William H. Willimon - "Failure" Easter Service (April 3, 1988)

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-	The gospel for this Easter Sunday	0:11
	is from the Gospel of John.	0:14
	Now on the first day of the week,	0:18
	Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early	0:21
	while it was still dark	0:25
	and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.	0:28
	And so she ran and went to Simon Peter	0:35
	and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved,	0:38
	and she said to them,	0:43
	"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,	0:47
	"and we do not know where they have laid Him."	0:50
	Peter then came out with the other disciple,	0:53
	and they went toward the tomb.	0:55
	They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter	0:58
	and reached the tomb first.	1:03
	And stooping to look in,	1:05
	he saw the linen clothes lying there,	1:06
	but he did not go in.	1:09
	And then Simon Peter came following him	1:11
	and went into the tomb,	1:15
	and he saw the linen clothes lying	1:17
	and the napkin which had been at his head,	1:20
	not lying with the linen cloths	1:23
	but rolled up by its own place.	1:24
	And then the other disciple	1:29
	who reached the tomb first also went in,	1:30
	and he saw, and he believed.	1:32
	For as yet they did not know the scripture	1:36
	that he must rise from the dead.	1:39
	And the disciples went back to their homes.	1:44
	Before any of you mention it to me,	1:51
	I want you to know that I did not write this sermon,	1:53
	or I did not think up the title of it	1:58
	after last night's basketball game.	2:00
	My text for this morning is Psalm 118.	2:06
	If I had written a sermon after the game,	2:11
	I would have taken as my text Psalm 37,	2:13
	oh Lord, why do the wicked prosper?	2:16
	(congregation laughs)	2:19
	So that out of the way,	2:25
	well, the game was over.	2:28
	The stadium was now emptied of cheering fans.	2:30
	It was a forlorn place of crushed popcorn boxes	2:36
	and empty drink cups and trampled programs.	2:40
	And the coach entered an even more silent locker room.	2:45
	Helmets piled up over in the corner.	2:50
	Jerseys piled in a wash bin.	2:52
	And the coach said,	2:56
	I want you guys to know	2:59
	that I am real proud of you, real proud.	3:00
	We didn't win the game,	3:05
	but I really believe that we impressed a lot	3:06
	of people today.	3:09
	I think this was a kind of moral victory.	3:13
	Later, as they were leaving the stadium,	3:19
	the second string tackle turned	3:22
	to the quarterback and asked,	3:24
	what's a moral victory?	3:28
	The quarterback said,	3:31
	well, it's the kind of thing coaches tell you	3:33
	when they don't want you so feel so bad.	3:36
	It's what the coach says	3:39
	when he thinks may be his last season.	3:40
	I tell you, if you can't fool a 17-year-old	3:46
	about failure, who can you fool?	3:51
	I know when the scores are put up at the 6:30 sportscast,	3:56
	they put up the numbers,	4:00
	and those with the largest numbers are called winners	4:01
	and those with the lowest numbers, losers.	4:07
	I don't recall a sportscaster ever speaking	4:11
	of a moral victory.	4:14
	Oh, they'll tell you anything	4:18
	to get you to go out on another Saturday afternoon	4:19
	and bash your heads together.	4:22
	Moral victory.	4:25
	The score really didn't show what happened in the game.	4:28
	If we had only made that first down	4:33
	back in the third quarter.	4:36
	No, Vince Lombardi was right.	4:40
	Show me a guy who really believes all that stuff	4:45
	about failure not being failure and losing not being losing,	4:48
	and I'll show you someone	4:52
	who's played too long without a helmet.	4:53
	A coach remains a coach only	4:57
	when the win-loss record tallies in his favor.	4:59
	Failure.	5:05
	The corporate president stands up before the stockholders	5:07
	and presents them with a drooping sales graph, and he says,	5:10
	well, we lost six million this year,	5:16
	but we're calling it a moral victory.	5:19
	It was a year of character-building for our company.	5:23
	A year later, there's someone else's name	5:28
	on the door out front.	5:31
	I sit on the university's commencement committee.	5:34
	And to my knowledge, we have never nominated anyone	5:38
	to speak to our graduates at commencement	5:42
	who is known for being a failure.	5:46
	We look for the people who are achievers	5:51
	and doers and movers and succeeders	5:53
