July 8 Sermon Notes Mk. 6:1-13, 2 Sam. 5:1-10, 2 Cor. 12:2-10

July 8 Mk.6:1-13, 2 Sam. 5:1-10, 2 Cor. 12:2-10 We have disparate readings today, but they do show reactions to success and failure. Jesus faces failure in our account this morning.. We usually picture Jesus floating about from success to success, until the cross. We forget how obdurate were the disciples then and are we disciples now. Here his vaunted power as a miracle worker is sorely tested. Failure is threatening to our self-esteem, the script of our our life should go. It throws us into a sea of speculation. We fear that it is more about us than the circumstance.Still, he manages to continue to heal and moves on. when his disciples encounter failure, he urges them to shake the dust from their feet and go to the next village. he does not dwell on it, nor does he curse the experience. It is said that we can learn from failure, but I tend to think we learn from success as well. sometimes, we learn to fail again, but not how to pull out of it. David faces success. He was anointed to be a king fairly young, but it was a private ceremony. Along the way he was in Saul’s court, a brigand, and a traitor to his country.Now power is consolidating in his hands. As we will be reminded this year, campaigning requires different skills than governing. When a dream is fulfilled, then what? I recall Richard Nixon saying that he had spent a life on the upward climb and he did nto know where to turn when he reached the summit.Success brings temptations, just as surely as failure does.Success breeds hubris, a sense of being above it all, of being impervious to attack.An annoying genre of books on leasdership include lessons of successful people examples, where the writer trumpets their own success. Success can breed mistakes and hubris. A number of successful business people canonized in the business press soon learn some difficult lessons. Paul balances a vision with success and trouble.. Paul is recounting a deep mystical experience. In his circle, Paul has reached perhaps the summit of mystical vision. In its way, it reminds me of Paul is playing a rhetorical tactic here. He has been attacked as not being a spiritual adept. His response is that he could tell about the depths of his mystical experiences, but he is too modest. It would be like Gov. romney saying he is too modest to speak of the enormous wealth generated by Bain under his direction. Paul then moves to the thorn in the flesh, left, as was the vision, undefined. It reminds me of the Transfiguration, as the disciples could not stay on the mountaintop but took the vision with them down in the valley, where life is lived. I am not a particularly mystical person, but I certainly respect that type of spiritual person.Paul uses his spiritual prowess, but he does not dwell on it. Some of us spend our lives searching for spiritual highs. some of us look for ever new ways to stoke our spiritual energies. some look for pentecostal signs over and over. For Paul the vision fades in comparison to the import he places on responding to suffering. Notice that he does place the suffering in the hand of god but on the forces of evil. He discovers that God’s way in the world need not be deterred by suffering. There, he finds the clear presence of Christ. There, he finds a grace sufficient for any circumstance. There he realizes that success can puff us up, but trouble brings a humility that opens us to the presence and the support of the divine. In the end, God is faithful toward us, in success and failure, in any guise.