Part 2 of 4: The Imperfections & Failures that Make Us
Pastor Anthony preaching on “The Imperfections & Failures that Make Us.” Scripture focus is: Exodus 2: 11-15a and Exodus 2: 23 - 3: 8:a with references to Exodus 3 - 4: 17. Preached on July 18, 2021.
This is the second sermon of a four-part series on: “Let Your Life Speak.”
Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church.
Is it possible to balance this file by its handle on the edge of a table? And one might think, “No, that’s impossible because the metal part of the file is much too heavy and you can’t balance something on one end.” But, with the help of a little bit of string and a hammer, we can do just that. We can get this file to balance off the edge of the table.
What kind of sorcery is happening at church?!?! Well, this particular sorcery is called Center of Gravity, the average location of the weight of an object, or the center of an object’s weight distribution. Once the string and the hammer are attached to the file, they all function together as one body or one unit. And, the weight of the hammer head underneath the table creates a counter balance to the rest of our contraption allowing the file to balance on its one end.
If the Center of Gravity were to shift too far one director or the other, our whole contraption would fall down.
The same is true for us, right? We remain standing and upright only because we keep our Center of Gravity balanced in our weight distribution. If we shift our weight too far to one side or another, either we will compensate by keeping our Center of Gravity in the middle or we will fall.
And, of course, if someone walks up to us and pushes us, we have three basic choices, we will fall over, we will re-center ourselves and our Center of Gravity, or we will push back. Alternatively, if someone grabs our hand and pulls us, our three basic choices are to fall over, re-center ourselves, or to pull back. My guess is that most often when someone throws us off balance, human nature says we will push back, or pull back to resist the force someone else is exerting on us.
You know what I’m talking about, right? Introducing a bitter vegetable for the first time to a toddler? I’d expect some push back, right? Trying to pull the car keys away from an elderly parent? Expect some pull back.
The great psychotherapist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman once told the story of a woman who found her husband coming home from work ever more tipsy. This stressed her out. She did everything she could think of to keep him sober from warning him every morning to arguing with him or even threatening him in the evening. But it seems that the more she pushed him, he pushed back by drinking more and more. Finally, when she realized that pushing him just wasn’t doing any good, she took a different approach and told him:
“Honey, I’ve been thinking things over. I have decided that you have a right to drink all you want, to enjoy life to the hilt, and to risk it. After all, it’s your life. I would like to stop nagging you, but I’ve got a problem. It’s fairly clear to me that you probably won’t make it for too much longer, and I don’t want to be stuck with the mortgage and the car payment, so I’ll make an agreement with you. If you will agree to triple your life insurance, I will agree never to mention your drinking again.” [Friedman, Edwin H. Generation to Generation – Family Process in Church and Synagogue. New York: The Guilford Press, 1985. p. 49.]
This is a story of balance and rebalance. The wife spent all her time pushing against him about his drinking and he kept pushing back by drinking all the more, trying to keep his balance. When people push us, we tend to instinctively push back because we don’t want to fall over.
There’s actually a second example of balance in this story. You see, as the wife kept taking on more and more worry about her husband, she started to lose her own balance and instinctively tried to push against her husband thinking that if he were stable, he’d be able to keep her balanced. Unfortunately, it never works that way; we can’t rely on others to keep ourselves balanced. So, when she stopped trying to lean on her husband and just handed all of the stress back to her husband. She could find her Center of Gravity again.
And, what do you think her husband did? Did he triple his life insurance so that he could keep drinking? Friedman doesn’t tell us what happened, but my guess is that based on the principles of balance, when she stopped pushing him, he no longer needed to push back. That means that either he found his Center of Gravity again, or he fell.
And all of us have fallen at one time or another, but it can hurt dearly.
When I was young, my older siblings really wanted to help me learn how to ride a bicycle. Their hearts were in the right place. Unfortunately, the bicycle seat was a little too tall for me, I had no balance, and we were at the top of a hill. You can tell where this is going, right? Downhill; that’s where I went, and that’s where my story went. I remember hitting the ground pretty hard, abandoning the bicycle, and running home crying to my parents.
Once I was hurt, I became afraid. I didn’t want to fall again. My siblings tried to encourage me back onto a bicycle and I refused. I was afraid. They pushed; I pushed back. They pulled, I pulled back.
Eventually, I learned how to ride a bicycle, but I remember resisting for a long time.
