Yer J,
|
WINNING - LOSING John M. Buchanan 4« <Y
Isaiah 53:1-12, Philippians 2:5-11l Broad Street Presbyterian Church ~ 3
March 9, 1980 Columbus, Ohio ws

One of the most important lessons in life is how to lose in a culture which will
accept nothing less than victory. And one of the most difficult steps in the process
of becoming a Christian is to come to terms with the Cross, in a culture that wants
very little to do with it. That's not new, of course. St. Paul wrote to his Corinthiar
friends that the Cross of Jesus was a lot of nonsense to most people, but that God's
apparent weakness is deceiving: in fact, His weakness is His strength.

In any event, we are much more comfortable with ideas like victory through strength
winning at any cost. When someone asks serious questions about the reigning theology
in the ranks of Big 10 athletic departments, for instance, we wink knowingly at one
another and recall the pericope attributed to one of the great fathers of the faith,
Leo Durocher, who reminded us that "nice guys finish last". They do, by the way,
unless you are looking at things from the vantage point of Christian faith - which
means a cross - in which case finishing last often means finishing first.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look first at ourselves. Everybody
likes to win, but we may be the most competitive people in the world. Of the 10,000
entries in the Guiness Book of World Records, fully 30% are by Americans. Whtte

i i the turnover ra :
- Re=worderpeuter thee \ihe late Vince Lombardi said, "Winning
isn't everything. It's the only thing." I confess to never quite understanding the
precise meaning of that, but the point was, and is, clear. An even more salient
descriptive statement came from George Allen, after his Washington Red Skins had lost
the Super Bowl in 1973. Allen said, "Losing is like death."

We seem sometimes to fear it more than death. Or perhaps, our inability to talk
about and seriously consider death results in a subtle transference. Perhaps losing is
dying, and dying losing. Perhaps, as some critics contend, we regard death as a final
loss, an ultimate defeat ~- and therefore have many problems even being rational about
it. In any event, we don't like om} all. And we teach the rudiments of the theology

e

to our children at a very young ag J temteihind08.6.1, i -oieeemmmmennnnh Rite 0.0 Kontithiea |

= ol
be featured in a

football game: the
startled when the

t and screamed &o her

ote A Ey wey The saddest thing I've ever seen in
a life-long love affair with athletics was a middle-aged man spending a bright October
Sunday afternoon watching two teams of ten-year olds play. He was not there because
he loved the game. He was a "scout" for the team our boys would play the following
Sunday. The most intensity I've experienced has been in a brief stint as little
league coach, in dialogue with unhappy parents. |

f beside him jumped her

MicheneX cites Dr. Jonathan Bowen, Sociologist at Cali
did an exhaus®\yve study of und athletic leagues. Bowen coneiudes: "Parents
get too caught i in ethic...this thrust for victory its accompanying
competitiveness wasS\far stronger among managers and coaches then players." (p.105).

rnia State University who

ge nine-year running
a bird flyip#”by. We do,

because ewknow "he will do
j : preeanianiiciel [rc lionize winners,
giving trophies to twelve year tennis players, and ome line on the back page of the
school paper to scholars. We make millionaires out of Olympic champions, attributing
to them great wisdom and insight so that their endorsement cf a brand of coffee, for
instance, will result in more people purchasing it. And when a winner gets religion:
when an athlete, Hollywood star or successful politician writes a religious book, re-
gardless of how innocuous, we will buy millions of copies.

Carnegie Samuel Calian, Professor of Theology at Dubuque Seminary , has written a
scholarly article on the subject in which he observes that . eee

American is to feel pressure to win at something - from 'winning souls’ to self-

improvement seminars our intent is to be winners - survival, we think is at stake.
(See Theologizing in a Win/Lose Culture, Christian Century, 10/10/79).

shoulders ."

the mixture can
be very powerful indeed.
neutral, of course, but they se
distortion of both sport and

My love for sperts is ag
blasphemy. Sport tha¢ religious crusade is
unhealthy, potent y destructive in its commitment to winning. It is,
longer sport at g

Jesus of Nazareth, by anybody's standards, on the other hand, was a loser. He was
not recognized by His peers for skill in His profession. He wrote no books, He
accumulated no wealth, He founded no movements other than a loose relationship between
twelve friends, and He certainly had no influence in the decision-making circles of
His day, At the age of thirty His own neighbors in Nazareth threw Him out of town.

He collected a retinue of drifters, outcasts, a few fishermen,several reformed prosti-
tutes and a lot of poor people and went about the countrywide talking about love and
infuriating the politicians and influential clergy. At thirty-three, when most people
have begun seriously to make some progress; when, in this culture, we have negotiated

a major mortgage, enjoyed our second significant promotion; that is, when we have

first tasted the sweet flavor of winning,Jesus of Nazareth walked into the capital city
of His nation and was arrested as a troublemaker. After a quick trial He was executed
along with two other criminals. His few friends abandoned Him: He died alone, a
failure; by anyone's standards as much of a loser as a man could be.

