“Oops!”
James
3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38
“For all of us make many mistakes.” James 3:2a
In one of the most candid statements found anywhere in
the Bible, James, advising his readers not to be too eager to become teachers
in the church, offers this as his reason: “for all of us make many mistakes.” How true that is. Grammatical, mathematical, syntactical,
typos, spelling, factual errors, misquotes…and that is just in the category of
writing and speaking, the kind of mistakes that really don’t make that much
difference. We haven’t even begun to
talk about the more serious kind of mistakes.
Mistakes committed by others, of course, have become a
major form of entertainment. How else to
explain the popularity of television programs that show bloopers by actors,
sports figures, news casters, and others?
Or the program that shows funny home videos. I have watched enough to know that what makes
them funny is that things do not go well, something happens that was unplanned,
unexpected. It wouldn’t be entertaining
if it all happened the way it was supposed to happen.
People especially enjoy it when someone who is
supposed to be dignified and proper, someone with a responsible position, a
news anchor, a politician, a government official, makes a mistake. Or to find a misprint on some official
document. Maybe that is part of the
appeal of those lists of church bulletin bloopers that make the email circuit
every once in a while.
“Tonight’s
sermon: ‘What is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.”
“For those
who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery down stairs.”
“Remember
in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.”
Whether these are actual bulletin bloopers, as
claimed, or made up, I don’t know. I do
know that Amy and I, with back up from Earle, Linda and Jill, work very hard each
week to ensure that we don’t provide another example for that list.
A more serious and permanent error was made in our
last church during its construction.
When the name of the church was being carved into the stone arch of the
entryway, someone misspelled the word Presbyterian. A couple of the letters are filled in and
redone. I’ve always imagined that it
would have been fun to be there that day when someone caught the mistake. Most often what people say in such a
situation is: “well, it’s not carved in stone.”
The mistakes we make may not be carved in stone, but
they can still have lasting effects. Some
that we made even years ago we may still remember. Maybe we unintentionally hurt someone’s
feelings, or did something to embarrass ourselves or to cause others to think
less of us for some reason.
Mistakes are different from sins. Sins, we have learned, come in two varieties,
sins of commission and those of omission, or we could say active and passive.
We sin in doing things that we shouldn’t do and we sin by not doing things that
we should do. And so we have the prayer
of confession that covers both categories:
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we
have done those things which we ought not to have done. O Lord, have mercy upon us.”
Mistakes, on the other hand, are what we make while
attempting to do some of those things that we think we ought to be doing. It’s just that in the execution, we don’t
quite get it right.
Another difference, it seems to me, is that mistakes,
unlike sins, are unintentional. You didn’t
mean to call that old acquaintance by the wrong name, you just got confused. And you didn’t intend to offend that person
you were talking to the other day. How
were you supposed to know that he or she would be so sensitive on that
particular subject? If we did these
things intentionally, then maybe they could be called sins. But they are inadvertent, accidental.
Sometimes mistakes happen even while we are attempting
to do something good. In the now
somewhat dated movie, Four Weddings and a
Funeral, there is a scene at the reception for one of those weddings when
two men who are casual acquaintances strike up a conversation that goes
something like this:
First man: How's
your gorgeous girlfriend?
Second man: She's no longer my girlfriend.First man: Ah, dear. I wouldn't get too gloomy about it. Rumor has it she never stopped (seeing) Toby de Lisle in case you didn't work out.Second man: She is now my wife.
Oops! You
see? He thought he was offering the poor
man some consolation on losing a girl friend, but he ended up making a serious
gaffe. I could as easily give several
examples from my own personal life, but they are still too painful to recount. Let me just say that one lesson I have
learned is that you should not ask a woman when her baby is due unless you are
absolutely sure that she is really pregnant.
A good number of the mistakes we make tend to be of
the verbal variety. James is rather
pessimistic when it comes to speech. He
calls the tongue “a fire” and “a world of iniquity” that stains the whole body,
sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.” He says we can tame all kinds of wild beasts,
“but no one can tame the tongue, a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” But I think he is talking here about the
deliberate use of speech for bad purposes, such as gossip or bad-mouthing
another person, lying, or intentionally hurtful speech. But when we talk about a mistake, we are
talking about the faux pas, the blunder, the gaffe, the word that slips out, or
the act that is intended for good but turns out to be wrong. When we think we are being friendly, or even
courteous or helpful, and instead we say or do the absolute wrong thing.
