Losing the Race
One of the dominant metaphors used for life is winning. We’ve turned just about everything into a competition, which makes losing shameful and the most undesirable position to find oneself. Out of the endless ways you could put a person down, calling them a loser still carries the most potency. It was certainly true when I was growing up, and I’d argue it’s still true today. Even typing '“loser” feels like a gut punch for me.
Which creates a culture and society often depicted with another metaphor. A Rat Race. Who can work longer, faster, more efficiently, creating more product, selling more product, accumulating more wealth, and answering the basic question, “How are you?,” with a one word response “Busy.”
Which could easily be translated, “Trying my best to win.”
In the face of the rat race is the season of Lent. A time when we are invited to sit and contemplate. We pause and allow our hearts to absorb the words of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, “the problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
Which takes us to a Jesus story, found in the eighth chapter of Mark’s account of Jesus’s life. Jesus is standing before his students and teaching them what his game plan for life will look like:
From then on, Jesus began to tell his students that he, the Son of Man, was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer great injustice from the elders, leading priests, and religious scholars. He also explained that he would be killed and three days later be raised to life again. Jesus opened his heart and spoke plainly to his disciples, explaining all these things to them.
Then Peter took him aside and rebuked him.
Peter functioned as Jesus’s lead student, the spokesman for the team, and he responds to what was being taught by taking Jesus back stage and chewing him out. I can just hear Peter, “Jesus, we have worked too hard and given up so much, we’re not going to lose. We are not losers! We are winners, so you need to drop the loser talk and get to winning.”
Jesus responds by telling Peter to get in the back of the line, and refers to Peter as Satan, which seems a bit harsh. Then Jesus says, “For your heart is not set on God’s plan but man’s!”
Jesus is trying to explain how he is to sit on the throne of the universe, but Peter has the seat buried in blueprints for other plans. The disciples’s plans. Our plans. The plans to win the rat race.
Jesus responds, “If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways. For if you let your life go for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will continually experience true life. But if you choose to keep your life for yourself, you will forfeit what you try to keep.”
This can sound like Jesus has had too much wine. The plan is losing? Seriously Jesus, you need to back away from the punch bowl, maybe grab a cup of coffee, or take a nap.
Without fully going into the deep weeds, the language in these texts calls for surrendering what we might call, the small life. Replacing the temporal with the eternal. Jesus says it like this,
“For what use is it to gain all the wealth and power of this world, with everything it could offer you, at the cost of your own life?”
Wealth and power is the game that Rome is currently playing, it’s the game of empire and Caesar. Sacrificial love is the way of God’s kingdom and of Jesus.
Such a paradox. An invitation guided by humility and powered by love. Jesus, this is needed now more than ever. May your way be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
