah; under the legal system with which Paul grew up, unless someone kept every single minute detail of every rule and regulation - they'd failed. Locked up by a sense of sin, guilt, failure. What a contrast, says St Paul - and you can feel the exhilaration in his words - what a contrast now that the possibility of faith in Jesus Christ has been revealed. Now, through faith in Christ, by God's amazing grace, we can be justified by faith.
Justification means putting things right. It's not denying that failure has happened. It's not pretending that things haven't gone wrong. Rather, it is God, in His position as judge of all the world, declaring that the failure has been dealt with, the sins - of omission and commission - have been forgiven. This forgiveness and putting right is only achieved through what Jesus has done for us on the Cross. Atonement - 'at-one-ness' with God - is ours when we put our whole faith and trust in the Son of God, who loves us and gave Himself for us (Gal. 2:20). That is the Good News of the Christian faith. Nothing that we can do puts us right with God. We are saved only by owning up to our failures and shortcomings, acknowledging that, by ourselves we can never get it all right, and casting ourselves upon the greatness of God's love.
Faith. Christian faith means forsaking, letting go, of trust in things that cannot save us. Pride of status, race or personal achievement. When Paul wrote, in Galatians 3:28, that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus", he was highlighting three things which, as Saul the Pharisee, he would have trusted in to bring success. And he contrasts those with three things that were doomed to failure. With his pre-Christian eyes, like others of his day, he would have regarded Greeks or Gentiles, slaves and women as born into failure, automatically ruled out of ever achieving the perfection of which free male Jews at least had a hope of attaining if they tried really, really hard.
Similar sorts of attitude are still around today, aren't they? Some folk regard other folk as born rejects. Some of us see things in others or in ourselves that we regard as unforgivable. No, says Paul; no one has automatic failure or success in the Kingdom of God. Whatever our starting point, if we have faith in Christ and belong to Him through baptism and are clothed with His righteousness, then we have peace with God and are heirs of all His promises.
FAITH: Forsaking All I Trust Him. I let go of my worldly security, pride in my own achievement; let go, too, of wallowing in self-pity at my failure. And I reach out the hand of faith to trust in Christ alone.
FAITH: Forsaking All I Trust Him. And also Fantastic Adventure In Trusting Him. I reach out the hand of faith to trust in Christ alone, knowing that any adventure involves the pits of failure as well as mountain-top moments of success. Confident in the all-sufficient merit of my Lord and Saviour to raise me up with Him at the last day.
"Though my sins against me cried, Thou dids't clear me". Christians echo with joy St Paul's affirmation, in Galatians chapter 2, of redemption and rescue, of grace rather than dis-grace: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. And the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Mary Barr
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