The Lutheran Hour
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"When Winning Is Losing"
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Text: Mark 8:35-37
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A reading from Mark 8: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I need to concede two things up front. First, these words of Jesus hit a bit close to home for me. I have a problem with winning, well, not so much with winning, but with not winning. I confess this warning from Jesus in our reading applies to me and to anyone, really, who enjoys winning in the things of this world, at the risk of forfeiting their soul. Brother, sister, listener, and I ask myself: how much of your life have you redirected to winning in the things of this world, whether winning a degree in academics, or winning a trophy in athletics, or winning a promotion on your job, or winning, as they say, to keep up with the Joneses in the acquisition of stuff—stuff that rusts and rots and decays and fades away.
If that’s you, you’re not alone, Google the words, “winning is …” and see what prompts the internet provides. The top hits include “winning is everything” or “winning is the only thing.” And I confess that too often for me this kind of winning turns out to be losing. How about you? Every now and then when preaching I say, “If you knew me like I know me, you probably wouldn’t sit here and listen to me.” But then again I pause, if I knew you like you know you, I may not waste my breath preaching to you. Of course this is an overstatement sort of. There is One who knew us while we were yet ungodly, and He did not condemn us. While we were yet sinning by winning unhealthily and often not feeling the least bit bad about it, while we were yet enemies of God, this One, the perfect Son of God, Jesus the Christ, loved us to death, His own death, an execution by crucifixion, His own life-giving death, His own freedom-setting death, which sets us free from the tyranny of needing always to win.
The second thing that needs to be said up front is that these words of warning from Jesus in Mark for us not to prioritize gaining the whole world in a way that leads to us forsaking our own souls is not meant as any sort of false spiritualism. God does not dislike or disparage the material creation. But the same God who calls us to cultivate our spiritual lives is the same God who has given us the materials goods that make life beautiful, as long as we do not confuse the gift with the Giver nor abuse the creation but curate the things of this world to give glory to God.
The theologian Arthur Carl Piepkorn puts it this way: “Not only do we pray ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ but we also pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We don’t pray ‘Thy will be done but only in heaven,’ we pray “Thy will be done on earth—as it is in heaven.” Jesus’ words cannot be used as an excuse to be so heavenly minded that we neglect earthly goods. He is warning about the dangers of exploiting the things of this world, without regard to the damage we do to our souls. And if that’s what you’ve slipped into doing, and if that’s what keeps you running and gunning mindlessly on this world’s hamster wheel of stress, then God is calling you to stop, to reconsider, to repent!
People who suffer from atrial fibrillation, or AFib sometimes need what’s called a cardioversion in which, in simple terms, a cardiologist resets their irregular, erratic, unhealthy heartbeat, and gets it back into a regular rhythm. By analogy, we sometimes need a similar jolt of heart therapy from the Holy Spirit to restore us back to the normal heartbeat of the Christian life, to get us back into the flow of baptismal grace, the rhythm of repentance, the syncopation of sanctification. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses begins with the reminder that the entire Christian life is one of repentance. Repent. Lent, like Advent, are seasons in which God calls us to repent. God DMs us, sends us a “D” direct “M” message. God’s got your number. “Hey, you, (insert your name) Repent! You’re speeding headlong in the wrong direction. You need a change of heart. Turn around. Return to the Lord. Stop trying to please just yourself. You might think you’re winning the world, but you may be losing your soul. Stop trying to be a people-pleaser. St. Paul the apostle bluntly punctuates that point: Are we seeking human approval or that of God? It is impossible to be a servant of Christ if I’m busy trying to please people. (see Galatians 1:10).
So, please, pause with me. Here at this midpoint peak in Mark’s Gospel. The Jesus movement is reaching its apex of public popularity; the people are pleased; the multitudes have been miraculously fed; the sick are being healed; the Jesus fan club is gaining members and momentum. But what His followers didn’t know is that Jesus is about take a turn, about to pick up the pace, in double-time towards His primary purpose, which is not to receive standing ovations and stand before sell-out crowds, not winning the world, but saving lives and winning souls!
Who is more sagacious than Solomon who said: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and those who win souls are wise.” Jesus wants His followers, including us, to be fully aware and prepared. It might feel like we’re sliding downhill towards some grim, grey Good Friday, but God’s work in a world like this is often unrecognizable. It’s hidden, upside down and inside out, asymmetrical and counterintuitive. It might certainly feel like we’re losing, I mean making sacrifices for Christ’s sake will mean letting go of some of the things we’ve been chasing after for years. But when the Holy Spirit is working in your life, when you’re disciplining yourself to be a disciple, you can take your daily sacrifices and connect them to the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus at the altar of Calvary, and this is not losing. For in losing our lives for Jesus’ sake, we find life; we forsake the suffocatingly merciless power games of this world. For the sake of breathing in God’s fresh air of mercy, we forsake the passing pleasures of this life. For the sake of the lasting treasures of walking in God’s wealth, we forsake the worldly fame that is always fleeting. For the sake of having our name written on the Lamb’s book of life forever. This is not losing; it’s raising your game to the purpose and plan that God has in mind for you.
C.S. Lewis once observed: “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” What looks like losing in the eyes of this world is, in the hands of God, producing something beyond imagination. Romans 5 puts it like this: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Yes, God indeed warns us, but not in order to cripple our style, or curtail our fun, or control our lives, but to accomplish the exact opposite, so that we can turn from winning—I wish you could see my air quotes—turn from a winning that is actually losing because it gets in the way of the abundant life that God so freely and richly desires to give us.
