Trinity 15
A Sermon preached by Clare Heard on Sunday 13th September
Failure
This week, James
and I went to the installation and licensing of 2 friends of ours, a husband
and wife, being installed and licensed as vicar and associate vicar of a church
near Reading.
It was a wonderful
service in many ways, not least because it was full of people wishing them well
and full of joy and hope about the future.
But the part that
stood out for me was the vows. They
pledged themselves to care for the community, to share God’s word and work of
ministry, to celebrate sacraments and to encourage others in their
discipleship. The same vows James made, when he was licensed here 2 years ago.
And if you think about all it involves, it’s a lot to promise!
But this is not
all they did. They also pledged their allegiance to the Anglican church, the 39
Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and lastly, to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
the Second.
They were very
powerful vows, made all the more poignant because it was the day before Queen Elizabeth
2nd became our longest reigning monarch.
Becoming Queen 63
years ago at just 25 years of age, the Queen also made some vows….vows she has
kept to this day:
-
to
govern the Peoples of the Commonwealth
-
to
cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in her judgements
-
to
maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel, and
-
to
maintain and preserve the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship,
discipline, and government thereof
It’s quite
something to swear to and must have been incredibly daunting to the young
monarch embarking on this path of leadership.
Today’s
Epistle adds to the sense of trepidation that comes with the making of any
significant vow of leadership. It warns that not many should become teachers (or
in today’s terms, those in positions of leadership, authority or influence).
It speaks
very clearly of how easy it is for us to say the wrong things, and how this is
particularly true for teachers. When people are in authority, have positions of
power or influence, we tend to expect more from them, and perhaps rightly so.
But can anyone live up to these expectations? All too often, we see in the
press, famous figures being built up one moment and torn apart the next.
Sometimes, people really have abused their power, other times, they’ve simply
made a mistake. As Abraham Lincoln said:
“Nearly all men
can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power”.
It is
difficult to be any kind of role model for the simple reason that none of us
are perfect – we all sin and fall short. The only perfect role model was Jesus.
Very few of us are able to curb our tongue all the time, say the right thing,
all the time!
Yet St James
clearly calls out how wrong it is to speak words of encouragement, teaching and
love one moment and then curse others the next, and he exhorts us not to do
this.
It makes me
remember my licensing service here at St George’s. I remember vowing at the service
to promote peace, and within a couple of days, was screaming at the children
(of course I can’t remember why) – and then feeling incredibly guilty because I
was about as far away from promoting peace as it was possible to get!
Does this sound
familiar? We come to church Sunday by Sunday and leave full of good intentions
to speak no evil, and then life happens.
I do think the
Queen sets a great example of managing NOT to say the wrong thing. I certainly
have never heard of any slips of the tongue during her reign. She appears to
have managed to stay polite, and more importantly wise enough not to say things
that shouldn’t be said, to be discreet – at least in public! But many of us do
not manage to be quite so wise.
St Peter is a great example of this. In the gospel reading
today, he says exactly the right thing, he declares that Jesus is Christ, the
Messiah. However, moments later he is telling Jesus off for speaking about the
path that he will take – he gets it completely wrong.
And we see this so
often, in the gospel, in teachers and authority figures, in all of life. We can
get it really right, and then we get it wrong. And so we need God and we need
each other.
The Queen has
always recognised this. On her 21st birthday, prior to her coronation, whilst in
South Africa she gave a speech and said:
“I declare before
you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to
your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all
belong, but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone
unless you join in with me, as I now invite you to do. I know that your support
will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of
you who are willing to share in it.”
This is why, in
all the vows we make in church, for baptism, for ordination, during
installations or licensings, even during coronations, the response is always
“with the help of God, I will”. Not in my own strength, but with God’s help.
The Old Testament
reading reminds us that God does help us, he is with us. And this gives us hope
about being able to make vows, in the knowledge that the grace of God will
cover over our failures and help us to journey forward.
In fact, in many
cases, it is from the failures that growth comes. The Times journalist Matthew
Syed has just released a new book called Black Box Thinking. In it he examines
how failure is critical for future success. Our willingness to embrace failure
and learn from our mistakes, rather than denying it, allows us to grow and move
forwards.
He quotes Andrew
Stanton, director of Finding Nemo and WALL.E, who says:
“My strategy has
always been: ‘Be wrong as fast as we can’ … which basically means, we’re gonna
screw up, let’s just admit that. Let’s not be afraid of that. But let’s do it
as fast as we can so we can get to the answer. You can’t get to adulthood
before you go through puberty. I won’t get it right the first time, but I will
get it wrong really soon, really quickly.”
Basically - lets get on with being wrong so that
hopefully we can be right more quickly! And I think this also applies to
developing as people. We learn the social no-no’s from making a mistake. How
many of us have done something really embarrassing and never forgotten? – we’ve
vowed never to do that again. We learn to behave in a loving way by not doing
so and then regretting it afterwards – and making more of an effort in the
future. I imagine the list is endless. Syed’s basic message is that we need to
treat failure as something to be learnt from, not something to hide and ignore.
This is something
that the Christian church has always captured within the concept of grace. God
is able to bring amazing things from our failures, our pain and our bad
experiences. They make up a part of who we are and if we are willing to face
the bad stuff, deal with the pain and offer it up to God, then we are slowly transformed.
This is true of us
as individuals and it is true of us as a community. We will get things wrong,
we won’t always work together effectively first time, but we need to keep
trying, as we learn from our mistakes - together. We need to be generous in our
forgiveness of others, and willing to receive their forgiveness when we get it
wrong. If we are to move forward in life, to grow, then we need to admit our
mistakes and learn from them.
Going back to my
friends’ installation last Tuesday, the Bishop of Reading, Rt Rev Andrew Proud,
preached on the fact that in spite of all our weaknesses, our brokenness, our
idiosyncrasies and our faults, we all have something to offer to God and God’s
family. He illustrated beautifully how each person brings something different
to the community by speaking of various people he knew – none of whom were
perfect, but all of whom had something to offer and something to teach others.
So at the start of
this new term, lets look for what others can offer, lets encourage one another
to admit our failures as a church so that we can learn from them and grow.
Let’s love one another enough to trust that we all have something to bring, and
let’s pray for the grace of God to be with us as we journey along the road of
failure and growth together.
Amen