The Motivating Power of Failure
I know some of you are reading through the Gospels this summer and if you are you will see many stories of Jesus healing people. Jesus and the disciples successfully heal many, many people. In the first few chapters of Mark’s Gospel Jesus commands an unclean spirit to come out of a man (1:26) heals Simon’s mother-in-law (1:31), and “cures many who were sick and cast out many demons” (1:34), he even heals people of leprosy (1:41-42) and a man who is paralyzed (2:11-12). So it goes throughout the Gospel of Mark; a man with a withered hand (3:5) is healed, Jesus cured many (3:10) even restoring a little girl to life (5:39-43), wherever Jesus and the disciples went (6:13), “they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” Jesus and the disciples have a very good success rate at healing and casting out demons.
June 24, 2012
Mark 9:14-29, The Motivating Power of Failure
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
[powerpress]
With their track record of healing people and authority over unclean spirits it hits us as a surprise as we read through the Gospel of Mark when all of sudden there is a time when the disciples are unsuccessful. This happens when Jesus, Peter, James, and John come down from the mountain where Jesus was transfigured and spoke with Moses and Elijah. Meanwhile the other disciples have failed – they couldn’t cast a demon out of a boy. Failing isn’t something most of us enjoy. Frankly, failing is painful, embarrassing, hurtful, even humiliating and it can be hard to forget. If you ask athletes, actors, or musicians they often will remember more vividly the times they failed than the times of sparkling success. It is a credit to the disciples that they allow us to learn from their failures by their willingness to share them with others in the Gospels.
“When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16 He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17 Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” 19 He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” 26 After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. 28 When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”
Failure is a part of life, even though we wish it weren’t, and actually failure can be very helpful in our growth and development if we learn from it as so many people have observed. Speaker Zig Ziglar noted, “Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.” Automaker Henry Ford said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
“Failure is success if we learn from it.” Malcolm S. Forbes
Because the disciples had failed, they were open to learning from it, so they could be ready to respond better the next time. They understood this incident was detour on their journey of discipleship and not a dead-end. So they asked Jesus in private afterwards, “Why could we not cast it out?”
I believe this passage teaches us at least four important lessons we can learn from failure. The motivating power of failure teaches us our need for prayer, humility, faith, and perseverance.
Jesus answers the disciples’ question about their failure by saying, “This kind can come out only through prayer.” Throughout Mark’s Gospel we see that spending time with God in prayer is a priority for Jesus. Through prayer we learn the reality of God’s presence; we come to believe more in God’s power and goodness. Praying strengthens our faith. Praying with other people also increases our confidence. In the mystery of prayer there is a dynamic that sometimes happens in a group where at times when our faith may be wavering, the faith of others can support us and pull us through. One of the things to note about this story is that not only is Jesus not with the disciples when the desperate father asks for help with his son, but Peter, James, and John are all on the mountain with Jesus too. In a sense, this is like taking four of the best players off of a team before a big game, it weakens the team and it can demoralize the other players who know the chance of winning is much less without them. The disciples, I suspect, are standing there confronted by the father whose son, it sounds like, has epilepsy, and the “go to guys” Jesus, Peter, James, and John are not there to take on the tough case. To make matters worse, there are scribes arguing with them and the disciples are likely feeling flustered and overwhelmed. I wonder if Matthew and Andrew and Philip and Thomas are looking at each other and saying, “You take this one,” “No, it’s your turn, you do it.” I’m refuting the scribes, you deal with the boy” They can’t fall back on Jesus to do it; it’s up to them.
This, of course, is the situation for the early church and for our selves. For the community for whom Mark was first written and for us, Jesus is not present in the same way as when he physically walked the earth. Now people look to us for healing and hope as this father looks to the disciples. How is the church to respond to these needs? Jesus says the first thing is to be praying so we’re in touch in with God’s power and authority. In life, like with the disciples in this story, we’ll be confronted by situations that are beyond our ability, intelligence, or experience, at times like these, prayer is the place to begin and not the place to end.
The second thing failure can teach us is humility. Anytime we fail at something it serves as a reminder that we have more to learn, we are not masters yet. Failure can be one of life’s greatest teachers though the lessons may be painful.
Author J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter stories spoke at Harvard’s commencement in June of 2008. Her title was The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination. Part of what she said about failure was this:
“Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”[1]
Failure can be humbling when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped or envisioned, but as long as we’re still living there is hope things can change. One aspect of humility is accepting responsibility for our life and asking God for help in moving us forward. “A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.” Elmer G. Letterman.
The disciples are humbled by their failure and they’re willing to ask Jesus for help in figuring out went wrong. Sometimes like the disciples we may have to swallow our pride and ask for guidance, instruction, or direction. Having to admit our ignorance or inability is good for keeping us humble and sparing us from arrogance. It also allows other people to speak into our life and share their knowledge, gifts, and experience.
In the case of the disciples and the father – Jesus shares that what is missing is the third thing we can learn from failure: a deeper level of faith and belief. The father said to Jesus, “and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” 19 Jesus answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” Did you catch that the father spoke, but the text says, Jesus answered them. Jesus is speaking to everyone present when he calls them a faithless generation. What they need is deeper faith in what God can do.
That faith and belief are at the root of the issue is made clear when the father says to Jesus, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” The father’s cry is filled with urgency and desperation. He recognizes he needs Jesus’ help with his unbelief and he wants it immediately. This is the humbling place where so many of us find ourselves. We believe, but we need Jesus’ help with the unbelief that tugs at our heart, mind, and spirit when life is hard and it seems like our prayers have gone unanswered. Failure can motivate us to pray more diligently. Failure can humble us and push us to learn and grow in faith and belief in God. Finally, failure can teach us the importance and power of perseverance. Jesus didn’t give up on this boy, his father, or the disciples. Jesus won’t give up on us. Our part, however, is not to give up either but to persevere. I know many of you enjoy gardening and a gardener (May Sarton) observed, “A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.” A gardener doesn’t quit because something gets eaten or doesn’t come in the way you hope. You persevere.
One of my favorite quotes about perseverance is by President Theodore Roosevelt. “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
It is true that “We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.” Leo Buscaglia
A friend of mine sent me an email and wrote that she saw a street sign this week that said, Perseverance Path. Perseverance is always an underlying path for us. As you drive around the Cape you see all kinds of interesting street names. There is one that is called Bittersweet; sometimes we are on that path.
What road are you on this morning? Some of us may be on a path called illness, another grieving… another challenges of aging… another in decision making… whatever “path or paths” we’re on, perseverance is a foundational one… we need perseverance every day, sometimes more, sometimes less.
As you’re driving around this week if you have to sit in traffic look around and see the street signs… and ask yourself what “path” am I on today?
Is it the path of prayer, humility, faith, and perseverance? The great early Christian preacher John Chrysostom wrote,
“The danger is not that we should fall…but that we should remain on the ground.”
Prayer: Lord give us the courage to fail, for if we have failed, at least we have tried and help us to remember that failure is not an identity, it is merely an event that we can learn and grow from. Help us not to confuse a single defeat with final defeat. Remind us that “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” (Denis Waitley) If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless. (Robert H. Schuller). Lord help us to dare to do great things in your name and may we not be afraid to fail.
Blessing:
Comforted & inspired beyond all fear,
Not faltering at God’s command,
Learning & increasing from our sorrow
God’s light illuminating our darkness
Let us boldly & courageously face the future, come what may.
[1] J.K. Rowling, Commencement Address, Harvard University, June 2008.