	because we know that our graduates	5:57
	do not wanna hear a commencement address	5:59
	on the reasons why my last three marriages ended in divorce.	6:01
	They do not want to hear a talk	6:08
	on the day I was asked to clean out my desk	6:09
	and turn in the key to the executive washroom.	6:12
	And yet I bet our graduates know	6:18
	that there's a lot more of life lived that way	6:23
	than in the tents of victory.	6:29
	Now I don't know whether they teach people	6:33
	in the Fuqua School how to go bankrupt gracefully.	6:35
	I don't think they teach in the biology PhD program	6:42
	what to do when you've spent your whole life working	6:45
	on a cure to some virus,	6:47
	and somebody gets there three months before you do.	6:49
	I suppose the divinity school doesn't tell you what to do	6:54
	when you go to some dying little inner city church	6:57
	where the roof leaks and membership is in decline.	7:01
	But I bet you know that much	7:07
	of your life will be spent there.	7:09
	Failure.	7:14
	It's that sinking emptiness in the stomach when you look	7:17
	at the exam grades, and you follow,	7:20
	and there are your initials right there on the bottom,	7:23
	that breathless expectation	7:29
	as the numbers are being tallied,	7:31
	and you realize that the numbers	7:32
	will not tally in your favor.	7:35
	It's that time when the doctor comes in	7:43
	from the operating room, and he takes off the surgical mask,	7:45
	and you say, how did the operation go?	7:49
	And you can read the words on his face before he speaks.	7:54
	I see I don't have to ask, do I?	7:58
	It is the packing up	8:05
	and moving from the one house to separate apartments.	8:09
	And the last thing you pack is that book of wedding pictures	8:14
	that you know will never be opened again	8:19
	because this book of joy has now become a book	8:21
	of failure.	8:27
	It's the morning after the election	8:31
	and looking at those unused boxes of campaign buttons	8:34
	and bumper stickers and balloons not needed.	8:38
	I wanna thank all of you who have been with us	8:43
	through this election.	8:47
	We didn't win, but I really think that we made our point,	8:49
	and we really got a lot of good discussion of the issues.	8:52
	And I really think if this had lasted just a couple	8:57
	of weeks longer, we might have turned this thing around.	9:00
	And I know that someday, we'll all look back on this	9:03
	as a significant experience in our lives.	9:08
	Failure, defeat.	9:14
	And what to do with defeat?	9:18
	It could be one of the most important questions we ask	9:24
	in our lives, what to do with defeat.	9:28
	One modern response is rationalization.	9:34
	It was a moral victory.	9:38
	I can still remember as a young pastor	9:40
	going into a home where her husband had just suddenly died,	9:43
	and she met me at the door, and she said to me,	9:48
	"I don't want any cheap preacher talk	9:54
	"about he's gone to a better place,	9:56
	"or he's better off now.	9:58
	"I don't want it."	10:01
	She knew.	10:04
	He was gone.	10:06
	It was over.	10:08
	She wasn't up to any of this preacher talk.	10:12
	Today in the face of failure,	10:17
	a typically modern response is to claim no knowledge of it.	10:19
	I'm sorry, Senator,	10:23
	I really don't remember exactly what I said at the time.	10:24
	Let Ollie take the heat.	10:31
	I didn't know anything about it.	10:32
	And he said, "It was this woman whom thou gavest me.	10:37
	"She's the one that gave me the fruit and bid me to eat."	10:42
	And Eve said, "It was the serpent whom thou created.	10:46
	"He gave me the fruit and bid me to eat."	10:50
	This is not new.	10:55
	What to do with defeat.	10:59
	It's in the Bible.	11:02
	It's in a story as old as the Exodus,	11:04
	a story told about Moses,	11:08
	the first great leader of Israel.	11:11
	God comes to Moses in a burning bush	11:16
	and says I want you to lead my people	11:20
	out of slavery into freedom.	11:24
	And Moses said,	11:28
	Lord, are you sure you've got the right address?	11:31
	I'm not good on my feet.	11:34
	I don't do well speaking before a crowd.	11:36
	Moses wasn't being humble.	11:41
	He was being realistic about the possibilities for success.	11:43
	Because you find out in life	11:50
	sometimes it's better not to try to achieve too much	11:52
	lest you fail.	11:57
	And there are many who believe that life is better	12:01
	as a kind of string of insignificant successes	12:06
	rather than one great, big ugly failure.	12:11
