Failure and the Invitation To New Imagination | Lent Devotional Day 21

Exploring the Meaning of Jesus’ Death
March 10, 2026
Written by Adam Baker

Failure and the Invitation To New Imagination

Scripture:

He was despised and avoided by others;
    a man who suffered, who knew sickness well.
Like someone from whom people hid their faces,
    he was despised, and we didn’t think about him.
It was certainly our sickness that he carried,
    and our sufferings that he bore,
    but we thought him afflicted,
    struck down by God and tormented.
He was pierced because of our rebellions
    and crushed because of our crimes.
    He bore the punishment that made us whole;
    by his wounds we are healed.
(Isaiah 53:3-5)

The Word became flesh
    and made his home among us.
We have seen his glory,
    glory like that of a father’s only son,
        full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14)

Reflection:

Jesus is a conundrum. Scripture tells us that he was despised and rejected, but also that Jesus was full of grace and truth, a human being somehow deeply pleasing to God while also being the divine Creator of all that is.
 
If God is love (1 John 4:8) and Jesus is the perfect display of who God is (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus shows us God’s love to us by drawing close and becoming who we are, while also refusing to abide by our exclusionary categories of what is right and wrong, powerful and weak, defeated and triumphant. God delights in Jesus, telling us all to “listen to him” (Like 9:35).
 
Still, according to worldly power, Jesus is a failure. He doesn’t protect himself or fight back. He is mocked and killed by his oppressors, humiliated like a criminal. In every category of success that the world offers, Jesus fails.

Queer atonement theory suggests that Christ’s failure is in fact the action that allows us to imagine a new world. In a society where success is dictated largely by the definitions and desires of white supremacist, capitalist male heterosexuality, queer theorists see failure as an opportunity to imagine a different, better way. As a failure, Jesus offers us a way of life defined by inclusive love.

If the phobia-driven patterns of the world offer only death to queer people, Jesus is God saying “I am also a failure, and I am with you, among you, one of you. I am queer and different from this world, a part of it while also being marginalized by it, just like you. Come and follow me, and let’s show this world a different way to welcome all into love.”

In Jesus, we see a God committed to moving toward human beings in overflowing love that looks like failure and stands with those the world judges to be failures. Jesus shapes a new, queerly faithful imagination, thwarting all of the “proper” patterns of success in order to offer unifying friendship that crosses all boundaries and holds space for all of us.

Prayer:

Holy and loving God, we ask that you would help us to become more like Jesus. In other words, help us not to be afraid of being failures in the eyes of this world. In Jesus, you became one of us, showing up as an oppressed and marginalized person. You told us a long time ago that your thoughts and ways aren’t ones that we would easily understand, and in Jesus, we’re invited to imagine a way of love that many will see as foolish and weak. Give us the strength and community connection necessary to live fully as a part of what seems like failure.

We know that you’re with us, one of us. Thank you for that.

Amen.

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