My grandmother used to announce, from time to time, that she had had only perfect children.
As a child, I sometimes envied this claim and sometimes resented it, since I knew I wasn’t perfect and suspected that this meant I was supposed to be. As a teen, I discovered irony, and decided that this was some kind of statement that whatever was, was perfect, and felt pleased that I was in on the joke. But I still wondered if I had to live up to perfection.
Do you ever feel like you’re meant to be perfect?
Do you strive to achieve some ideal; feel like you’re being measured against some standard you don’t control, as a child or parent, at work, as an athlete, whatever?
Do you strive to achieve some ideal; feel like you’re being measured against some standard you don’t control, as a child or parent, at work, as an athlete, whatever?
Conversations with friends and family suggest that being a parent is especially likely to give you the experience of never being able to live up to expectations - but so is dealing with your own parents!
My own social media feed is full of hundreds of ways to be a better pastor, or a better church - most of which I would love to do, and definitely should be doing, and can’t possibly excuse not finding the time or the resources to do - except that I clearly haven’t done them. And our life together is full of opportunities to disappoint one another, to fail in ways great and small.
And if that happens to me, I’m betting that many of you have similar experiences: at work, or in family relationships, or just watching those folks on TV who make fantastic meals with one hand tied behind their back, in perfectly-decorated kitchens they renovated themselves last weekend, and insist that you, too, can do this easily.
And then we come to church together, and we hear this amazing portrait in scripture of the woman who - one commentator observes - is “working hard everywhere, on everything, for everybody -- from dawn to dusk no less!”
She’s a perfect housekeeper, business owner, craftsperson, entrepreneur, advisor, parent and spouse.
Anybody here feel comfortable living up to that?
I’m exhausted just reading it.
And whether you use the lens of today’s translation as a “capable wife,” or the more literal translation “woman of warrior strength,” it’s an impossible ideal, it really is.
The good news about this is that it’s probably not meant to be the ideal that you and I are to live up to. It’s actually part of an oracle given to a gentile king by his mother - a recording of prophetic motherly advice, recognizable by the advice not to drink too much and get in trouble - and the point of this advice is to praise what is most praiseworthy, and not get caught up in success for its own sake.
Centuries of scholars have liked the idea that this portrait of the strong woman is meant to be a portrait of God’s wisdom, not a practical guide to housekeeping or the ideal of the disciple.
But when you pick it up and read it centuries later, it still looks remarkably like all those church leadership articles on the internet, and the fabulous parenting and meals and home-improvement projects on Pinterest and TV: a description of success that you and I are supposed to strive for,
and which we will inevitably fail.
And maybe we need that.
Maybe we need to fail, to lose, screw up, disappoint ourselves, and know we can’t live up to what we are supposed to.
Because the world you and I live in puts subtle but strong pressure on all of us to be perfect - to buy happiness from the folks who make commercials, to be athletes and A students and good-looking and popular, to meet our children’s needs and give them success, protect our parents from disappointment or disability, be more generous, spiritual, healthy, you name it.
And what happens in the gospel when we fail is totally different from what happens in everyday life.
That’s the lesson Jesus’ disciples are supposed to learn today.
Jesus catches them in the middle of arguing about who is the best: who is the closest to perfect, and will win success and recognition when Jesus’ kingdom comes. They’ know that they are supposed to strive for spiritual perfection, for success in keeping of God’s law, and that’s kind of what they are trying to prove to each other in this discussion, but they know that Jesus never seems to quite approve of that striving for success. And this time is no exception.
Jesus tells them that the failures will be the winners,
and that the nobodies are the people who are most like Jesus.
(Which must seem odd to the disciples who’ve lived with and followed Jesus, because that man can inspire a crowd and then feed them like nobody else.
Pintrest and Donald Trump have nothing on him.)
But Jesus clearly means it.
Failure and anonymity, being overlooked and ignored, are Christlike.
Not for their own sake, but because they make space for God.
Since there is nothing to be gained from welcoming and honoring the nobodies,
when we do so, we leave a vacuum of grace for God to fill.
Because there is nothing to be gained by failure, no advantage to being the low one on the totem pole, and overlooked, there’s so much less between us and God in those places.
What would happen if all of us took that idea seriously this week?
If you’re like me, you don’t actually set out to be perfect, but at least once a week, you realize you’ve failed, you disappoint someone, lose an opportunity that’s important to you, run hard and painfully into the ways that you can’t do enough, or be enough, or you’re overlooked and ignored.
What if we learned to look for God in those times and places — not as a consolation, or for healing, or a promise of better — but to look for how our own failures or inadequacies make it essential for God to be in the world.
What if we noticed how much more our loved ones, our world, ourselves, need God when we lose and disappoint and fail; noticed the absolute essentialness of God’s presence and action when we don’t do, and can’t do, what we want to do.
And learned to trust that those empty, awkward, lonely, unfortunate losses and spaces in our lives when we fail are grace, because God is there in spite of us.
How would it be, if we took that more seriously than our own ideals and hopes?
How would it be if that were a stronger force in our lives than the subtle, invisible cultural pressure to succeed?
It might be remarkably like the kingdom of God here and now,
and it certainly changes the world,
and that’s the most important reason in life for praise.
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