This was a piece we learned way back in 1st year HS and was part of our annual Sibol Christmas play "Come to the Manger". Thanks to Lex for sending it to me since my memory is really bad and I couldn't remember it verbatim.
It's really a wonderful essay and seems to capture Christmas and Christianity.
Well it's my simple way of wishing everyone a Blessed Christmas!
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The Triumph of a Magnificent Failure
- Anonymous
He was the son of a young peasant woman, born on a wintry night in a cave where animals were kept, in a village far from civilization. The husband of his mother was not even his father, yet he was accepted as a son and taught a carpenter's trade, and worked in obscurity for thirty years.
Then for three short years he was a wandering preacher. He never wrote a book, nor was he ever appointed or elected to an office. Nor did he ever go to college, nor traveled to a big city, nor wandered more than a few kilometers from where he was born. He was never married, nor did he sire children, nor did he own a house, nor did he ever go into business and make money. He did none of the things a great man usually does.
He was poor and despised, but he was good and gentle and just. He was full of ideas, great ideas that threatened to topple an empire, ideas that were to change the face of the earth.
He was a real revolutionary. He was like the communists in a certain sense, in that he wanted everyone to have a share in the wealth of the world. But unlike the communists, he did not say, "What is yours is mine!" He said, "What is mine, is yours!"
Becase he was an agitator, he incurred the disfavor of men of great wealth and political power. They drove him our of their cities. They beat him up and called him a fool, and set the police of his friends.
Finally they arrested him. A friend betrayed him. The rest of his friends deserted him. And he went through the mockery of a trial.
His enemies tortured him, and when they got tired of doing that, they sent him to die like a common criminal. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth and that his tattered robe. And when he died, he was buried in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Was he a failure, this man they called Jesus Christ?
The story does not end there.
Almost two thousand years have come and gone, yet all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the wars that were ever fought, all the treaties that were ever signed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings and emperors and great leaders that ever reigned and ruled, all put together, have not affected the life of Man here on earth as much as this poor wretch who was born in obscurity and died a failure.
After he died, his ideas did topple empires, did change the face of the earth. And even now his influence is felt in every nation, in every city, in the heart of every man.
Those of us who feel the bitterness and frustration of a lost cause should take heart from the final triumph of such a Magnificent Failure.
