As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. O God, we live in fear. We are afraid to fail, so much so, that we stop trying. Help us to live fearless lives, ones that are pleasing to you. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Our culture has spoken. The highest sin for the Christian, the American, the citizen, the human being in today’s world as we see it, has been named. To Fail, in the eyes of the world, is to sin. The Americanization of the gospel has become more real. Failure, for some reason, is among the greatest of sins. We overlook adultery. Politicians stay in the highest offices and our NBA players remain $135 million heroes, after admitting adultery. You can get away with Murder if you hire the right defense team. Stealing is the stuff of which to make great movies. From the Sting to Ocean’s 12 coming in December to a theater near you, we all love a good movie about breaking the 8^th. But failure is not an option. Certainly not admitting to it. Imagine if someone were to come up to you, and ask how this or that went. How your heart would race if it hadn’t gone well. Instantly excuses come to your lips. And good ones too. But what if you just had the guts to say, “Yeah, that thing bombed. Didn’t do too well.” I mean, if you had those kind of guts, you might be able to say, “But here’s what we learned from it.” But we can’t do that, not in today’s world. Cause no one can fail anymore, we don’t have that freedom.

What would happen in our lives if we were free to fail? How would it affect us? Not in a small manner, I guarantee you that. What if we were free people, free in God’s grace? What if we really lived like people secure in the unshakeable love of God?

This isn’t a member here, but it could just as well be any of us. Someone recently was talking about the fact that she had never become involved in anything that might expose her to the risk of failure. As a child, she was taught that a person who fails is a loser, and that no popular, attractive person should ever be associated with anything or anyone that might be considered a failure. The fear of failure was ground into her being.ⁱⁱ So is the danger for all of us. Our parents, our friends, our society instills in us a fear of failure and programs us to avoid failure at all costs. We are not free to fail, and are therefore, not real. But that’s for next time.

Many people are so frightened of failure that they are literally paralyzed from doing what they could do. Launching out on something new is rarely a live option for them because they dread taking any kind of risk. People suffer great anxiety, even anxiety attacks, when asked to respond to a new involvement for fear that their reputations will be threatened, their status put in jeopardy, and their security endangered.ⁱⁱⁱ

I’m about to read from the gospel of Matthew. I’ve heard quite a few sermons on this passage. Some pastors will tell you things such as, “If the one with one talent had failed, he still would have been in just as much trouble.” Others will tell you, “If the one had at least tried and failed, the master would have been happy with that.” Truth is, we don’t know. Jesus tells a parable here, and we don’t know what would have happened if. More on that later.

So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Matthew. Listen. Matthew 25.14-30. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

Whatever you decide about whether or not the one talent person would have been given grace had he tried and failed is in my mind irrelevant. That discussion misses the point. The point is the one talent person does fail, due to a total lack of trying. The one talent person, and a talent is a measure of money equal to what a laborer would earn for 15 years of work. So, by today’s measure, what, $600,000, $750? No small amount. An amount that would bring some fear with it. A point of the parable that must come across, and mustn’t be lost in a debate about whether or not the one would have been okay if he failed is this, he did fail. He failed to even try. His fear of failure assured him of exactly the result he feared most, a complete and utter failure, drawn out in the parable of being exiled to the pit where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Too often we picture God as some immovable rock, when in fact it is God and God alone who never rests. I only quote Scripture: “He neither slumbers nor sleeps” Psalm 121.4. It is God who says, “Behold, I create all things new.” Therefore, God’s most persistent enemies must be those who are unwilling to move in new directions, those who are too afraid to try. If you try, you sometimes fail; but if you never try, you always fail.^iv

The one talent person is the prototype of modern folk who are frightened to spend their lives for fear they will fail. And when they don’t spend it, they become what they are frightened of, failures. What we need today is not another philosophy on how to succeed, but rather one on how to fail creatively, and how to learn from our failures.^v

This attitude is desperately needed by our children. Children growing up in today’s world need less protection from the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that produce failure, and more need an adequate philosophy for the failures they will inevitably suffer.^vi I want my daughters to know fear. I want them to fear oncoming traffic, the person who pulls up and says “Would you like to get in the car, I’ve got candy,” and brussel sprouts. Ok, maybe not brussel sprouts for them, that’s just me. But I don’t want them to fear failure. I want them to fear not being able to try. I’d rather for them, and myself, try 99 things in which I will fail, than miss that 1 that I will succeed unexpectedly in. To that point, I was biking Kayla around the other day.

There is such a thing as a blessed failure. The blessed ones are ones that you learn from. Look at some of the most famous failures. Abraham Lincoln was a business failure. His store in a country village busted out. He was a near failure as a lawyer. Defeated in his first campaign for the state legislature. Defeated in his first attempt to be nominated to Congress. Defeated in his first attempt to become commissioner of the General Land Office. Defeated in his bid for the Vice-Presidency in 1856, and defeated again for the Senate in 1858. Obviously, he was one of the greatest people in our nation’s history. Good thing he didn’t let such a thing as a lot of failure scare him from trying.

Thomas Edison, terrible newspaper salesperson on a western railroad. He was dismissed from that job after accidentally setting fire to a baggage car. When trying to light a room using an incandescent light bulb, he failed 700 times before discovering the right filament. He is credited with the statement, “When everybody quits, then I begin.”

Who knows the number of failures of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Even their father, Bishop Wright, pronounced that humans would never fly.^vii

Imagine if a preacher whose family didn’t understand him. The religious authorities hated him. Political leadership opposed him. His friends deserted him. A close follower betrayed him. Vocal support denied knowing him. His congregation spit on him. Some have called Jesus the world’s greatest failure. I would agree, if you put the emphasis on world’s greatest failure. Because in his failure, we are all won for God.

Jesus Christ was free to fail. In selfless abandonment, He gave himself to be about what he called, “His Father’s business.” He was rooted in the fact that he belonged to God, and that no failure on this world could alter that fact. Therefore, no one could take His life from Him.^viii

Imagine if Jesus at 29 talking to his mother or father about his call to ministry.

“But mom, what if they don’t like me?”

“Well, some of them won’t. No one is liked by everyone. But you don’t do it to be liked.”

“Yeah, but what if all my closest followers are fishers and tax collectors?”

“Well, son, if that happens, you’ll make the best of it.”

“Yeah, but what if all the people come to me for healings?”

“Well son, then you’ll know word has gotten out.”

“Yeah, but what if, you know…”

“yeah…”

“What if the religious authorities come after me?”

“Then you continue to follow God’s call, no matter what.”

“But I don’t want to fail, mom. This is too important.”

And what if he let the fear of failure stop him.

We are not free to fail because we are foolish, or even because we are courageous. We are free to fail only because God loves us, and we have responded by discovering our true personhood in that love.^ix We are free to fail when we discover our true personhood in God’s love. And when we do so, we must take chances. Otherwise, we aren’t who God created us to be. We won’t need to be sent to the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, we’ll already be there.

You all know your Shakespeare, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”^x God calls us to life. Living a life of fear is living a life of death. The riches that God wishes to bestow on all of us can only be found within the parameters of a life lived above the fog of conformity and fear. Find God’s wishes for you, have the freedom to fail. Amen.