Wake Up and Smell the Kingdom: We Fail

“I don’t think you’re ready for this.”

Joshua seems skeptical as he addresses the gathered tribes of Israel:
“Can you really serve the Lord? I don’t know… are you really prepared to commit your undivided attention, your highest priority, in better and in worse, forever, to the God who chose our ancestor Abraham and brought us out of slavery?”

There’s very good reason for the ancient tribes of Israel to choose the God who has already chosen them. Joshua reminds them, and then they remind themselves, of all the benefits God has already offered them: faithfulness, rescue, fulfilled promises, military victory and conquest.
Signing up to “serve” this God – to choose their people’s savior and guide instead of the local gods who just got defeated, or the old gods our ancestors left behind – seems like a no-brainer, an easy decision.

But Joshua does not want them – does not want us – to make the easy decision. The easy decision to sign up for more of these fantastic benefits.

Joshua wants them – us – to make the hard, serious, risky and faithful decision to commit our selves, our future, everything we have, to the God who chose us. To always – always – put the priorities of God above our own priorities. To put God and God’s plans, work, and commandments first, even before we consider our own personal, or our own families’, plans, hopes, and needs.

And that is a risky proposition.

Joshua warns his people that – if we make that commitment – failure is going to hurt.

The benefits of committing to God are amazing. But failure once we have committed may very well destroy us.

And the people double down.

Yes. This risk is worth it. We will commit our whole selves, our future, our hopes and plans and needs, to God.

Yes, we mean it. We’ll hold ourselves to it.

We will serve the Lord.

It’s beautiful.

When you tap in to the emotion of the moment – in spite of the awkward translation and millennia of cultural gaps between us and Joshua and the tribes – and get connected to the heart of the story, it’s a moment of incredible power and romance and wonder.

I want to be that wholehearted, that sure of my connection to God, that willing to take risks in committing my hopes and plans and needs and future to the work of God, to being God’s person, among God’s people.

I feel that same surge of joyful hope and wonder every time we baptize someone here, and make our own promises to follow Jesus, to put Christ first and to live in God’s work and will, as we support the person being baptized.

And every other minute of the week, the year, I know that that’s hard.

The “other gods” are right there, always at hand and ready to demand and reward my attention to advertising, to my phone, to success and power and recognition. Demands that seem little: buy this thing, finish all the email before you take time to pray, or rest, or help someone in need. Expectations that seem “normal”: to keep things running smoothly, to be “nice” or moderate instead of fierce about justice or love.

And I fail.

I fail, like the ancient tribes of Israel, who found that they weren’t, after all, prepared to put God, and God’s vision for God’s people, ahead of their own needs and hopes and wants and plans every time, year after year after year.

I fail, like half of the bridesmaids in Jesus’ story today, who were probably reasonably prepared for the work they thought they’d taken on, but ran out of fuel when the job took much longer than they’d expected.

Those ancient tribes of Israel, like many of us here and now, probably found that serving God – following Jesus, for us – often isn’t what we expected. Turns out to go on and on and on well after the energy of joyful commitment runs into the mundane need to keep showing up for prayer and work that never seems to get finished. The need to keep choosing the unrewarding tasks of love, justice, generosity, peace, and holiness before the rewards of success, admiration, approval, and comfort.

So, they made this promise – this enthusiastic, joyful, hope-filled commitment to serve God.

And, eventually, they failed.

Like half of Jesus’ bridesmaids did.

Like many of us do.

I have been feeling that failure lately, when I hear news from Gaza and Israel – and Congress and across the world – and I’m sure that serving God, and following Jesus, demands more of me in response than I am offering.

I‘ve been feeling that failure in the way that times of stress make it so much easier for me to love my neighbor less than myself.

And this week, I found myself in two different conversations about the ways that – even after we’ve received the salvation, forgiveness, and fulfilled promises of baptism, of God – we humans have a tendency to fail. To find ourselves selfish, or impatient, or greedy, or complicit in some complex web of war or oppression or injustice. To fall short of our promises and intentions to love God with all our heart, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

And how there is, often, a lot of grief and pain involved in that failure. Our own disappointment and the disappointment of others. A sense of being cut off, shut out, sometimes, from community or from love or from God, or from hope.

The consequences of failure to love God first are real, even when we know – as we know – that God loves us in spite of ourselves, anyway. That’s why Joshua and Jesus don’t pull their punches, when they say that failure to serve God once we’ve promised, failure to be prepared for God changing the schedule, will hurt.
Not to threaten us, I think, but so that we know when we feel it that the pain of failure is part of the same story of promise and invitation, the same story of God showing up, that also promises us joy, victory, trust, and unbreakable connection with God.

All our failure – all our often predictable falling short – is part of the same story that also promises that God’s people succeed with God. That that deep desire to commit ourselves to God does lead to a generations-long, shining, holy closeness to the God who chooses us, to abundance and trust and joy. That our willingness to show up and take on a task for God does lead to celebration and fulfilled hope.

We tell these stories because they tell us the truth that a life of commitment and service to God, a life of following and expecting Jesus, is challenging and prone to failures. (A truth I find a little reassuring as well as disappointing when I myself fail to live up to my hope and faith and commitments.)

And we tell these stories to remind us that our potential for failure is part of the story of God’s salvation, and that we want to take the risk of showing up for Jesus, being committed to God.

We retell these stories, and others, sometimes, to bring us back to the place where we want to commit again, want to renew the joyful energy of the promise to serve God, renew the enthusiasm with which we set out to welcome Jesus into our lives.

Because – just as truly as we often fail – truly there are times when, with God’s help, we succeed.

Sometimes, with God’s help, we find that the hope that inspired us in the first place is more than enough to keep us going, to keep the promises we make. And we find ourselves swept up unmistakably into the world, and the selves, that God has made for love and glory – into the very heart of God.

Maybe I’m still not ready, like those ancient tribes of Israel, still not prepared enough, to keep my promises without ever failing. But today, I’ll take that risk again.

I’ll promise – with you, perhaps? – with Joshua, with others – that I, and my house, will serve the Lord.