Over and over throughout the book of Mark, the disciples fail to understand, fail to believe, fail to act. Over and over Jesus diagnoses their lack of faith: “O you of little faith… don’t you remember? Don’t you understand?” This plays out right until the very end, to the night when Jesus is arrested. All of the disciples fall asleep instead of praying. When the soldiers come, they all forsake Jesus and run for their lives. In the moment of Jesus’ greatest need, the disciples blow it. Big time.
One of the Mark’s main themes is the failure of the disciples. If we were to draw principles about discipleship from the book of Matthew, one of them might be: a huge part of being a disciple is learning from failure.
Or, put it another way, the question is not whether you will fail, but how you will respond when you do? Will you walk away from Christ, or will you keep following him?
Notice that each time the disciples fail, there is a note of rebuke and correction. At several points, I think Jesus is honestly frustrated with his disciples. But at the same time his correction is tempered with gentleness and mercy: he is not about to give up on them. Jesus never says, “You idiots. I am going to find some new disciples. Some people who are a little bit smarter. Some people who have a lot more faith.”
He never does that. He corrects them, but he does not cut them off. He gives them freedom to fail without worrying about replaced.
Now if Mark spends so much time pointing out the failure of the disciples, then we can deduce from this that failure is an indispensable part of discipleship. Learning to fail well, in the beginning, is just as important as succeeding.
What do I mean by that? I mean that each time we fail we come to recognize the patience, mercy and love of Christ who does not cut us off or go in search of new disciples who can “do it better.” Each time we fail, we realize how helpless we are to do this on our own and how deeply dependent we are on Christ.
So may you fail forward today. Fall, but fall on Jesus, and learn to trust him.
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