When Losing IS Winning

Recognize those who want to be considered members of the Vineyard...

Started new series Not In It To Win It. For the next few weeks we are going to look at how following Jesus informs our engagement with our political system. I’m thankful that this is a topic that doesn’t get anyone angry. Everyone stays pretty chill. No one thinks of creative names for the other side.

If read newsletter, asked you to think about what winning looks like in life. Give me some feedback. How does world view winning?

Ever had experience what you thought you saw isn’t really what you saw?

House of mirrors

Optical illusion

Upside down pic… right side up one appears to be normal until we see reality

Suggest this is our constant state as fallen creatures in a broken world.

Convince this is just how is. Normal.

Ever just convince yourself things will always be this way - marriage, money, health, family tension, depression

Message we will look at this morning Jesus talks about what’s at the heart of KoG. How we see reality is not reality. And so how we win is not really how we win. Passage is jarring. Pulling off band aid. Flipping on lights after sitting in dark room. Necessary to see how things really are, and that how we win in the KoG is by losing.

Pray...

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Read Matthew 16:21-26

Matthew 16:21–26 (NRSV)

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Context: Jesus is couple years in ministry marked by the supernatural - healing, deliverance, miracles. Just finished feeding thousands - for second time.

Just been moment where Peter acknowledges Jesus as Messiah - he’s doing Messiah-stuff. Everything points to the fact that Jesus is winning - at least by disciples standards.

It’s what makes his next statement so baffling. Matthew 16:21 “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” You’re going to do what?! Be killed.

Appears Peter essentially chews Jesus out. No way! Not going to happen. Don’t even think it.

Why Peter’s reaction? Doesn’t follow script he and everyone else believes about Messiah. Messiah would be priest/king - special relationship to God & military leader. When Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah this is what he had in mind. Jesus was checking all the Messiah boxes for the script he knew:

Miracles showed special relationship with God - check

Crowds showed he could raise army and lead revolt - check

This is what a Messiah is, and Messiah’s definitely don’t die. That would be losing.

Except that Jesus takes picture they had and turns over on what what Messiah will be/do. He essentially tells them they’ve been looking at the picture upside down. They’ve been viewing him/Father completely wrong. God is not like what you think.

Do you feel like God has ever flipped the script on you? Like, what I thought I was signing up for is not what I signed up for?

Thought life would be easy

thought marriage would get better

Thought grandma wouldn’t die

Finances would improve

thought Hogs would be better

What Jesus says is so baffling to Peter - repugnant - that he goes off on Jesus. And then gets called ‘satan’. You don’t ever want Jesus to call you satan… Satan in Hebrew means adversary/hindrance. Telling Peter than his resistance to Jesus’ death is hindrance to seeing kingdom fully come. Jesus intends to lose in the eyes of the world.

Losing is what winning looks like. At least when we turn our picture right-side up.

It gets worse. Not only will Jesus win by losing, but that’s also how his followers will win too. By losing. Matthew 16:24 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Jesus says something that probably made them lose their minds. If you really are going to be my disciple, you have to lose too. You have to accept the way of the cross.

We are so far removed from this hard to identify with. Can’t imagine how horrible the idea of cross is to them. The cross was more than a way to execute people. It was a torture instrument. It was a terrorism tool. This is what happens when you mess with Rome. The cross - where thousands of Jews were killed - was completely repugnant to them. Asking them to voluntary pick one up...

In the Roman world, the thought of someone going to the cross as a way of winning would be seen as a fool. The cross was not winning. It was losing in worst way imaginable. Alexander worships his god graffiti - original then rubbing. For a Roman, winning by losing is nonsensical. I think is still is for people today.

And equally nonsensical in Jewish world. Deuteronomy 21:23 “... anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” The wooden cross seen as tree in Jewish mind. Hanging on one meant you under God’s curse, not blessing. The real Messiah would never allow himself to hang on a cross. He would certainly never tell his followers to follow his example.

Except he did and he does.

Jesus didn’t come do one-off thing so sin taken care of and we all go back to winning as usual. The cross defines who God is. The cross is what God is like, and on it Jesus redefines winning for all time. He’s not be ambiguous about his plans:

The first will be last and the last will be first.

Whoever would be greatest among you must be slave of all.

Matthew 16:25 “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

This was a hard sell for them. And it’s still a hard sell for us.

It seems like Jesus is saying that the way we think we win is not really how we win. That following him for the win looks an awful lot like losing by our standards. Like self-denial. Like choosing to be last. Like sacrificing our will for God’s will. And Jesus says, “Yep”.

In a few weeks will elect new president. Some of us will be somewhat happy with result, some not so much. But even if your person/party wins, that’s not the win. If your person wins the work isn’t over.

Winning in God’s kingdom is not getting the right person/party in White House. God’s kingdom will never come through a human political system. NOT saying you shouldn’t still vote… just saying it isn’t the win for us.

