Turn to God as you really are

February 10, 2016

Ash Wednesday - Evening

In a boardroom on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, during a meeting in the offices of the Trump Organization, one of Donald Trump’s deputies had had it. Blanche Sprague earlier in the day had learned of the death of a friend in a car wreck, and Trump was berating one of the people seated at the conference table, and so Sprague angrily stood up. “It just became too much,” she said. ‘I can’t take it anymore,’ and just walked out.”

She regretted it immediately, thinking surely Trump would fire her. Then her phone rang. It was him. She told him she wanted to write letters of apology to the 20 or so people at the meeting.

Don’t, Trump said. “He said, ‘No, that would hurt you, I don’t want you to do it.’” Sprague said, “He didn’t want to put me in a position of having to be weakened by my mistake.”

This little vignette is from an article this week in the online journal “Politico.” The article there goes on:

Over these last 40 lime-lighted years, Mr. Trump has won a lot, but he has lost a lot, too—four corporate bankruptcies, two failed marriages and a vast array of money-squandering business ventures. He lost his signature Trump Shuttle airline to his lenders. His self-branded casinos in Atlantic City struggled consistently to turn profits. In each case, though, he has heeded a form of the advice he gave that day to Sprague: Never acknowledge failure. Never admit defeat.

I think it must be a terrible burden never to have failed at anything - or at least never having admitted to it.  But it is a burden that many of us have been taught to bear, or to feel guilty that we are not bearing.  Success is one of the more subtle idols the culture we live in has set up for us to worship.  To be a success in life – to succeed in school, to be a successful business person, or professional, to make a successful marriage, to be a successful parent – those are the goals of life, aren’t they?  And if we fail to meet the standards, if we fail to succeed, there are dire consequences.  We don’t get in to the right school; we lose our chance at the job we thought was a slam dunk; our friends don’t quite know what to do with us after the divorce.

The consequences can be so dire in fact, that we have developed, I believe, a corporate psychosis called denial.  The refusal to admit that we have failed takes many forms.  Excuses, dodges, the genuine belief that we don’t have any responsibility for what we have done or not done – they’re all manifestations of the disease.  And so is perhaps that most pernicious symptom: projection.  It goes like this: I’m terrified of the many ways I know that I have failed in life, so I find someone out there onto whom I can displace all those fears. I received an email recently from Stacy Alan, our campus chaplain at Brent House at the University of Chicago. She wrote me with a request to make use of a resource based in Grand Rapids called “The Failure Lab.” She wrote this, “Here at U of C, students (and others!) seem to have fewer and fewer resources to deal with failure … (and) as the acceptance rates are dropping, to get admitted in the first place, they can’t have failed significantly—ever—at anything.” There are lots of ways to keep at bay our fear of the consequences of not meeting the success gods’ demands.  That I have never failed at anything is a lie. That I can never admit to failure in my life is a worse lie.

And I am afraid that the church has not done much better than the culture in which it lives.  For how many people is the God of Jesus confused with the god of success?  In one subtle form or another.  That confusion comes out in the vague fear many people express that they aren’t getting it right.  That they aren’t getting this Christianity thing right, that they aren’t somehow doing what God wants them to do, that they don’t know enough about the bible or their religion to be much of a success at it.  We talk glibly about successful churches and priests and pastors who have been a great success at building up their local outlet.

Well, along comes a day like this one.  Along comes a day with these peculiar ashes and these even more peculiar scriptures and prayers.  Along comes a day when we are asked to stop pretending, to ourselves at least.  Ash Wednesday asks us to stop the success game – just for a moment – and admit that we have failed, that we fail all the time.

Frightening?  Yes, for many of us.  There’s a reason our churches aren’t full to today.  This is positively un-American.  It is an act of civil disobedience in the face of the demanding gods of success.  It is also an embrace, a proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I do not have to get it right.  I do not have to succeed.  I do not have to win.  Because Jesus Christ has won for me.

I believe the gospel of Christ can be boiled down to one sentence: You can screw it up but you can’t blow it.  Every sin, every failure, every omission you and I have ever or will ever commit has already been forgiven.  God nailed them to the cross with Jesus.  All that is left up to us is to turn again and again and again to that cross to receive the gift of love and life and freedom that God chooses to give us.  But if we refuse to acknowledge our failures, our faults, our refusals to love – then the gift may be offered, but it has not been received.

On this Ash Wednesday I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent.  Take up your cross, crucify there the illusions of perfection, the fantasies of success we weave so well.  Admit to God that you have not gotten it all right.  Practice acts of love: fasting, prayer, almsgiving.  Turn to God as you really are and let God give you life.