Grace and Truth: A word from pastors

Have you ever given thanks for your shortcomings? Maybe you said, “Thank goodness for my high blood pressure.” Or, “Thank God I’m overweight.” Or, “I’m glad I struggle with depression.”

Not I. I’m likely to feel like a failure when I don’t meet my goals or expectations in life. In many ways, it’s ridiculous to celebrate our failures. Yet our shortcomings are often the door that opens to our salvation. Just ask Zacchaeus.

In the Gospel of Luke (chapter 19), Zacchaeus—rather than catching a glimpse of Jesus passing through Jericho—finds himself staring at the watching crowd’s backs. He is short, plus nobody likes him because he overcharges them on their taxes to Rome.

Yet for some reason Zacchaeus is eager to meet Jesus. So he hauls his pint-sized, notorious self into a tree for a better view. Jesus sees him, calls to him and says he is coming over for a meal.

In the middle of giving a recent sermon about this story, I noticed something aloud: Zaqueo no habría conocido a Jesús si no fuera de baja estatura y mala reputacion. (If he weren’t short and of ill repute, Zacchaeus would not have met Jesus.)

The fact that I didn’t notice this until midsermon hints at how much I struggled to study and preach in a second language. My comment was not the main point of my sermon—it wasn’t even in my manuscript—but I returned to the idea over and over in the following week: How might my own limitations become my way of connecting with Jesus? And how might my connection with Jesus change how I relate to others?

In an opening devotion for an antiracism meeting I attended, John Stoesz identified with how Zacchaeus benefited from an unjust system; as a white man, John, too, has benefited from an unjust (racist, sexist) society. Acknowledging his failures to live justly has helped him meet Jesus in people of all colors and ethnicities and to challenge racism within himself and his community.

For all of us, as for Zacchaeus, being aware of our failings is always an opening to salvation—a chance to receive Christ in our hearts, homes and communities. When I can see and accept my shortcomings, I can more easily see Jesus and accept his call.

In The Gifts of Imperfection (just the title may make some readers shiver with disdain), social worker and researcher Brené Brown writes that she began by researching shame and fear, eventually realizing that wholehearted living requires accepting and loving oneself fully. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky, Brown says, but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. Courage, compassion and connection are the three gifts she names that come from being honest and vulnerable. It’s as if she were studying Luke 19 instead of interviewing thousands of 21st-century women and men.

Social science and Scripture agree on this: We must draw near life with openness rather than with fear, self-protection and excuses, and we often gain more through failure than success.

Oh, how we protest! We make new year’s resolutions so that this year we will be different. Still we drink more alcohol or eat more cookies or work more hours to avoid noticing that we are not well. We banish solitude and prayer and intimacy so we can keep Jesus at arm’s length.

This doesn’t mean we’re hopeless causes. It means we’re like Zacchaeus and so many others who’ve managed to awaken from the sleep of sin and fear. Good news.

My stilted sermon in a Spanish-speaking church left me feeling slightly embarrassed. I wondered whether I had said anything of value to those gathered for worship. It wasn’t until the next day—after having described the sermon as “clumsy” to several inquiring friends—that I remembered the side comment I had made about Zacchaeus’ shortcomings being the key to his salvation.

It slowly dawned on me that my last-minute insight might not have been possible had I been working more easily in my native tongue. And if God had worked through my halting Spanish preaching, maybe my other difficulties could open doors to redemption, too.

May God be at work in each of us through our shortcomings and our failures. ¡Aleluya! And hallelujah!