Good News for Losers--February 9, 2023

Good News for Losers--February 9, 2023

"And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest on human wisdom but on the power of God." [1 Corinthians 2:3-5]

I think for a lot of us, we like the idea of love as long as it's an abstract concept, but we start to squirm when we realize that Jesus' kind of love isn't compatible with the ego-driven need to make ourselves look "great" or "successful" all the time.  Real love has to be more interested in the well-being of the beloved than in getting a chance to boast about ourselves.  And honestly, that's hard to let go of.  We are so ingrained with our culture's lessons about how we need to "sell ourselves" and make ourselves "more marketable" that it can be hard to know what to do with a Savior who just isn't interested in being seen as a "winner," but who does care about loving people.

This is where so many of us get hung up with Jesus: we don't want to let people see Jesus as "weak," because we are afraid it will make US look weak. We don't want to recognize that Jesus' way is the way of suffering love, because it looks like weakness, or because it makes Jesus look like a "loser," or because we think we need to project being tough and powerful ourselves. Or at most, we'll treat the cross of Jesus like a special exception--that it was OK for Jesus to die on a cross, but that we are not meant to look weak, or foolish, or like "losers" ourselves. No, no no--we can't have people thinking we are anything but successful, strong, and sure of ourselves... right?  We need to boast about our greatness, so that we'll be acceptable.... right?

And, to be sure, sometimes that is exactly how the watching world looks at the Gospel. Ted Turner, famous media mogul and billionaire, once famously remarked that in his opinion, "Christianity is a religion for losers." And what gets me is that sometimes Respectable Religious Folk think it's the job of the church to prove that he's wrong, when I'm convinced, listening to Paul the apostle and Jesus himself, that he didn't know how right he was.  The gospel is about God's fierce and relentless love for losers, not a self-help scheme to make yourself look like a "winner." The problem is that so often we think it's our job to make ourselves look like powerful and strong "winners" to refute the Ted Turners of the world, when maybe the good news is that Turner was exactly right: the gospel claims that losers like us are beloved and claimed as we are, because God has taken the side of losers by becoming one just like us and saving the world through death rather than through killing.

The world's logic just can't process that--it can only imagine "winning" (however we define that) as the key to being important in life. And so, the world says, we have to show that we have bested someone else, dominated someone else, or have more than someone else in order to, you know, "win." Once we accept the world's logic, the crucified Jesus will be a scandal or something we want to sweep under the rug. We're afraid that if our Lord is recognized as a loser who died on a cross instead of the one doing the crucifying of his enemies, we'll be seen as losers, too. It's just as Robert Farrar Capon said about our secret wish for Jesus to really be an invincible superhero like Superman:

“We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God 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 a 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.”

And part of what makes it so hard for us to admit that Jesus' way looks like defeat is that we know we are called to follow that way. We know that if Jesus' presence in the world looks like weakness to the bullies and big deals of the world, then we'll risk looking weak, too, for following Jesus' footsteps. And so often, we are so terribly insecure that we really do care what other people think about us rather than about what Jesus has already said about us.  And when I'm more worried about whether other people envy me or admire me than I am about how I can love them, I'm already off course from the way of Jesus.  Like we've said earlier in this series, Jesus is so grounded in knowing he is beloved of God that he doesn't need to brag or boast or puff himself up to fight off his insecurities.  Knowing he is beloved frees him from the need for ego-stroking so he is able to love others even if they think he looks "weak" for doing it.

The apostle Paul gets it, too. Because Jesus' way is not the bombastic shouting, obnoxious boasting, or angry threatening of the ones who think they are "great", Paul doesn't do those things, either. He didn't blow into town in Corinth pointing at his own impressive status, or listing his advanced degrees, or talking about how much money he had. He came, in his own words, "in weakness"--the opposite of the smooth-talking snake-oil salesman, the podium-pounding politician, or the arrogant emperor. He came, not trying to intimidate or impress, but simply offering the news of Jesus, and letting the authentic Spirit of God show up in the Spirit's own ways. Like they say, good evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread--and that means acknowledging your own empty hands rather than pretending you are self-sufficient. It means letting our own weakness become a bridge to connect us with other people, rather than thinking we have to hide it from them.

That was Paul's approach to sharing the good news of Jesus with other people.  He didn't shy away from admitting his own weakness, fragility, and foibles. And that can become our model for loving other people, too--the honest and open sharing of the places that seem "weak" or broken, so that others know they are safe to share their own hurts, weak places, and wounds, and they won't be ridiculed, belittled, or kicked out because of them.  In fact, those very things we are least likely to boast about can become our connecting points--so that others can know that if Jesus loves us exactly at all the places we feel like screw-ups and losers, then Jesus' love will meet others there, too. It's another way of saying, "I've been a beggar, and Jesus welcomed me at his table and has shared his bread with me--and there's a place at the table for you, too." Jesus has never been ashamed to say, "I was hungry and you gave me food," too, for that matter. So we're in good company if we are at his table for beggars, which turns out to be his feast of victory.

Maybe there's someone you will cross paths with on this day who is waiting for you to tell them the same.  

And maybe today, we can be so grounded in the certainty that we are already beloved of God that we don't need to waste a moment trying to make ourselves look or sound more impressive to anybody else.  Rather, we can show our scars and talk about our weak places as a gesture of love so that others will know they are welcomed and beloved as they are, too.  Maybe that's what it really means to be the church--we are the place where Jesus' love is taken seriously enough that we don't have to try and prove we're "winners," so that others who have been told they are "losers" will know his love is for them, too.

Lord Jesus, let us own our weakness unashamed and unafraid, so that we can point to your way of meeting us in weakness, loss, and death at the cross.