And that’s the tough part about balance. Falling is not a great option. It hurts. And falling in the past can make us especially stubborn when others try to push us or pull us. If we’re afraid of falling again, we can put up a mighty big fight resisting others trying to push us or pull us, even when they’re trying to help us, even when their actions are completely self-less and they’re only trying to benefit us and our lives. If we’ve fallen before, it is only natural that we will resist anyone trying to push us or pull us, even if all they have is love for us.
So, what do we do when we are resisting the people who love us because we’re afraid of falling?
In our scripture, Moses has grown up as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter and he sees an Egyptian abusing a Hebrew slave and Moses, thinking he’s alone, murders the Egyptian. But, his crime was not unseen; others had seen him murder the Egyptian. Eventually, Pharaoh finds out and wants to kill Moses, so he flees.
Moses is a murderer and a fugitive. He has fallen badly and he knows it and he runs away to where he thinks he can never be found.
But you can’t run away from God.
So in our second scripture, Moses is out tending to his flock, when God shows up in a burning bush and tells Moses to take off his shoes because he’s standing on holy ground.
This is amazing, right. Moses is witness to a supernatural miracle and is in the presence of Almighty God, the creator of Heaven and Earth, so surely he’ll respond, “Lord, yes, Lord, whatever you command, Lord,” right?
Not at all. What does he do? God pulls him. He pulls back.
In Exodus 3:3, God shows up in the burning bush. Moses turns away in humility or perhaps it’s shame. God sees him turn away and has to call out to him, “Moses! Moses!” as if God’s saying to him, “Moses, don’t make me come to you.”
In Exodus 3:11, God tells Moses he’s being sent to Pharaoh and Moses pulls back with self-doubt: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” So God tells Moses all of the great things God is going to do.
In Exodus 4:1, Moses responds by questioning his own leadership, “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” So God gives Moses signs to prove God’s presence.
In Exodus 4:10, Moses says, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” So God tells him that God will provide the words for Moses to speak.
In Exodus 4:13, Moses has run out of excuses and finally just says, “O my Lord, please send someone else.” Finally, God has had it. Tells him to pick up his staff, get his brother, and he is going back to Egypt.
God pulls Moses, and Moses pulls back. Is it because God is awful? No, Moses knows that God is good and faithful. So why does Moses pull back against God? Because he fell, he failed, and because he’s afraid of falling and failing again.
What Moses doesn’t understand is that past failures and imperfections do not disqualify someone from God’s will. In fact, the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) would argue that God would refuse to choose anyone who appears perfect because they might believe they did it on their own. Instead, God purposely chooses those who are imperfect and filled with failures because then we all know, “Well, if it wasn’t for God, this surely would not have succeeded.”
In Parker Palmer’s book, Let Your Life Speak, that this sermon series is loosely based on, he says:
“…If I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only about my strengths and virtues; it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow. An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for "wholeness" is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of… In the chapters to come, I speak often of my own mistakes-of wrong turns I have taken, of misreadings of my own reality—for hidden in these moments are important clues to my own vocation. I do not feel despondent about my mistakes…, though I grieve the pain they have sometimes caused others. Our lives are "experiments with truth”… and in an experiment negative results are at least as important as successes.' I have no idea how I would have learned the truth about myself and my calling without the mistakes I have made.” [Parker J. Palmer. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Kindle Locations 96-103). Kindle Edition.]
If God is calling us, pulling us, or pushing us towards a life that is fuller, deeper, more meaningful, more joyful… what are we supposed to do? We know we don’t want to fall again, so that’s not a good option. But we also don’t want to be pushing or pulling against God and others who love us deeply. So what’s left?
And if you remember, there are three basic options when someone pulls us or pushes us. We can fall, we can resist, or we can re-center ourselves, we can find a new center of gravity. What does that look like?
Actually, it looks like walking. You know, it’s not possible to walk without falling. You see, we lift one foot, start to fall, and then re-center ourselves in a new place, with a renewed Center of Gravity.
And that’s what Moses did. He knew he didn’t want to fall, he knew resistance was futile because God wasn’t going to stop, so he started walking toward Egypt.
Have you fallen in the past? Have you disappointed your parents? Or been divorced? Or hurt someone you loved? Or have you disappointed yourself? If you have failed or fallen in the past, then know this: you are perfect in God’s eyes for the loving plan God has for you. Like Moses, you may not like where God is leading you, and you may not be ready for where God is leading you, but if you keep putting one foot in front of the other and re-centering yourself as you go, you too will discover all the wonders that God has planned for you.
