Jesus is for Losers

Believe me, I know what it means to be a loser.

When I was in middle school, I was a loser. Like, the biggest loser. You know those kids who nobody likes, their just to weird, everybody knows they are a loser? Those kids thought I was a loser! It's not that I didn't have any friends. I had two friends- but they were both imaginary. And they never played with me, they only played with each other. I remember in grade 6, my teacher, Monsieur Choquette, was getting mad at everyone for something. You know when your teacher is getting mad at you for one specific thing, and then the start throwing in every other bad thing you or some other student might have done once into their lecture? Suddenly he changes the thing he's mad at, and he starts saying "And why doesn't anyone like Peter? I think he's a nice guy..." I was like- wait, what? When I was in middle school, my family moved to an upper middle class neighborhood in South Calgary. The year was 1990, and in those days everybody had to wear just the right clothes- Guess Jeans or Levi’s 501, Doc Martens or Vans for shoes. I tried so hard to fit in! I remember going shoe shopping with my dad and begging him not to buy me Reeboks, because those shoes were not cool anymore. Though they would have been a step up from my Zellers brand Bullet shoes. Instead we bought Vans, and I finally had something cool to wear to school! Imagine my frustration when I went to school and discovered that my Vans had black lining on the soles. All the cool kids had Vans with white lining. My classmates made sure to point this out- repeatedly. Or when they noticed that my Jeans were “Spider” brand. I went home that night and reasoned that the brand name really wouldn’t matter if no one could see it- so I just had to rip off the label, and I’d be fine. But under the “Spider” label was another label which said “Alley Cats”- and that one would not come off. All the cool kids would stand around in a clump before school and at recess. There was only really one group of cool kids, and it consisted of about ⅔ of the kids. There were smaller groups of nerdy kids- academics. But I didn’t hang out with any of them because I didn’t want to be seen as one of them. Then there were the loners. Like the kid everyone called Mario, who always wore Mario themed clothes. One day all the cool kids swarmed him, and started chanting “Mario, Mario!” To get away he tried to climb a chain link fence. The tall kind, behind the baseball diamond. He just sat there at the top while all the cool kids mocked him, wishing he had a Mario Tube he could escape through… Of course I joined the mob of bullies, so I could fit in. Then there was Joey Oberhoffner. We’d always sing “Joey O, Joey O….”, to the tune of the guards in the Wizard of Oz. He always wore the same turquoise pants. He insisted he had three pairs, but we never believed him. But see those kids, they knew that they were losers. I kept trying to fit in with the cool kids, so I’d try to be discreet- sneak up on the cool kids in their clump when they weren’t looking, and then just stand there as if I were an accepted member of their group. The cool kids called me a follower, and the losers tried to persuade me it wasn’t working. I remember one day I approached the group of cool kids, who seemed unaware that I was coming closer. Until suddenly like a flock of birds they moved 12 steps away from me and all turned to look at me and see what I would do. Only one kid stood beside me- a kid we called “Donut” for reasons that were never made clear to me. Donut looked at me and said in an extremely sarcastic tone “Will you be my friend”? I quietly walked away while they laughed, but I quietly resolved that I would just hang low for a bit, let this blow over, and in a few weeks I would sneak back into the pack. I wanted so badly to fit in, and now as an adult I still feel the pressure to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. But as a Christian I need to remind myself that this is not what life is about. After all, Jesus is for losers! I don’t just mean that he’ll like me no matter how fashionable I’ll be- although of course that is true. Even if I am a failure at all the things that matter to people in this world- fail to secure a good education, fail to purchase a nice house, fail to get promoted at work, fail to have the perfect family- even then God’s love never fails. But there’s more to it than that! What if I fail to love, the very thing for which God created me? What if I am a sinner like the worst of sinners, the kind that everybody would judge and reject, the kind who wouldn’t dare show their face in the doors of a church? The thing about going to Church, turning to Christ, is that it’s kind of like taking a shower. People don’t take showers because they are cleaner than everybody else. They take showers because they need ‘em more! So if you are a ‘loser’ in the spiritual sense- then you need grace! Jesus put it this way; "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17) As Christians we might try to be like that middle school kid who keeps following the cool kids around and parroting them. But we are called to ‘despise the things of this world’ (Cf 1 John 2:15) We are warned not to ‘conform to the pattern of this world’ (Romans 12:2). The call of the Christian is not to be like the cool kids. The call of the Christian is to let grace transform us, and not to let the worries of life and lure of wealth choke the life of grace in us. The thing is that the things of this world are not all despicable! It was obvious in high School that I should reject the sex, drugs, and alcohol culture that pervaded. It’s obvious how that stuff leads you away from God. But there is another thing which may be a little more insidious in our culture today, which I think Christians are buying in wholesale. It is the idea that ‘happiness’ or ‘wellness’ is our goal. Christianity is reduced to a means to an end, a relationship that you have while pursuing that end. Now don’t get me wrong- wellness is a good thing. But I keep getting asked to give this talk on how faith contributes to wellness. And it does! Objectively people in our culture who are plugged in to their faith and a faith community are happier, more successful, have stronger marriages, less depression… it would seem that if wellness were your goal making sure to have an active prayer life and attend Church would help a lot! But wellness is not the goal of the Christian life. If it were, than people like Jesus and the apostles failed miserably at achieving that goal. Most of the apostles were martyred, or imprisoned, or faced other extreme hardships. Jesus himself was killed. When Jesus was recruiting people he did not say “Come follow me, and I will make you happy, and you will experience the wellness for which you were created.” Instead he said “Come follow me, take up your cross, drink the cup that I will drink. You will be persecuted and rejected. Rejoice in your suffering.” The reality is that the goal of the Christian life is love, and this reorientation towards love instead of wellness changed everything. When the goal is love, suffering makes sense as a way of loving. Making sacrifices and fasting and living simply all make sense in the logic of love, but not in the logic of wellness. Having a lot of kids doesn’t even make sense to people who make wellness their goal… but Catholics have a lot of kids! No wonder Christians are rejected in the eyes of the world! Jesus is for losers! Not for the self made people who have it all together on their own power. As disciples of Christ, we go to Him, to the source of grace, and grace enables us to live a life of love which is radically counter cultural.