Looking for Losers--February 26, 2024

Looking for Losers--February 26, 2024

"[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 cross 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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? " [Mark 8:34-37]

Okay, a quick refresher, in case you're ever invited to my house for game night: the point of the game Uno is to get rid of your cards first.

Every so often when we get the family around the dinner table for game night, we have to remind everybody (myself included sometimes) about how the game of the night works. Some games are about acquisition--you try to get as much as you can for yourself--a higher score of points for bigger words in Scrabble, a larger portfolio of investments and money in Monopoly, or even the whole deck of cards if you are playing war. A lot of games are like that--they are about getting... taking... accumulating. It can be easy, if you are used to playing those kinds of games, to just let that become your default mindset for every game, and then, without thinking, you end up stuck with a pile of cards in a game like Uno, and then it dawns on you--this is a different sort of game entirely.

It does take a certain amount of un-learning to play Uno, and other games like it, because we can get stuck in the mindset that winning always looks like "getting."

And maybe we have the same problem when we actually take the time to listen to Jesus. Because Jesus is convinced that being his follower means un-learning what the world has taught us about the "point" of life. Over against all the other voices loudly telling us that the point of life is to get as much as possible for yourself, and to look as tough and strong and threatening as possible in order to keep what you have taken, Jesus says that our kind of winning looks like losing. Our kind of winning is Uno-winning--the victory that comes in giving yourself away. Our kind of triumph looks like a cross--not in crucifying or destroying our enemies, but in Jesus being crucified at the hands of his enemies and praying for their forgiveness as he bleeds out. To the world around, that looks like nonsense--but to followers of Jesus, it is the key to life.

And of course, the stakes are so much higher than a game. If I forget how to play Uno on family game night, the only danger is that one of my kids gets to say "Uno" before I do, and maybe they get bragging rights during bedtime snack. But in life--oh, dear ones, the stakes are so much higher. It really is a question of what we orient our lives toward. It really is a question of whether we think the goal, the meaning, and the purpose of life is looking like a "winner," on the world's terms, or whether we see God's upside-down power and beauty in self-giving love.

This feels to me like it should be already a settled subject. This talk about "taking up your cross" to follow is so essential to Jesus' teaching that it seems to me like every churchgoer, every Christian, everyone who has ever sat in a pew before or read from one of the Gospels before, should "get" that much. It is so very, very fundamental that I really find myself getting frustrated and disappointed when other self-described disciples of Jesus speak and act in ways that run counter to this. And what saddens me--what truly disheartens me on an almost daily basis lately--is how frequently people I know, people with who I have prayed, people who name the name of Jesus and confess him as Lord alongside me, in their very next breath will say and do things that are mired in the "Me-First," "I-Need-To-Look-Like-A-Winner" mentality. I find myself grieved, more often than I would like to admit, over how easy it is for church folk to fall into using the language of "We've got to be tougher--we've got to show others how strong and powerful we are." I lament how often I see church folk smiling approvingly at (or liking and sharing on social media) the kind of angry bluster that peddles fear of "those people" who they think are a threat to our comfortable position... or who feel the need to make threats like, "There's a storm coming... and one day, we are going to rise up and take back what's ours!" while thinking they can baptize that thinking and call it holy.

That isn't the way of Jesus. It is the opposite. It is quite literally anti-Christ.

And to be honest, if I didn't already know Jesus better (from actually reading the gospels), if that kind of angry, boastful, saber-rattling attitude was my first introduction to people who called themselves followers of Jesus, I wouldn't want anything to do with Jesus, with his story, or with is followers. To be perfectly frank, it is religious people who talk about coercively "taking their country back" (whatever that means) that make it harder for me to be a Christian in this time and place. It's not some imaginary threat of atheists coming to take away my ability to pray. It's not, as I also sometimes hear, some ominous "Them" who are ominously coming to hurt the Bible, mishandle the cross, or put God in a corner.  No, if I can lay all my cards on the table here (so, "Uno!", I guess), what makes it hardest for me to be a Christian in this moment of history in this particular culture are religious people who shout about wanting to look like winners, rather than actually listening to Jesus himself saying, "Losing is the key to winning. Take up your cross. Let the rest of it go."

Today, then, I need to ask--both for you to hold me accountable, and for each of us to commit to listening to Jesus again with open ears--that we allow Jesus to help us un-learn the garbage we've been taught about how life is supposed to work, and instead to learn his path. Help keep me honest, and when I slide back into the attitude that is centered on Me-and-My-Group-First, or on fear of losing a comfortable position, and on looking like a "winner," I ask you to smack me upside the head in love and call me back to take up a cross rather than to take up arms.

It will be hard sometimes for us to live this way, over against the other voices. It will feel like swimming upstream. It will look like we are giving all of our cards away when everyone else is playing to keep theirs. The question to ask, though, is simply this: who knows best how this game called Life works? Maybe we should trust that Jesus knows what he's talking about. Maybe the point of life all along has always been about giving ourselves away in love.  And if the world calls that "being a loser," good: Jesus has been looking for losers to join his movement and to carry our crosses.

I dare say it's worth a try. Help keep me honest about it.

Lord Jesus, turn us around when we are aimed in the wrong direction, and help us to unlearn the old ways of living our lives, to be pointed in your orientation toward self-giving love.