Neither is any other way we might define the win. Most toys, nicest house, hottest boy/girlfriend, coolest car, biggest bank account, being most popular, having the largest number FB followers, getting the most scholarship offers...

I think most of us realize this. That these things - as nice as they are and not wrong to have - don’t make for a rich, meaningful life. I think the big stumbling block for most is when realize what Jesus is really inviting us to. A life of losing. Of denial. Of giving away. Of being a loser by the world’s standards.

I think some of us thought we were just signing up for fire insurance. Maybe that will work. Maybe you can have just enough Jesus to not go to Hell. He’s trying to get us to turn the picture over so we can see a kingdom reality. That by giving our life away for his sake, we actually gain our life back. This is how we become truly human. This is how we enter into his joy. Where we will have peace. This is where we find life and fulfillment.

Jesus’ message - the gospel - is not conceptual. It’s not a set of facts. It is a radical reorientation of everything you thought you knew, everything you thought was right. It’s a commitment to a lifestyle that is right-side up in an upside-down world.

The life Jesus invites us to imitate is cruciform. Shaped like a cross. But the promise he offers is that if you’ll take his posture in the world, you’ll find that you’re actually winning.

If you’ve never heard of Bart Ehrman, he is professor of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill. Degrees from Moody, Wheaton, and Princeton Theo. And he’s an atheist. Published book in 2018 trying to unravel mystery as to how a first-century movement launched by a dozen Galileans became the greatest force for cultural change in history. How was it that Rome replaced their entire pantheon of gods with a crucified Galilean rabbi? How is it that people who would mock a crucified Messiah in 200 AD are all bowing the knee to him by 500 AD?

Notice Exhibit A: Cross at Emperors Gate Read Ehrman’s quote on p64...

The Cross, the Colosseum, these places of losing have brought the world to its knees.

Could this happen again? Jesus says yes. But not how we’ve been going about it. The tools and tactics of this world will never bring about a revival of the kingdom of God.

The truth is that we already have everything we need. We have the Spirit of God living in us. We have more going for us than they did. There’s more of us, and we have indoor plumbing.

History can repeat itself. How can it happen again? Not by trying to win by the world’s standard, but by taking up the cross. By surrendering our will to God’s will. By turning the picture over and reorienting ourselves to the right-side up nature of the kingdom of God. The cross is what it looks like when losing is really winning.

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Ministry...

This message is not complicated. But it is challenging. It brings us to a crossroads and forces us to consider what winning will look like for us. Will I trust that losing myself for Jesus’ sake is where I will find real life? Or will I keep my upside-down picture and keep trying to find life that way.

Someone may be here or listening online and you sense God’s Spirit inviting you into a relationship with him. Today is your day to become a follower of Jesus. Maybe you are already familiar with the story - that God the Son took on human flesh and became one of us. That he showed us exactly who the Father is by his teaching and miracles. That he took the death consequence of our sin upon himself at the cross. And that he defeated death on our behalf and rose from the tomb on the third day.

1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

The Bible invites us to give our allegiance to this person. Not mere belief, but loyal obedience. To surrender yourself fully to Jesus as Lord of your life. We’re going to have some prayer time in a moment. If today is your day, would you step out and find me and let me pray with you about becoming a follower of Jesus?

Most of us are here who have already taken this step of surrender. But it’s good to ask if there is anything we haven’t surrendered fully. Is there any way that we are trying to define winning that is out of alignment with how Jesus defines it?

Today for some might be a day of repentance. Asking God to forgive you for where you’ve made other things the priority.

Many of us already know that the world is broken. We experience the brokenness of it in our family relationships, in our health, in our marriages, in our finances, in our mental health. The good news of Jesus’ message is that the kingdom of God has come in him. That we can begin to live in the coming kingdom now. That sometimes the future kingdom breaks into this present time.

The HS is here to enact the kingdom in our lives. To heal what is broken and restore what is lost.

Ministry time ...

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Communion

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*** Announcement reminders ***

We’ve been closing our worship times by praying prayers that remind us of who we are and that help form us to represent God well. During the next few weeks I’d like us to prayer a kind of Christian pledge of allegiance - the Apostles’ Creed - asking God to help us keep Jesus in the center of all we do and say.

Explain “catholic” church!!!!

I believe in God, the Father almighty,     creator of heaven and earth;

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.     He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit         and born of the Virgin Mary.     He suffered under Pontius Pilate,         was crucified, died, and was buried.     He descended to the dead.

    On the third day he rose again.     He ascended into heaven,         and is seated at the right hand of the Father.     He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,     the holy catholic Church,     the communion of saints,     the forgiveness of sins     the resurrection of the body,     and the life everlasting. Amen.

Now as we prepare to take this time of worship into the week ahead, the Lord who loves you reminds you in 1 John:

1 John 4:9 NRSV

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

GO BE THE CHURCH!!