Jesus Loses It All

Jesus Loses It All--March 26, 2019

"They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.  He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” [Mark 10:32-34]

Jesus had to lose.

And he was willing to do it.  Not that it is ever easy, or anyone's first choice--but Jesus was willing to lose it all.  

Maybe even harder is that Jesus had to lose to someone--to the Respectable Religious crowd, as well as to the Big Deals of the Empire--and he had to endure them all licking their lips and salivating over his defeat.  He had to endure having all the people he had upset by exposing their hypocrisy now thinking that they had gotten the upper hand. He had to listen to them brag about finally besting him, and he had to listen to them mock him while his lungs slowly gave out.  We have been taught by the movies to expect that the hero will find some way in the last minute to pull out a victory in one of those moments when the chips are down, so the bad guys can be exposed and silenced, and so the hero can be vindicated.   We have been taught to expect that the good guys have to win, and the bad guys have to lose--and the world has to watch them lose, so that we can see justice done.

But Jesus has to endure losing all the way, with no quasi-magical come-from-behind secret move, no extra gun taped to his back a la John McClane in Die Hard to overtake the hostage-takers, no revenge fantasies fulfilled or comeuppance for the ones calling for his crucifixion.  Jesus loses, while the world watches, all the way to death.  And after death, the world stops watching.

I think that may be one of the most difficult things, both about what Jesus had to endure, and about the Christian faith as a whole: the fact that Jesus doesn't get a moment to get revenge, or vindication, or even just an "I told you so" to the ones who have brought aobut his death.  Yes, to be sure, there is resurrection on the third day, but there is some part of us that wants there to be a scene for Jesus to get even--some post-Easter appearance where Jesus goes and punches the ones who had mocked him on Good Friday, and to get them right in the face.  And that never happens.  Jesus doesn't get to have a public "win" within the timeline of the Gospels where he gets to publicly shame the people who insulted or turned him over to the Romans.  There is no point in the story where Jesus interrupts their victory celebrations to say, "I'm back."  No--as far as they are all concerned, they won over Jesus, and they got the last word.

And there is a part of me that is just very indignantly upset that this is how the Story goes.  There is a part of me that wants the big showdown between Jesus and his opponents, not just so that Jesus can come out a winner--but because (to be honest) I want to be seen backing a winner, too, rather than following around a... loser.  And yet this is what Jesus knowingly chooses: defeat without a public rematch, loss without a settling of scores, death without getting even.  The resurrection is very much real, but it is not a revenge fantasy.  And some part of me--of all of us, I suspect--doesn't want a savior who really, actually dies and loses in order to save people.  We want a Christ who leaps down from the cross at the last second, a cigar in his mouth like in a Schwarzenegger movie, who delivers some pithy tough-guy one-liner, cocks his shotgun, and puts his enemies in their place--not one whose last intelligible sentence is, "My God, why have you abandoned me?"  But we are given no such movie-star "winner" Christ for a savior--only the Christ who loses it all.

Robert Farrar Capon makes a similar point in a classic chapter from his brilliant book Hunting the Divine Fox where he points out how much human beings want a hero-savior like Superman rather than a cross-bound one like Jesus.   Capon writes, "We crucified Jesus not because he was God but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from the cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying."

On the days when it looks and feels like good is getting hammered, the days when it feels not only like the crooks are getting away with their crookedness but rubbing it in your face that they did, it is hard not to want the kind of Savior to arrive on the scene who gets the upper hand, punches the gloating schemers while everyone watches, and shows that he was never really in danger of losing after all.  But that is not the way of Jesus.  And Jesus doesn't save us from losing. He saves us by losing, even if we don't like it or indulge in hero fantasies that switch out the crucified rabbi with a movie action-hero.

That means there will come times--maybe whole seasons--when arrogant and cocky jerks win the day, and they make no secret of relishing their triumph.  And even though we have a deep hope in the ultimate justice and vindication of God, that doesn't mean that you or I are promised any revenge fantasies ourselves.  And to be honest, sometimes the arrogant blowhards are just looking to get a rise out of you anyway, and really want you to take their bait and attack them back.  That sinks to their level and lets them think they are justified in their bragging over against you.  So, today, we are going to have to do two difficult things: we are going to have to let Jesus be the kind of Savior who doesn't go settling old vendettas for the sake of his sullied reputation, and we are going to have do the hard work of not getting sucked into the shouting matches the braggarts want to draw us into.

Today, as hard as it is, let us dare to let Jesus lose for us, and lose it all.  There is resurrection to come, but not personal revenge.  There is salvation, but not a showdown.  And there is no Savior without a real and honest defeat, which makes possible a new creation.

Lord Jesus, it is so hard for us to swallow our pride and accept that your way of saving us is through loss, and that your kind of redemption comes in what looks unmistakably like loss.  Save us your way, anyhow, and grace us with the willingness to let your weakness become our strength.