“Like us in all things except sin” …how profoundly true that is of Christ. He reproduced in himself our every experience, even going to the extreme of undergoing failure—sadly the lot of virtually every human being at one time or other, in one way or other.
Lack of cachet
One could think that Christ’s earthly career was programmed for failure. He was born in Palestine, hardly the hub of civilization and culture at the time, bearing no comparison with Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Worse yet, he lived in Galilee, the less prestigious sector of the Holy Land. Indeed, he grew up in Nazareth, the very epitome of Galilean lowbrow. When told that Jesus is “the son of Joseph, who comes from Nazareth,” Nathanael can hardly take him seriously. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:45-46). This lack of cachet was no accident; it was willed.
If success is what Jesus strove for, he would have had to put Galilee and its rusticity behind him and betake himself to some cultural or intellectual venue, or at the very least to locate himself in Jerusalem. He surely understood that he would have been given a more ready hearing and more acquiescence in the wider world beyond Galilee: “Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida. Tyre and Sidon would have repented long ago, humbling themselves with sackcloth and ashes, if the miracles done in you had been done there instead” (Lk 10:13). Yet he stayed on to pursue his ministry in unglamorous, unresponsive Galilee.
Far from going abroad, Jesus did not much focus even on Jerusalem, where he might have dealt with the better-educated, more prestigious personalities of the nation. He was counseled to do precisely that on one occasion: “You ought to leave here and go to Judea—for no one acts in secret when he desires to be publicly known” (Jn 7:3-4). Yet Jesus persisted in making an outreach to the “little people” in Galilee.
The limitation of time
As with place, so with time; Jesus was limited. Had he lived a full score of years, that fact in itself would imply a success of sorts. But he died a young man, still in his prime. And in that short span of time, humanly speaking, worldly success eluded him at every turn. Some people who should have known better mistook him for John the Baptist or Elijah (Mk 8:28). And Peter showed himself to be lamentably uncomprehending in trying to dissuade Jesus from his destiny (Mk 8:32).
The phenomenon of failure
At a certain point one must put balance into this picture. Although quite obviously Jesus knew failure, there are undeniably bright spots in his earthly mission. There was Peter’s confession of Jesus’ Messiahship, there was Jairus, Nicodemus, Mary of Magdala, and above all his mother Mary, all of whom found faith in him. And, to be sure, there wasthe immense and majestic victory of Easter Sunday. All this must be conceded, yet the fact remains that failure dogged the steps of Jesus from the beginning to the very end—short of the Resurrection. His trial and execution were not only horrendous but degrading. He stood there shamefully discredited beforethe people.
To the human eye, all this might seem to be happenstance, sheer bad luck. Yet Jesus himself saw it all in another light. For him all this setback had meaning and purpose: “Unless the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains just one grain. But if it dies, it yields a great harvest. Whoever loves his life, loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life” (Jn 12:24-25).
There is yet another dimension to all this—Christ’s experience of failure serves as a boost and encouragement for all who embrace him in faith. When failure and suffering come knocking at the door, as they inevitably do, the disciples of Jesus can draw strength from the thought that in confronting the harshness of life, they are following in the footsteps of the master.
©Magnificat July 2000