Scotsman John Baillie wrote, “The Christian religion would have aroused much less
opposition in the world if it had left out its emphasis on sorrow and suffering and
death and spoken only of Life and joy and peace: if it had offered Easter and Whit-
sunday without Lent and Good Friday. But a religion that deliberately chooses a
gallow tree for its coat of arms, what do men want with that?" (A Reasoned Faith, p.154)

\e>

@I omis#ion.

sets | We decorate che cross so > lavishly
that it looks Like an award given for winning a contest instead of an instrument of
capital punishment. It is a very old dynamic. St. Paul wrote that the cross was
foolishness to his contemporaries: a stumbling block to people of intelligence. Who
wants a Lord who is a loser? Who is interested in a God who suffers? In our New
Testament text this Kecsing we heard Paul putting words around the fundamental and
radical news of the Gospel: that Jesus Christ voluntarily became a loser: that He chose
to empty himself of privilege and power and prerogative: and that God has exalted Him
precisely because He was obedient to death,

That is hard going for us, theologically. It is hard for us, precisely because we
put such a premium on winning. We prefer religion based on that premise: religion that
talks about "positive thinking", “possibility thinking", religion that will be helpful
and supportive, particularly in the life work of succeeding in our chosen field whether
it is handball or selling real estate.

There are two reasons why the topic is an important one. Religion without the
cross, first of all, will have very little to say to us when we experience the reality
of losing, failing, or the inevitability of suffering. That, frankly, cuts very
deeply. No one of us is immune to it. Unfortunately, we will encounter, in some
form or another, disappointment and the loss of a hope or dream. Unfortunately, we
will suffer, in some way or another; we will watch a loved one die, or contract an
illness and hear ourselves saying those familiar words, "I never thought about this
happening to me", and without a cross our religion will not be much help. The people of
Israel, defeated, captured and kept in exile by the Babylonians, had to confront the
loss of hope and the reality of personal suffering in a very real way. ‘They asked the
question everyone of us has asked in the middle of tragic disappointment, "Why me? Why
has this happened to me?" They asked it in a particularily pointed way because they
knew themselves to be special to God. They were "chosen" people. Why in the world,
then, were they losing and suffering?

a eninkca een patience mS answeyet in a way that ce 2 LB
anyone who finds himself or self in a valley suffering. God use hefit
tragedy for His redemptivegPurposes. He can ugé, even the sorrow £ His people, to

work His will in the wor

God, we believe, does not cause human suffering. eS a a a Sa zit
pees pene: meet. Some people take comfort in attributing to Cod all the
tragedies that happen ~ and somehow find solace in the belief that human death is God's
will - regardless of the circumstances. I do not believe that God orchestrates

our losses, nor does He arrange for malignancies and automobile accidents. Those

things simply happen as a product of the freedom in which human life is lived. What

the religion of the Cross says is that God is acquainted with grief, and that He
experiences our grief with us. What the Gospel”offérs to you and me when disappointment
is real and pain intense is a Ged who knows what it's all about: a God who bore in
himself that most exquisite of all pain which results from watching a beloved child
suffer and die. And, when there is no hope: when our failure is complete, the Gospel

of Jesus Christ offers a God whe turned the crucifixion of His son into a victory

three days later.

-& -

Salvation, after all, is knowing that all of life's defeats are bound up in the
victory of Jesus Christ. ===heewae " crass kneeled ikea! 5 C.
Kung, in his monumental work On Being a Christian Stiipgests that "We experience true
freedom when we are liberated from dependence on and obligation to the false gods who
drive us on mercilessly to new achievements: money or career, prestige or power, or
whatever else is the supreme value for us." (Op. cit.).

God does not will suffering. dimes ait peepee. In fact, if his
Fatherhood is related at all to our experience of parenting He rather enjoys our
victories. He wants us to be free, however, of the bondage to winning and succeeding.
We believe that His salvation in Jesus Christ is precisely to be free in this regard.
God, we believe, is not defeated by what appear to be devastating losses. The death
of His Son, we believe, was lovingly transformed into a victory of peace and joy.

But there is no Easter without Good Friday, and there is no life without death,
and no victory without an honest confrontation with failure and defeat. Lent
resolves, not in a final victory of human courage, but in human death, transformed by
the Love and power of God himself, into the Resurrection, the incredible Good News
of Easter morning.

The Good News is that God will be with you in your suffering as well as your
lighter moments. The Good News, which is essentially news about crucifixion, is that
God will stand with you, with love and strength, in your time of disappointment and
defeat. The Good News is that a God who has known the death of a Son, knows how
grief feels, and will be with you and me in our time of sorrow.

The Good News is that He will turn losses into victories: tears into laughter;
Good Friday into Easter,

That is the Gospel,..f vhich we migtit well respond
"Were the whole rea’

That were a present’ ¥
love so amazing, So divine,

Demands my soul f my Life, my all."
Amen,

God, our Father, as we move through these days of Lent, make us newly
Sensitive to Your love. Give us, 0 God, moments of quiet reflection, to kneel
in amazement, at the Cross of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.