As Martin Luther tells us “Because of His goodness, God Almighty warns us, just as He warned the people of old, with many prophets and an abundance of words, so God now calls us to repent.” To repent from thinking that just because something is culturally acceptable and socially popular that that’s the measure of whether that thing is right, or good, or true, or beautiful.
Walter A Maier, the first Speaker of The Lutheran Hour, he knew this. This is Black History Month, so here’s a story that illustrates the point. Dr. Maier, a Lutheran pastor of German descent, graduated in 1912 from Concordia College New York. One of his fellow classmates and friends was a student of African descent named Charles Stoll. Charles was the captain of the football team and the Latin club. After graduating from Concordia, Charles wanted to go to seminary to become a pastor; he tried to enroll in a seminary of the Lutheran Church, but was refused and was redirected, to quote, a “colored seminary.” This sort of segregation was culturally acceptable at the time. There were no laws against that kind of discrimination. It was entirely consistent with the ways of the world in those days. There was a way that seemed right, but Dr. Maier, instead, took an unpopular position in favor of Charles Stoll. Rather than close his eyes to the injustice, rather than contradict his conscience and ignore God’s truth and harden his heart and risk forsaking his soul in order to keep pace with public opinion, Dr. Maier followed the clear testimony of God’s Word: that all people are created in the image of God, that Jesus Christ loved and died for all people irrespective of their race or ethnicity. In fact, even 28 years later, Dr. Maier wrote these piercing words aimed at people who point their finger at others but miss their own shortcomings. He said, quote, “The Nazi treatment of the Jew is repulsive, but how did we treat the American Indians. We fed them whiskey, cheated them, took their lands away, and locked them on reservations! What have we done to the American Negro? Try to have a colored boy enrolled in some of our upper schools, and you will find part of the answer.”
I am proud of The Lutheran Hour for resisting the tides of the times and for taking an unpopular prophetic postures that call all people turn to the truth. In order as the Psalmist says, to proclaim God’s righteousness God’s justice, God’s mercy, for the sake of all people, including a people yet unborn. The future for all people, for all ethnicities, whether they consider themselves in the minority or the majority, that future is better when all people are seen in the way God sees them and values them. Because in God’s hands, mercy rules.
In sports, especially when played by children, there is often the “mercy rule.” If one team is getting pummeled, the score so lopsided that catching up is impossible, the mercy rule brings the game to a quick, merciful conclusion. Face it, sin pummels us, it grinds us down. No one gets out of this life alive. The playing field of life is too lopsided, too unfair. The devil’s deck is stacked against us. Try as much as we wish, perform as many good works as we want, pray and sweat and exercise and eat right, we cannot win. Death is undefeated, insurmountable, un-overcome-able until the mercy of God becomes real for us and grips us with this promise in the Scriptures that Jesus does not ignore the affliction of the afflicted, that’s us, and does not hide His face from us, but He hears us when we cry to Him. God is on your side.
The Jesus Movement was not headquartered in a prestigious cultural center like Rome or Athens or Alexandria or situated in a powerful business capital like New York or Shanghai or Singapore. And yet, as Psalm 22 puts it, “kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations.” His was no charismatically persuasive cult of personality funded by a billion-dollar campaign war-chest. In Jesus, mercy rules. His was no might-makes-right ideology justified by a divisive self-righteous identity movement. In Jesus, we are more than conquerors, so much more than this worldly winners. We sing a song of triumph even in Lent, we “rejoice in God” and the Son from whom “we have now received reconciliation.” In Jesus, reconciliation rules; dividing walls are broken down; animosities are left aside; old enemies are brought in; new friends are welcomed aboard. Because His blood is poured out; His body is given up so that our shame is washed away; our debt is written off; our sin is buried under; our old ways are left behind; and a new victory is all we see ahead. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Reflections for February 25, 2024
Title: When Winning Is LosingMark Eischer: Joining us now, here’s Lutheran Hour Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Hello, Mark.
Mark Eischer: Listening to Dr. Nunes’ message today, I’m wondering, is it wrong to want success?
Mike Zeigler: It depends. Because every person’s different. For example, Dr. Nunes, in his sermon, he told us to Google the phrase “winning is” and then to see how the machine fills in the blank. Interestingly, when I googled the phrase under my profile, “winning is,” you know what I got, “winning isn’t everything.” So apparently Google knows that I’m more likely to be the loser who needs to be consoled: “It’s okay. Winning isn’t everything.”
Mark Eischer: Okay, but we’re not talking here about short-term wins and losses.
Mike Zeigler: As Dr. Nunes said, Jesus is interested in our souls, and what he means by that is our whole person, body and soul. Jesus cares about setting us free from this tyranny of thinking that winning or losing can affect our value. It can’t. Because God says we’re worth dying for. He said that in Jesus.
Mark Eischer: All right, but when is it okay to want to be successful?
Mike Zeigler: I think a good measure is when you’re trying to serve your neighbor, according to your calling. That’s a good thing, to want to be successful at serving your neighbor. So for example, as Dr. Nunes mentioned, I am certain that our first Speaker of The Lutheran Hour, Dr. Walter A. Maier, he would be grateful for the eventual success of the endeavor that he started fighting for a hundred years ago when he tried to get his classmate, Charles Stoll, into that school that wouldn’t accept him because of the color of his skin. And even though that effort met with short-term failure, now we can look back and we can see Dr. John Nunes, a man of African descent, who is a graduate of that very school and a guest speaker on The Lutheran Hour. And for that success we can say, praise the Lord.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Return to the Lord” by Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Jesus, I Will Ponder Now” setting by J.S. Bach. Public domain.
“Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.