This Lent, I Invite You to Fail
Sermon — Sunday, February 22
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
Imagine that Jesus Christ came back to earth, Ivan Karamazov says to his brother Alyosha, in Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov. Imagine that Christ returned in 16th century Spain. He’s heard the prayers of his people for fifteen hundred years, and he’s finally come to help, and the people are amazed. Wherever he goes, joy fills their hearts. People who are sick are healed. A girl rises from the dead. “The Sun of Love burns in his heart, and warm rays of light, wisdom, and power beam forth from his eyes.” The Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself comes to Jesus, and puts him under arrest.
His interrogation is really more of a rant. He accuses Jesus of placing an unbearable burden on the people, the burden of freedom.
He could have fixed everything the first time, the Inquisitor says. Jesus could have turned the stones into bread, and fed the people forever. He could’ve kept them full and happy and eager to obey. But he left them hungry for revolutionary change, and all the chaos that ensues. (Dostoyevsky’s thinking about the French Revolution when he writes, but he could already sense the tension building in Russian society, that would lead to their own Revolution a few decades after his death.)
Jesus could have thrown himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple, and been saved, and shown everyone proof that he was the Son of God. He could have dispelled any doubt of who he was, and people would not have had to struggle with the burden of faith; they would have certainty instead.
By accepting the devil’s offer of power over all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus could have brought about the dream of a united world living together according to his teachings of justice and peace; but Jesus threw it all away.
He left the world in unrest, confusion, and misery, and now the Church has had to do his job. The Church, the Grand Inquisitor says, has had to feed the hungry to win their obedience. The Church has had to tell people what to believe. The Church has had to conquer the whole world to spread the gospel of the Prince of Peace.
So, you’re not needed here, the Grand Inquisitor says. And tomorrow I will burn you at the stake.
It’s a brilliant indictment of the failings of the Church. And Dostoevsky gets away with it by distancing it from himself: it’s about Spanish Catholicism in the 1500s, not Russian Orthodoxy in the 1800s; it’s a story in the mouth of a character, not an opinion from the pen of the author.
And “The Grand Inquisitor” forces us to consider one of the questions at the heart of the theological “problem of evil.” He asks us whether it would be better to have full bellies and certain faith in a world of robots controlled by God, or to be hungry and wracked with doubt in an imperfect world in which we have free will. It all comes back to that initial accusation: that it was wrong for Christ to burden human beings with the freedom of choice, rather than turning them into a faithful, obedient flock.
In a way, Lent presents us with this same freedom of choice. Its emphasis on temptation and repentance remind us of the dark side of free will, and our readings this morning introduce these themes. God takes Adam and Eve, and puts them in the Garden, and tells them not to eat the fruit of one particular tree; but they face temptation, and they make their choice, and we all suffer the consequences still. (Gen. 3:1ff) Paul explores the very different choices of Adam, through whose disobedience the world became subject to sin and death, and Jesus, through whose obedience we received the abundance of grace. (Rom. 5:12, 17) And in the Gospel, of course, the devil and tempts Jesus three times, but each time Jesus makes his choice to follow God, instead.
And the practices of Lent that involve “giving something up” or “taking something on” bring this experience of choice to the forefront. Whether you’re trying form a new habit or break an old one, it takes real effort to choose, every day, to continue to fast from whatever it is you’ve given up, or to continue to pursue the good works you’ve taken on. There is a burden that comes with free will, whether or not it’s worth it in the end.
But when I told you the story, I left out the final scene. When the Grand Inquisitor finally finishes his rant, Jesus doesn’t launch into his own. He doesn’t give a philosophical defense of free will. He doesn’t offer a sermon about obedience to God.
Jesus watches the Grand Inquisitor for a while in silence, gazing at him softly but intently. And then he gets up, and walks over, and gently kisses him on the lips. That is all the answer he will give. And the Grand Inquisitor releases him and sends him away.
This ending to the story captures one of the most important nuances of Christian theology. Jesus is not primarily a philosopher, here to argue about moral responsibility or free will. He’s not primarily a food pantry, here to feed the world by turning stones into bread. He’s not a magician who comes to prove his divinity with a miraculous escape, by throwing himself down or by rising from the grave. He’s not a politician who wants to rule the world, compelling our obedience to the Sermon on the Mount. His ministry touches on all these things. It has implications for philosophy and social work, for theology and politics. But none of these is the primary thing.
Jesus is first and foremost a Savior, who comes with compassion to give his life for imperfect people in an imperfect world, the world after Adam in which we live. The world in which bear the burden of choice, and we often make mistakes. The world in which we sometimes fail to love God with our whole hearts, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, which we call “sin.”
We live in this world, but God’s response is not to do what the Grand Inquisitor would like, to step in and control the world for good, like a parent hovering over their toddler making sure they never fall. But God’s answer is also not to act as the Grand Inquisitor accuses Jesus of acting, by pushing the burden of freedom and choice onto us, and forcing us to bear the responsibility alone. God’s response is to do what Jesus does in that closing scene: God comes to us and embraces us with love. Because Christianity is not a set of rules about the choices we should make; it’s the story of the irrational grace of God that we receive in response to our mistakes, and the invitation to offer that grace to one another.
I said a few words about Lenten practices last week. But let me say a few more. During the season of Lent, some people choose to take on something good, like volunteering time or donating money to a cause. Some people choose to give up something bad, one of the toxic habits or dysfunctional cycles that many of us have in our lives. And some people choose to give up something that’s otherwise good or neutral, like coffee or Wordle or meat on Fridays.
And here’s the thing. It’s always good to take on something good; Lent is just a convenient opportunity to start. And it’s always good to give up something bad, and again, Lent can be the starting point for that. But that third practice of fasting from something good is what’s unique about Lent. As I said last week, it’s an exercise in self-knowledge. You give up chocolate or Wordle to learn more about your own patterns of temptation, to prepare yourself to face temptations that actually matter. If you discover something about the circumstances in which you fail to resist the temptation of that delicious treat, you might learn more about the situations that trigger you to be rude to your family and friends. =
And all of that is good. But this Lent, I also want to invite you to learn more what it’s like to fail. If you fast from something for Lent for 40 days straight, good job. And you’re missing out. Because at least in part, Lent is an opportunity to practice gracious imperfection. To make a commitment to something, and to fall down, and to get back up again. To bear the burden of free will, and to discover that it’s too heavy to bear; and then to find that God responds not with anger or judgment, but with love and grace. To practice accepting God’s grace for ourselves, and then to offer to someone else.
When we confront an imperfect world, we can try to clamp down, to control things like the Grand Inquisitor would, so that everything goes as it should. We can try to hide ourselves from God in shame, as Adam and Eve do. Or we can accept the invitation to surrender, to recognize our limits, to open our hearts to the “free gift” of forgiveness and “the abundance of grace.” (Romans 5:16, 17) To practice love in an imperfect world is not to try to make the people around us perfect, so we can finally fully love them; it’s to accept that we are imperfect too, and yet we, too, have been fully, truly, loved.
