Ty Koehn, a pitcher on a winning high-school baseball team, consoles Jack Kocon, the player he struck out for the winning play. Koehn and Kocon are lifelong friends.
To watch this sermon in the context of the service, go here.
Jesus Christ is a loser.
This sounds deeply offensive in the ears of our dominant culture. When I say it, I want to rush ahead and assure you that I don’t really mean it. But it is true: Jesus Christ is a loser.
He came not to triumph over the forces of empire, but to be crushed by them.
He came not to save us from those who trample the poor and kill the innocent, but to be trampled and killed by them himself.
He did not come to win 270 electoral votes; or “own” our enemies with a devastating defeat that shames them; or safeguard anything of material value for us. He came to lose.
And he does not protect us from his own fate, either: we too will be crushed, perhaps even trampled or killed. We will lose the contest; or we will be betrayed; or we will endure humiliation. In the end, we mortal beings will lose everything. They say that when Frank Sinatra was about to die, his last words were, “I’m losing.” He was right.
Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, where he will be killed.
He is going to lose.
Now, we all know that this is not the whole story. We know that the Trampled One “tramples death by death;” that the Victim becomes the Victor; that (as the Easter hymn has it) “in the grave they laid him, Love by hatred slain, thinking he would never rise to life again.” We know that they thought that, and we know that they were wrong: Jesus rises, and he raises us up, too. We know that somehow Psalm 91 has it right: in the end, all will be well. Even in the journey that leads to the end, even as we are losing, God is lifting us up, binding our wounds, filling us with strength and confidence.
But Jesus Christ himself does not rush to Easter morning, and he does not encourage us to do that, either. He wants us to soak up the awareness that we, too, when we choose to follow him—we, too, are losers.
You and I are losers.
We are going to lose.
In the end, we will not accomplish any of our goals. We are not going to be successful. We could search the Gospels all we want and never even find the word “success.” Take any goal you have right now. I have a few. I want to run and be ever more physically fit. I want to secure my financial future well into the 2060s, beyond any worry. I want to fix all of the cracks in the infrastructure of my friendships. I want to fully forgive my younger selves for all of their mistakes. I want to perfectly avoid those same mistakes in the coming years. And while we’re at it, let’s throw in whiter teeth and less dependence on sugar. I have many goals, and I want success in all of them.
But Jesus tells me: No, Stephen, you are a loser. You are going to lose.
With Jesus, there is no Easter without the cross. There is no new life without death. There is no future without a crushing and shattering present, and often enough a troubling and haunting past. We have to go through something hard, something that may feel impossible, if we want any kind of redemption or release, for ourselves and for others. If we want resurrection, we have to let go of the lesser dream of personal success. Personal success is an idol. We are challenged by Jesus to cast it aside like a garish metal statue, a worthless piece of kitsch that we have made into a false god, a fantasy that somehow we can just fast-forward to the happy ending of the movie, with the self, little Me, as the star.
Only by being a loser like Jesus can we really understand, experience, and participate in resurrection.
Here’s how it works.
When our Pastoral Care Leadership Team prayerfully follows and supports people here at Grace who need companionship, encouragement, and hope, they draw upon their own experiences of loss and challenge. They respond with the wisdom, serenity, and authentic hope that they received in the wake of sometimes devastating and irreversible disappointments in their own lives.
When our Formation leaders meet with children and youth, they are qualified to do so primarily because they themselves have known the heavy burdens carried by young people. Having been young themselves, they know that second only (perhaps) to the very elderly, children and youth face the most challenges in this world.
When our Outreach leaders lend a hand to our ministry partners and lead us in the work of Service Sundays, they know, they have felt, some of the fears and sorrows experienced by our neighbors in need. Their ministry flows from hearts of genuine empathy and compassion.
When our lay leadership takes up the holy work of the financial stewardship of this community, they do so with memories of their own struggles as households and families that need to work hard to make ends meet, and be careful, and still never be sure that disaster won’t strike. They know in their bones that the use of money is a serious matter of human ethics.
When our Place for Grace leaders, lay worship leaders, prayer-shawl knitters, bulletin folders, staff members, musicians, climate-justice ministers, Tribe leaders, and newcomer ministers live out their callings here at Grace, everything is touched, everything is nourished, by their personal experiences of loss, challenge, disappointment, anxiety, and crisis.
Why else would you sing a song?
Why else would you knit a prayer shawl?
Why else would you reduce your carbon footprint, or proclaim scripture, or write a get-well card, or say hello to a stranger?
Why would anyone do anything here if you have never been hit in the gut by something brutally difficult?
My own ministry is no different. I can understand an alcoholic because I am one. I can walk with someone who is dying because I am a mortal being who is well aware that there are fewer days ahead of me than behind. I can credibly proclaim God’s forgiveness because I have made my own awful mistakes. I can offer words of true hope and encouragement because I myself have awakened in the wee hours with existential anxiety and despair.
And so I announce to you this Good News: if you are here because you are struggling; if you are here because you messed up; if you are here because you spoke a prophetic truth and suffered the rejection of a prophet; if you are here because you are hungry for meaning, or hungry for dinner; if you are here because you know you have already lost, and you don’t know where else to go; know this: We are all losers here, losers who follow Jesus, the Loser of losers, and so in his Name we offer you the following:
We offer real hope that you will not be left alone.
We offer the justice and joy of God’s table: at God’s table, everyone shares everything so that everyone has enough.
We offer our hard-won wisdom that we received in the face of back-breaking grief.
With God’s help, we offer life that emerges through death, rather than cheap fixes that deny the plain-fact reality that we lost, we will lose, and we will die. By God’s power, we endure all the terrible things that happen to us, and intervene to mitigate the terrible things that could happen to our neighbors. Everybody suffers here, and everybody helps. Everybody knows how rough it is, and everybody knows how deep God’s grace runs in and through this place, in and through the whole world.
This is how we know that Jesus rises from the dead.
If that’s something you want or need, then stick around and learn more about Jesus. He is a loser. But he leads us through loss into astonishing, world-changing resurrection.
***
Isaiah 53:4-12
Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45
Preached on the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24B), October 17, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Photo: found here.