Failure and forgiveness: a graduation speech - graduation address to seminary students - Editorial

Christian Century, June 1, 1994 by James M. Wall

A few months back, when the snow and the temperature were both falling, I wrote an editorial about what Michael Jordan had told sportswriters who were skeptical about his decision to try to make it in professional baseball. Instead of returning to the Chicago Bulls basketball team after three NBA championships, Jordan started over in a new sport. "I am not afraid to fail," Jordan said, and I commented that this remark should be cited in graduation speeches. While putting the finishing touches on that piece I got a call from the president of a local seminary asking me to give a commencement address in June. I told him I was under both conviction (it's a United Methodist school, so he was familiar with the term) and moral obligation to follow my own counsel.

As I started to write the speech, however, I found that there is a problem with using Jordan's comment. The seminary graduates will be working in a society in which failure and success are measured in terms of money, power and glory. The text "I am not afraid to fail" raises the question, "Fail at what?" So I began by reminding my hearers of Jordan's remark, and then I said:

We can't really speak of failure unless we define failure in terms appropriate to a community of faith, and not in the secular understanding of success as measured by riches, rank or a resume. Speaking of resumes, William Broyles, former editor of Newsweek, had an astute comment on his experience of climbing a 23,000-foot peak in the Andes: "You can't show a mountain your resume." The huge challenge we all face every day of our lives is not one that will yield before a resume; nor will it respond to our superior physical or mental prowess. The challenge is to determine which perspective will govern our lives - the success-oriented, achievement-driven, judgment-rendering perspective of modern society, or the mysterious God-centered worldview of a religious faith governed by love, forgiveness and understanding.

There are many ways to illustrate the nature of modern society with its obsession with win-lose, succeed-fail measurements. We need only point to media reports on "who's ahead" in the world of movies. Box office numbers are dutifully reported to tell us what we should regard as the superior product. Which film made the most money this week? Newsweek looked at the summer movies and asked, "Will they sizzle or will they fizzle?" Quality is less important than quantity of ticket sales.

How does this standard of "Who wins? Who loses? Who succeeds? Who fails?" apply to the members of this graduating class? There is nothing inherently wrong in wanting to excel. You have spent three or more years equipping yourself to be good at what you do. You know the scripture, tradition and experience of a community of believers out of which you are now called to exercise leadership. You are expected to be better trained than others.

But no matter how much you excel in your work, it will not matter one whit unless you approach your various assignments from the perspective of a Christ-centered existence. We are called into the ministry because we are capable people; but far more important, we are called to see the world from a different perspective, a perspective that testifies with joy that "once I was blind and now I see."

Joseph Conrad, a Polish-born author who disciplined himself to write in English, summed up his writing goal as being, "before all, to make you see." He was referring, of course, not just to the vividness of the storytelling, but to "seeing" existence at its deepest level. The greatest failure we face is not the failure to carry out whichever tasks of ministry we assume; it is to fail to make others see the world from the perspective of the God who calls us to a Christ-centered existence. No doubt we will often fail at this; but we must never be so afraid to fail that we don't try.

Karl Barth's famous advice about approaching ministry with a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other has two dimensions. One aspect of this balancing act is to allow the newspaper to keep us attuned to daily life while the Bible reminds us of the One who provides us with the focus with which to approach every decision of life. But there is a second aspect to Barth's admonition: the newspaper is a daily reminder that the world measures achievement by standards of power and success, while the Bible presents the story of a life that began in a stable and ended on a cross.

Living and working within the religious community will not allow us to escape the temptation to abide by the standards of secularity. We are constantly tempted by the lure of title, salary and location. We want the satisfaction of knowing that our church budget is higher than that of our neighbors, and that our annual salary exceeds that of our most competitive classmate. We are tempted to measure success by the number of new members we add to the church rolls and not by the unrecorded saving of a single soul.

We have all experienced both the temptation and the sin of jealousy, envy and greed. I am still jealous, for example, of that fellow who made a fortune telling us that "all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten." I knew that; why didn't I put it into a book?