One of the best Biblical examples of someone who did
this is found in our Gospel reading for today from Mark. It is Peter.
Good old Peter. You can always
depend upon Peter to come through for you.
It is that well-known passage where Jesus asks his disciples what people
are saying about him. “Who do people say
that I am?” According to Luke the
disciples offered several answers: John
the Baptizer, Elijah, one of the prophets.
Then Jesus asks: “But who do you say that I am?” And it is here that Peter offers his now
famous answer: “You are the Messiah.”
In Mark at this point Jesus simply charges his
disciples not to tell anyone about that.
But in a retelling of the same story in Matthew, Jesus praises Peter and
blesses him. “Blessed are you, Simon son
of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed
this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Imagine!
Inspired speech! Being a
mouthpiece for God. Getting a
revelation!
But then, Jesus begins to talk about having to endure
suffering and being rejected and killed.
And in both of these Gospel accounts we read that: “…Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” Peter, just coming off of what at least
in Matthew Jesus describes as inspired speech, and apparently still feeling
inspired, feeling that he is on a roll, feeling a new sense of confidence, decides
that it would not be out of place for him to even offer Jesus a little
advice. But this time Jesus’ reaction is
quite different: "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine
things but on human things." Oops!
Peter went from being the hero to being the goat, from
speaking for God to speaking for the devil. Well, it was an honest mistake. Peter was being protective of Jesus,
defending him. He thought he was being
helpful. How many times have you and I
done the same thing? Trying to say the
right thing we say the absolute wrong thing.
Trying to be helpful, we put our foot in our mouth.
Or our mistakes can be much more serious than
that. Not simply a gaffe, but a tragedy. You make a decision that you think will be
good, or you do something without giving it much thought, and it turns out to
be a life-altering mistake. We sometimes
read in the papers about young people doing things that young people do, not
giving it much thought. But it can have
a lasting and devastating effect upon their lives.
So o.k. As
James says, all of us make many mistakes.
Mistakes happen. They happen in
the bulletin and in the church service and in our lives. Some are trivial, some are serious. If Christianity is at least partly about
managing our sins, confessing them, receiving forgiveness, forgiving the sins
of others, what, if anything, does our religion have to say about our unintentional
mistakes we make?
Well first of all, it seems to me that the same
principle should apply to mistakes that applies to sins. In the Lord’s prayer we ask for forgiveness
for our sins or debts or trespasses, whatever word you want to us, “as we forgive
our debtors” or those who sin or trespass against us.”
In regard to mistakes that we make in our lives, the
same principal applies. When we make a
mistake, we hope that those who may be affected by it will be understanding and
realize that it was unintentional.
Therefore, we should try to be understanding of the mistakes that others
make that affect our lives. What would
you call that, the principle of reciprocity?
The other way that I think our faith can have an
effect upon us in regard to the mistakes we make is in learning to get past
them. I don’t know if mistakes are
something we would confess or not, as we would sins, because, after all, they
are not intentional. But if we believe
that our sins can be forgiven, why shouldn’t we also believe that our mistakes
are forgivable, that we can move on, get past them?
The last two hymns I have chosen for this morning’s service
were chosen with that thought in mind – the thought of moving past our
mistakes, however trivial or serious they may be. The first (There is a Balm in Gilead) speaks of the balm (that’s b-a-l-m, like
a healing salve or ointment) of
Our last hymn (All
Praise to Thee, My God, This Night) is an evening hymn, but we don’t have
very many evening services and so don’t get to sing this hymn very often, and
it is a lovely hymn. The words were written by Bishop Thomas Ken, who also
wrote the words to the Doxology.
The hymn was one of three that he included in A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the
Scholars of Winchester College that he wrote in 1647. (The
Presbyterian Hymnal Companion) The words of the second stanza seem particularly
appropriate to me:
Forgive me, Lord, through Christ, I pray, the
wrong that I have done this day,
That I, before I sleep may be at peace
with neighbor, self, and Thee.
The wrong I have done.
Wrong is a good word. Not
necessarily a sin – just something that was wrong or something that went wrong. It could be a mistake, an oops. Forgive me.
Intentional or not, I am sorry for it.
If I have hurt someone, may they forgive me. And help me to put it behind me. So that, before I end this day, I may be at
peace with my neighbor, myself, and Thee.