	You go speak, says God.	12:18
	I'll tell you what to say.	12:21
	I'll show you what to do.	12:24
	Moses goes to the pharaoh.	12:25
	Thus says the Lord God of Israel, let my people go.	12:27
	As it turns out, everybody got word	12:31
	about the exodus but pharaoh.	12:33
	He says to his advisers,	12:36
	do I know the Lord God of Israel?	12:38
	I don't believe so.	12:40
	Not recognized over here.	12:41
	Each time Moses is refused.	12:45
	The pharaoh responds not with liberation	12:48
	but by increasing the workload of the Hebrew slaves,	12:52
	and this makes the people murmur against Moses.	12:56
	And they said, if it hadn't been for you,	12:59
	Things are worse off now than they were before.	13:03
	Pharaoh is going to kill us.	13:06
	And Moses turns his own frustration	13:10
	and resentment towards God himself.	13:13
	Oh, Lord God,	13:16
	why have you done evil to these people?	13:20
	That's a harsh words to say to God.	13:26
	But when it comes down to it,	13:29
	when you've really experienced failure,	13:30
	who else is there to blame?	13:32
	Oh God, why did you even put ideas	13:35
	of freedom into our heads?	13:38
	We got uppity.	13:39
	We should have been more content.	13:41
	Religion, the opiate of the people.	13:44
	Make them happy being slaves.	13:46
	Why did you ever put this notion into our minds?	13:49
	Moses has failed, therefore God has failed.	13:53
	My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?	13:57
	That's in the Bible too.	14:00
	But God responds by saying to Moses,	14:05
	you go back over there.	14:08
	I've got something else in mind.	14:09
	Wait till to the pharaoh sees this.	14:10
	And Moses goes back.	14:13
	He fails.	14:15
	God says, go back this time.	14:16
	Try this.	14:18
	Again and again, he fails until finally God comes up	14:20
	with something so radical, so drastic and terrible.	14:24
	Something new, resourceful is needed.	14:29
	God comes up with the Passover,	14:32
	which our Jewish brothers	14:34
	and sisters celebrate this very weekend.	14:35
	And so the story tells us	14:41
	that our God is a resourceful, persistent God	14:43
	who isn't stumped by failure.	14:47
	And the Hebrew children pass over from slavery to freedom.	14:52
	And yet as you probably know,	14:58
	that is not the end of the story.	15:00
	They get out in the wilderness.	15:01
	When they get in the wilderness, they grow hungry,	15:05
	and they murmur against Moses and God,	15:07
	and they say we were better off as slaves in Egypt.	15:10
	At least there, we got three good meals a day	15:14
	so we could work.	15:16
	We're going to starve out here.	15:18
	And God comes up with the bread from heaven,	15:19
	water from the rock.	15:22
	But then Moses goes up	15:26
	on the mountain to get the commandments,	15:27
	and while he's up there, where are the people?	15:29
	Down in the valley making an idol for themselves.	15:32
	We will have another God, they say.	15:35
	And Moses says to God,	15:39
	if I were you, I would wash my hands of this people,	15:42
	this stiff-necked people.	15:47
	Some kind of gratitude this is	15:50
	for delivering them from slavery.	15:52
	They're down there bowing before a golden calf.	15:54
	But God tells Moses, you go back down in the valley,	15:58
	and you say to this stiff-necked people.	16:01
	And Moses dies, and God picks another leader	16:06
	to bring the people into the Promised Land.	16:10
	But I tell you the Promised Land,	16:12
	still failure is confronted.	16:14
	One leader after another comes up before Israel,	16:17
	Joshua, and then the judges, and then Samuel.	16:21
	And if you know the story, it's a story of setbacks	16:24
	and failures and disappointments,	16:27
	and finally God comes up with a radical new plan for Israel.	16:29
	A king will be selected, the greatest one in Israel,	16:36
	King David, anointed to bring peace	16:40
	and justice to all the land.	16:43
	David, King David, is God's own chosen instrument.	16:46
	Yet if you know that story,	16:53
	David also fails with his adultery with Bathsheba	16:56
	and his murder of Bathsheba's wife, Uriah.	17:02
	And if David, God's own hero, his anointed one has failed,	17:07
	what hope is there?	17:13
	And you would think maybe at this point	17:16
	God would wash His hands and say enough, enough.	17:17
	But then God comes up with yet a new plan.	17:24
	There is another Moses.	17:29
	There is a new king	17:33
	coming out of the House of David,	17:36
