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Not Success but
Faithfulness
July
8, 2007
Luke
10:1-12, 17-20
There
is one truth which each of us must know above every other.
We must understand the truth of who we are. Now when I say
we need to know who we are, I am not talking about knowing
our name or our family background or the twists and turns
of our history up to this point in time. I am talking about
who we are on its deepest level, on the theological level.
On that level each of us must know that we are not God. Now
this might seem rather obvious, but millions of people frustrate
themselves daily because they do not have this truth clearly
in mind.
When
God decides to do anything, God is always successful at doing
it. When God wills that something should happen, it happens.
But we are not God. Therefore when we set our minds to do
some good thing, it does not always happen. Even if we try
with all of our might, there is no guarantee that we will
be successful. We might try with all of our heart and energy
to see that our children grow healthy, happy, and with a faith
in God. But it is possible that they will grow, making disastrous
decisions, wasting their talents and abilities, and trying
to find their way through life without any obvious or active
religious conviction. We might try sincerely to love our spouse
in a mutual and faithful way, but may have to watch our marriage
dissolve before our eyes. We might try to heal broken relationships
in our families and among our friends, only to find that our
honest efforts are dismissed out of hand. We might choose
to treat others with compassion and justice, only to find
that these honest efforts are ridiculed and are manipulated.
Our love can be rejected, our compassion ignored, our integrity
abused. In all of these areas and many others, we can and
do fail. Yet that failure need not destroy us, if we know
who we are. We are creatures with limited ability to do good.
It is only God who is successful one hundred per cent of the
time.
Now
this truth is very important, because without it we are likely
to live in either guilt or despair. If we think that we have
the power of God to accomplish the good things we desire to
do and then fail in doing them, we can end up either blaming
ourselves or giving up. When our marriage fails, when our
children make a mess of their life, when people refuse to
love us, we can either decide that there is something wrong
with us and begin to wallow in guilt, or we can throw up our
hands in futility and give ourselves over to despair.
Jesus
carefully avoids both of these distortions of guilt and despair
in today's gospel. He sends the disciples out to do what is
right, to love others, to proclaim the kingdom of God . Yet
he is aware they will not always be successful. He is aware
that there will be people who reject their message and reject
their love. What does he tell them to do when this happens?
He does not say, “Blame yourself because you failed.” He does
not say, “Give up because you failed.” He says, “Recognize
the failure, then shake the dust from your feet and move on.”
We
are not God. We will fail. And when we do, God asks us to
shake the dust from our feet and move on. One of my favorite
sayings is from St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius says,
“God does not demand success from us, only faithfulness.”
God does not demand success because only God is successful
all the time. What God demands from us is faithfulness, to
do the right thing, to continue to preach the kingdom whether
we succeed or fail.
So
the gospel today calls us neither to guilt nor despair, but
to faithfulness. So let us today resolve to be God's faithful
people. Let us resolve to love more deeply and with greater
integrity. Let us resolve to treat others with compassion
and justice. And above all, let us resolve to measure ourselves,
not against our successes, but against our faithfulness. To
build our identity around our successes is not who we are.
To build an identity around our successes is to assume an
identity which belongs to God alone.
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