"Playing by Different Rules"--September 18, 2019

"Playing by Different Rules"--September 18, 2019

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." [1 Corinthians 1:26-30]

I decided to try an experiment: I tried playing by different rules without telling anybody what I was up to.

It started like this: this morning in the space between breakfast and going to school, my daughter approached me and said, "Will you play Old Maid with me, Daddy?" Well, I will confess, it had been a few years since I had last played that old classic, but with a quick reading of the instruction card that came with the special kid-friendly deck, I was refreshed on the rules: get as many matched pairs as possible, so that you don't end up with the card labeled "Old Maid," the one card in the deck that doesn't have a match, a pair, or an identical corresponding partner.  Okay, got it.  So I shuffle and deal out the cards, and played a standard game of Old Maid with my six-year-old.  Not to brag (since this is essentially a game of blind chance), I won that first round.

My daughter, disappointed for the moment, winced as she saw she was left with the losing card, and blurted out with a furrowed brow and a frown, "Oh--I got stuck with the granny!"  And it occurred to me in that moment that, while the stakes of this particular card game are pretty low for a Tuesday morning, there was something that made me queasy about this moment.  Maybe it was memories of being the wallflower kid back at the junior high dance watching the other kids pair up. Maybe it was the years' worth of seeing people be told you have to be "coupled off" in order to be successful at life or else you will risk being regarded as "damaged goods" or as the proverbial "old maid," only to see them rush themselves into a bad relationship that imploded before long. Or maybe it was looking at how my own family is not made of matched identical sets, but has brown hands that are different from my own pale pink ones.  

But, even though I know this was just a card game played while killing time before school, I didn't like the idea of playing a game in which the goal was not to get stuck with the person who didn't fit.  I know the figure on the card isn't a person, and can't feel left out. But I also know how easy it is to get drawn into the game-playing that treats others like they are dead weight because they don't fit.  We human beings cling to that strategy like an inflatable raft on the ocean, and we have to learn it from somewhere.  And here was my six-year-old daughter making a face of disgust to be stuck with the old maid, and there I was reinforcing the idea that the goal should be to get rid of these undesirable ones that end up in your hand. And because these cards have faces and characters on them, there was this notion, however subtle or implicit, that some people are just not valuable because they don't fit, because they don't match up, or because they don't have the marks of status that everybody else has.

So as I say, I tried an experiment.  Or, maybe I should say, I began it--because I can only imagine where this will go or how long it will keep running.  I asked my daughter if she wanted to play a second round of "Old Maid," and I decided that this time, I would try as hard as I could to get the "Old Maid" card, without letting her know that I was trying.  I could tell by the way she held it out from the rest of the cards in her hand (first-graders don't have great poker faces) where she had placed it (and even that was interesting--she held it out, sticking out from her deck as if she didn't want it to touch or taint her other cards!).  And so I plucked the Old Maid from her hand when it was my turn, and let the game play out so that I would either keep it or could take it back from her before the end of the game.  And when she won, I wanted her to see that there was no "disgust" on my part--not at losing the game, nor at having the "losing" card. I just smiled and said, "Looks like I got her--and I kept her!" without a hint of disappointment.  I wanted to begin to plant the subversive but vital idea that one does not simply have to accept the rules we are presented with in life for how to be "successful" or to "win," and that you certainly do not have to accept the rules the world gives us about which people don't matter.  I began playing the game intentionally trying to gather up the one that the rules of the game say is to be avoided and shunned.

And I think I'm going to keep playing that way for as long as possible, just to see what happens, and whether she notices or ever asks why I am not upset to get the card everyone else says is the "bad one."

Now, this little social experiment isn't just to mess with my kids.  Not at all.  No, I think this is actually the beginning of one of those lifelong lessons that goes to the heart of the Christian faith.  No less an authority than the Apostle Paul saw that God's way is quite often to gather in the ones discarded by the world at large and to make something new and wonderful that includes them all.  "God is always taking beggars and turning them into kings," Martin Luther once wrote.  And I think that same idea is what Paul has in mind as he writes to the Corinthians.  "Not many of you were wise... or powerful... or of noble birth," Paul notes, writing to the fractious house churches of Corinth. They were a whole church full of discarded people, all told at some point along the way that they were disposable, replaceable, broken, or damaged goods.  And yet, Paul says, God has created a whole new beautiful humanity with them, and has used exactly their unimportance in the world's eyes as a way of shaking the whole system the world uses to decide who is, or isn't, important.  

That means the church is--and always has been--a motley crew of anybodies and nobodies, people who don't match, people who don't fit, and people who have been thrown into the discard pile.  And day by day, we are a part of a two-thousand-plus year experiment in playing the game of life by a different set of rules, where we seek out the outcast and the unvalued and regard one another as chosen and precious to God. It is a beautiful thing to be a part of... and I'm not really sure what will happen as we keep at this experiment. 

The struggle for us day by day is that we are sent into a world still playing by the old rules, and which might not understand when they ask us what we are up to.  The world around us might even start to use religious language to tell us that only the ones who fit, who match, and who conform to the cookie cutter are acceptable to God.  The Respectable Religious folks among us might say that you're only a spiritual success if you fit the mold and match up to everybody else. And as loud as those voices can sometimes be, we might be tempted to believe them.

So day by day, the followers of Jesus are sent out to play by a different set of rules, seeking to gather in the very faces that the Rule-Makers say are supposed to be discarded, and welcoming in with genuine love the people who don't look like "winners," don't have prospects, or don't fit our categories.  The world and its authorities will look at us, this beautiful church that looks like the Island of Misfit Toys, and declare us with self-assurance to be "losers."

And when it happens, we will not frown with disgust or throw our cards down in bitter disappointment.  We will simply smile, knowing we are all held like precious treasures in the hand of Christ, and knowing that he has gone to great lengths to gather us all up into his grip.  We'll spend our lives playing by different rules--whether the world around us ever catches on or not.

Lord Jesus, as you have gathered us when we were the odd ones out, move us to gather up all the people who have been discarded in life, but who are precious and beloved in your sight.