Easter Day--The Rev. Melanie Lemburg

 Easter Day 2023

April 9, 2023

 

        I do not consider myself to be a “Swiftie.”  However, I am close with at least two Swifties—these self-proclaimed fans of the pop music artist Taylor Swift, and these two beloved Swifties of mine occasionally keep me apprised of the goings on in the T. Swift universe. 

        In a recent conversation about failure, and about how I’d been contemplating failure as a part of my Lenten discipline and reading, my Swiftie friend, Rev Aimee mentioned that Taylor had recently received an innovator award and in her reception speech, she spoke about failure.

        Here’s what Taylor said: “I do want to say that the thing with these exciting nights and moments and specifically this award that I’m so lucky to have gotten is that they’re shining a light on the choices I made that worked out. Right? The ones that turned out to be good ideas,” she said. “I really, really want everyone to know, especially young people that the hundreds or thousands of dumb ideas that I’ve had are what led me to my good ideas.”

        “You have to give yourself permission to fail,” she continued. “I try as hard as I can not to fail because it’s embarrassing, but I do give myself permission to and you should too. Go easy on yourselves and just make the right choices that feel right for you. And someday someone might think that you’ve been innovative. Thank you so much for this.”[i]

        What a gift that one of the biggest successes of an entire generation takes a moment to reflect on her failures and invites everyone to give themselves permission to fail!

        As I mentioned, I was already pondering failure as a part of my Lenten discipline this year.  Lest you think too highly of me for taking on something so interesting, you should know that it came about by my reading the book that was designated this year as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lenten book.  (He picks a different book every year, and I try to read it as a part of my Lenten discipline.  Some years are better than others!) The book this year is titled Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up, and it’s by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Emma Ineson, who is a bishop in the Church of England.    Bishop Ineson defines failure as “when things don’t go according to plan”[ii]  She clarifies that failure itself is not a sin, writing about how Jesus teaches his disciples what to do when (not if) they encounter failure, saying how again and again, in the face of their failures Jesus “names the reality of the situation and offers another, hopeful, chance to try again.”[iii]  She writes, “Jesus was used to dealing with failure in others.  He anticipated the failure of his disciples, trained them for it even, and was merciful when he encountered failure in those he met, always giving them a second chance.”[iv]

        So if Jesus is fully human (as well as fully divine), and failure is not the same as sin, it’s important to recognize that Jesus, himself, tasted failure.  (If he didn’t then he wouldn’t be fully human.)  In some ways, this can help redeem failure for us (like T. Swift was talking about).  If even Jesus failed, then failure can be seen as something that is “an intrinsic part of everyday human experience, not something to be fearful of, embarrassed about or ashamed of, but owned, confronted, and learned from.”[v]

And while the failure of the cross isn’t a matter of things not going according to plan (because the gospels tells us over and over again that Jesus knew he was going to die, and he walked willingly down that path toward the cross and his death), Jesus knew the taste of failure as he hung there, betrayed by Judas, one of his closest friends, abandoned by so many others, mocked and made fun of by those in power in his own faith. And, most significantly, he felt the profound sense of God’s absence in all of that.   

        The biggest joy of this day is that Jesus’s resurrection shows that failure will never be the last word in anybody’s story.  Easter shows that once and for all failure is never final, and what might look like failure can turn out to be an incredible success. 

        But we do ourselves a disservice if we rush too quickly to the redemption of our failures in and through Jesus’s resurrection without first encountering the truth of what Jesus teaches about failure. 

In her book, Bishop Ineson offers a number of suggestions on how to wrestle with and learn from failure in our own lives, or as she puts it “how to fail really well.”  There are two significant and related ones, that I want to mention here.  The first is to “fail widely,” that is learning to make different kinds of mistakes (because so often in our lives, we make the same mistakes over and over again, never learning from them or changing and growing—we see this in the bible, too).  The second is knowing your besetting sins.  “Besetting sins are those aspects of our own character that lead us to fail in the same way repeatedly.  Knowing what those flaws are and being aware of the impact they have on our interactions is half the battle.”  Trusted friends can sometimes help us with this, holding up a mirror to help us “challenge the sins we have come to love.”[vi]

Or to once again quote, Taylor Swift,

“It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me

At tea time, everybody agrees

I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror

It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero.”[vii]

The gift of this day, of Easter, is that no matter what we do (or don’t do), Jesus’s death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead proves, once and for all that God’s love is stronger than any failure.  It’s stronger than absolutely anything—even death.  So failure is never final, and the resurrection means that even after our death in this life, we continue to grow in God’s love in God’s kingdom. 

        In closing, I’ll share with you Bishop Ineson’s final words about failure. 

        “When you are feeling down about your failures, remember the Benedictine monk who found that, due to cold, damp weather, his carefully stored wine had begun to ferment a second time, creating within it bubbles of carbon dioxide.  What a failure!  Discovering that mistake must have been a very bad day for him.  The name of the monk?  Dom Perignon.”[viii] 


[ii] Ineson, Emma.  Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up.  SPCK: 2023,  p 129

[iii] Ibid. p126

[iv] Ibid. p 127

[v] Ibid. p 128

[vi] Ibid p 163

[viii] Ineson, Emma.  Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up.  SPCK: 2023, p 176

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