	a new prince bringing with Him hope for all the world.	17:39
	Under the reign of Jesus of Nazareth,	17:46
	all the world will experience peace and goodwill.	17:49
	And at His birth, there is a birth of hope for the world.	17:54
	And yet at His birth, from the very first,	18:00
	there is still failure.	18:03
	In the screaming of the mothers	18:07
	of slain innocent children	18:10
	whom Herod massacred at His birth,	18:13
	the taunts of the hometown synagogue at Nazareth,	18:16
	the scoffing of the Bible scholars at the temple,	18:21
	the screams of the mob in Jerusalem,	18:26
	this new king David meets failure.	18:29
	It gathers like storm clouds over His whole ministry.	18:36
	He preaches.	18:39
	He says, "Blessed is he who takes no offense in me."	18:40
	And yet from the first, many were offended.	18:46
	And He preached away more people than He won.	18:48
	I remind you that it was just a few months ago	18:54
	when we gathered here.	18:56
	And we felt hope surge within us	19:00
	as we listened to the angels' songs	19:02
	about God's renewed determination to deliver us	19:06
	from evil and war and the things that beset us.	19:10
	But how quickly those angels' songs were overwhelmed	19:16
	by the screams of the crowd,	19:19
	overwhelmed by the facts of failure	19:24
	to have peace on earth.	19:28
	It was a short journey, wasn't it?	19:32
	From the singing of the angels at Christmas	19:35
	to the shouts of the mob on Good Friday.	19:40
	Were we really so surprised, therefore, to stand on Friday	19:48
	on a lonely windswept hill where this Son of David,	19:54
	this new Moses, this king,	19:58
	this liberator, this savior was killed?	20:00
	Were we really surprised?	20:06
	We knew the story.	20:08
	We killed Him	20:12
	just as we had killed all of God's prophets before Him.	20:15
	We had become so adept at extinguishing hope,	20:20
	that it was all over by mid-afternoon,	20:25
	and we went home, and we rested.	20:27
	Just as the people had wanted to kill Moses before him,	20:33
	they killed this would-be liberator.	20:36
	So much for God's plan.	20:42
	So much for the angels' songs.	20:45
	So much for hope	20:49
	because the greatest failure	20:53
	of all are not just our failures	20:55
	but when God fails.	20:59
	And if God fails, what hope is there?	21:02
	And so as He hangs there on that cross,	21:07
	He stands for us as a symbol of all the closed doors	21:09
	and all the broken promises and the dashed dreams	21:14
	and the brick walls	21:18
	and the dead ends that we must experience	21:19
	in life in our failures and defeats.	21:22
	And you could hear death laugh	21:25
	as they sealed His tomb shut with a great stone.	21:28
	So let us not mock the Good Friday tragedy	21:37
	with a bunch of preacher talk about moral victory.	21:43
	Don't give me any empty consolation	21:48
	that He will live on in our memories.	21:51
	There's no nourishment in that.	21:56
	Could we be honest enough to call death death,	22:00
	defeat defeat, failure failure?	22:03
	And who would blame God	22:09
	if now in this last failure,	22:12
	in the death of His very own beloved son,	22:16
	God should at last be done with us	22:20
	and go?	22:24
	Who would accuse?	22:26
	Now on the Sabbath,	22:34
	toward the first day of the week,	22:37
	while it was still dark,	22:41
	Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early	22:44
	and saw that the stone had been taken away	22:49
	from the tomb.	22:55
	(organ music)	23:00

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Failure" Easter Service (April 3, 1988)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:51. Sermon end time: 22:57.

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r45h7c87z

Date:

April 3, 1988

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Biblical Book:

John

Chapter and Verse:

John 20:1-18

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1126
ref8463_6l3
uachapelsermaud
duke:321113
dcrau001759
ark:/87924/r45h7c87z
e1d49016-5a77-43db-8433-d498684a1b9e

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William H. Willimon - "Failure" Easter Service (April 3, 1988)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Easter Is Not Natural" Easter Sunrise Service, Duke Gardens (April 3, 1988)

2. William H. Willimon - "Failure" Easter Service" (April 3, 1988)

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William H. Willimon - "Failure" Easter Service (April 3, 1988)

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