Losers Like Jesus

“Losers Like Jesus”--September 10, 2018

“[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’” [Mark 8:34-35]

In Jesus' list of values, "winning" (whatever that might mean) doesn't even make the list.  The way the big-shots, power-brokers, and blustering loudmouths thinking of "winning" is not even on Jesus' radar--it's not worth talking about, not worth aiming for, and as sure as heaven not worth spending your life on.  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in Jesus' book, to use up your days and your passion just trying to be a "winner" is a waste of a lifetime.  It's a dead-end and a shame--from Jesus' vantage point, that misses the whole point of life.

On the other hand, Jesus is convinced that the best possible way to use your life is to use it up--to "lose" it, in a manner of speaking, but to lose it intentionally.  The loudmouths and the people who fancy themselves as "important" will never understand, but that doesn't stop Jesus.  Jesus is insistent on being as complete a loser as possible... and on calling each of us to be losers like him.

Now, mind you, there is a difference between losing something unintentionally and consciously, knowingly, purposefully giving something away.  Even if both look the same—i.e., something isn’t there anymore that used to be there—there is a world of difference.  You don’t lose your car keys in the couch cushions, for example, the same way that a lifeguard loses her life saving a drowning child.  There is no power in losing your keys, or in losing that good parking space to the steely-eyed soccer mom in the mini-van coming the other way, or in losing your savings at the roulette tables trying to make a quick buck.  There is amazing power, power that is life-saving and world-saving, in a chosen act of giving oneself away.  And that is why the life spent "losing" yourself in Jesus' way is the key to understanding all of Jesus' values.

A word about this powerful way of losing: one of my favorite songs of all time is by Jon Foreman with his band Switchfoot, a song by the name of “Daisy.”  Its opening line goes like this: 

Daisy, give yourself away

Look up at the rain, the beautiful display

Of power and surrender, giving us today

When she gives herself away.

The only power the rain has is when it gives itself away.  When the clouds hold in the rain, you have nothing but constipated clouds, and things dry up, wither, and die.  But when the rain lets go—when the rain loses itself, so to speak—plants come to life, dirt is washed away, rocks are worn down, and canyons are carved.  That is power that shapes the world… and it only comes from losing, not holding back.

It is this kind of losing to which Jesus calls us.  Jesus doesn’t call us to drop our keys or lose a sock in the dryer.  Jesus doesn’t call us to misplace things, but to give ourselves away.  He calls us to be, well, losers.  And he does it because he is calling us to follow after him, and Jesus’ way of reigning is to give himself away for us.  Jesus’ kind of power, his way of being the Messiah, is by laying down his life, the way rain gives itself away… nurturing life, washing the dirt away, and then coming back full circle into the clouds again. 

So… what will it look like for us to be Jesus’ kind of “losers”?  And will it always mean literal crosses for us?  Well… no, probably not.  But we are called, we followers of Jesus, to follow after Jesus in his strange kind of upside-down power by giving ourselves away.  That will take a million different forms over our lives.  Elaine Puckett puts it well:  "When we think about laying down a life for another we usually think in terms of a single event. But it is possible for us to lay down our lives over the course of a lifetime, minute by minute and day by day.”  In the quiet gifts, given when no one was looking, in the labor spent and the sore knees endured that no one knew you offered, in the willingness to speak up fo someone who is being stepped on, in the pouring out of your life’s energy for your children, or for others’ children, or for people you will never meet this side of glory, we are laying down our lives in a conscious, chosen, purposeful act of losing. And that will be the mark we leave on the world, like the mark the rain makes on the parched and crackled crust of the desert. 

You know, in a parallel version of today’s verses, Luke records Jesus as saying that we are to “take up our cross daily” and follow.  “Daily” means that we will be looking for new ways, and keeping at some of the same old ways, too, morning by morning, giving ourselves away for others as a lived sign of the way Jesus has given himself away once and for all. 

Lose yourself today—not like your car keys or your pocket change, but in a conscious, loving act of self-giving.  And see how it unleashes the same power we have come to know in Jesus.

Even if the world's big-shots call it being a "loser," that's the way to spend your life... just like Jesus does.

Lord Jesus, you have called us to lose ourselves as you gave your life away, and to find ourselves the same way you found your life again in resurrection.  Help us to do it, freely and joyfully.