“Shake It Off”
Preached July 7, 2024
One of the best pieces of advice that was ever given to me - was to talk to yourself like you would talk to a good friend or, in my case, a parishioner, a church member. If a friend or one of you came to me and you were absolutely beating yourself up over something, being hard on yourself, lamenting a “failure” - we would talk about that. We would talk about where you could give yourself grace and forgiveness. We would talk about how you could see this as a learning opportunity and a fresh start. Sure, maybe you didn’t have the outcome you wanted but that doesn’t mean that YOU as a person are a failure…
But, if I’m being totally honest with you, I struggle with this myself. I think most of us struggle with the F-word…we don’t even like saying it…You know the word I mean: Failure. (Yeah, I really debated using that joke in my sermon - hopefully my joke didn’t fail…Haaa). Anyway, I don’t always talk to myself the way I would talk to one of you or a good friend.
I am the type of person who has goals and benchmarks and a certain idea of what it means to succeed. And so when things don’t turn out the way I planned or the way I wanted…I struggle with this. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think a lot of us struggle with failure because our culture puts a high emphasis on success and what it looks like to succeed. To succeed in our careers, to succeed in our popularity and social standing, and even to succeed at what our families look like… we are constantly comparing ourselves to a societal expectation of what it looks like to succeed and we don’t often realize how much power our cultural definition of success has over us.
All of us could probably benefit from recognizing this, naming this, and taking a step back away from it and instead looking at how Jesus approached failure and how our definitions of success change in light of that.
After traveling around the Israel-Palestine countryside, teaching, preaching, healing. After going head to head with authorities over religious law. After casting out demons. After quieting the waves and the wind. After healing a chronically ill woman and raising a little girl from the dead, Jesus returns to Nazareth, he returns to his own home town. And he is rejected there. Those who knew Jesus best. Those who raised him, those who held him as a baby, those who were his playmates as a child - they were not impressed with Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark it just tells us that those in his hometown “took offense at him.” In the Gospel of Luke, they ran him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff! As a sports metaphor, that would have been like LeBron James returning to Cleveland after winning a championship in Miami and no one wanting him, being so unimpressed with him that we ran him out of town. Or, perhaps, it would have been like me returning to the Mahoning Valley a year ago to serve as pastor at Boardman UMC and both Canfield and Boardman UMCs teaming up to drive me out of town - thanks for not doing that, by the way!
Anyway… to take his hometown’s response seriously, it would mean Jesus failed. His own kin rejected him, spurned him, and his mission and goals there were stymied. And how did Jesus respond?
He sent his disciples out, two by two, to teach and to heal. He shook the dust of his failure off of himself and told his disciples to do the same if they should ever meet rejection. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” That is, literally, shake it off! Do not let the dust of failure cling to you.
Or, as Taylor Swift so eloquently puts it for our modern age:
“'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off. Woaaaaah.”
Because failure can cling to you like dust. Settle on you. Make you feel burdened, or less than you are, less than God created you to be. And that’s not what God wants for us, or how God wants us to respond to failure. So like the dust from the disciples’ sandals, and like Taylor Swift, we are to shake the dust of our failures off, and we keep on going, like Jesus who moves on from Nazareth to Capernaum and he continues his message and his ministry.
But this isn’t the last time that Jesus will fail. In fact, to many, and to the world’s standards, Jesus’s whole ministry was a failure.
Jesus wasn’t only rejected by his own hometown, he was rejected by those he came to save. The Messiah was supposed to come and overthrow the empire, free the oppressed, and save the Judeans. During his life and teaching, many would have considered him a failure too. The most numerous complaints against Jesus were that he was a drunkard, hanging out the lowest of the low, with tax collectors and sex workers, with sinners, with the least of these. And he was arrested for treason, received the death penalty, and was executed by the State for his crimes. His followers all deserted him, denying they ever knew him, locking themselves up in rooms, hiding from the government.
Yes, Jesus rose from the grave, conquering death, we as Christians believe this. This is the scandal of the cross. That we took what the world would perceive as a total failure, the life and death of Jesus, and we view it as a victory.
And Jesus asks us to be like him. To pick up our crosses - the sign of Jesus’s largest failure, his execution - and to follow him.
What does this look like? It looks a lot like taking what this world considers a success, and turning it on itself.
It looks like failure.
It looks like being a peacemaker and turning the other cheek in a world that is obsessed with war.
It looks like hanging out with sinners, with the lowly, in a world that prioritizes the “right” kind of people.
It looks like loving our neighbors AND our enemies as ourselves in a world that separates “us” versus “them.”
It looks like meekness in a world that values strength.
It looks like humility in a world that values flaunting power.
It looks like kindness, mercy, and forgiveness in a world that tells us to get even.
It looks like us, living like Jesus lived - and when the world deems US a failure for not playing the rat race, for giving away more than we should, for loving others too much, for caring about those beyond our circles, beyond our own families, for loving those who don’t look this us, for working tirelessly for freedom from oppression for ALL, for mercy, for forgiveness, for grace in a graceless world! When the world deems us as failures for living as disciples of Jesus Christ...
We shake off the dust of failure that the world is trying to put on us. Shake the dust off your sandals, shake it off, shake it off, woooaah...and then boast in Christ. For Paul says, “So I will boast more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
Yes - by the world’s standards, Christ failed.
By the world’s standards, the peacemakers and the lowly and the meek and the kind… are failures!
By many standards, worshiping a God who could be killed, especially in a public and humiliating way…is a failure.
But not to us. For in Christ we will BOAST of our weaknesses! What the world sees as weakness: love, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, helping others, fighting for humanity and dignity for all, even being part of a church community like ours - what the world may see as a weakness, in Christ Jesus, it is our strength.
Hear this, friends, Our failure is our strength when our failure is in and for Jesus Christ.
So continue to be a follower of Christ. Continue to be God’s hands and feet in the world: loving, serving others, working toward peace, putting others first, being generous to and with the least of these. Continue loving God and serving your neighbors as self. And whenever you get rejected, insulted, discouraged by others for following Christ Jesus, well...shake it off. And continue God’s work.
May we do so - turning what the world views as failures, into success for Jesus and the Kingdom of God.
It looks like us, living like Jesus lived - and when the world deems US a failure for not playing the rat race, for giving away more than we should, for loving others too much, for caring about those beyond our circles, beyond our own families, for loving those who don’t look this us, for working tirelessly for freedom from oppression for ALL, for mercy, for forgiveness, for grace in a graceless world! When the world deems us as failures for living as disciples of Jesus Christ...
We shake off the dust of failure that the world is trying to put on us. Shake the dust off your sandals, shake it off, shake it off, woooaah...and then boast in Christ. For Paul says, “So I will boast more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
Yes - by the world’s standards, Christ failed.
By the world’s standards, the peacemakers and the lowly and the meek and the kind… are failures!
By many standards, worshiping a God who could be killed, especially in a public and humiliating way…is a failure.
But not to us. For in Christ we will BOAST of our weaknesses! What the world sees as weakness: love, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, helping others, fighting for humanity and dignity for all, even being part of a church community like ours - what the world may see as a weakness, in Christ Jesus, it is our strength.
Hear this, friends, Our failure is our strength when our failure is in and for Jesus Christ.
So continue to be a follower of Christ. Continue to be God’s hands and feet in the world: loving, serving others, working toward peace, putting others first, being generous to and with the least of these. Continue loving God and serving your neighbors as self. And whenever you get rejected, insulted, discouraged by others for following Christ Jesus, well...shake it off. And continue God’s work.
May we do so - turning what the world views as failures, into success for Jesus and the Kingdom of God.
Amen.
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