Day 177 God's Game

Why are television shows like American Idol and other "reality" game shows and movies like The Hunger Games, captivating? Maybe it's because what we see on the screen is a fascinating and disturbing mirror of our own souls.... Maybe we are collectively caught inside (and addicted to?) a game that allows only one winner.

We are desperate for a faith that unplugs us from the need to succeed and frees us to lose, especially in North America where winning is everything and treated as the highest virtue. Mercifully, Jesus models another way. Jesus shows us that it is as the loser that God comes to us, blesses us, forgives us, and offers the hand of peace. We are loved by a loser! It is good news that has been "hidden since the foundations of the world" (Matt. 13:35), and revealed fully in Jesus. This is the Gospel.

"Jesus the loser" is not some kind of mental jujitsu in which Jesus feigns being the loser only to flip the script at the end and rise triumphantly in the resurrection as the winner and finally declare, "Got ya! I beat you at your own game. I win, you lose!" Jesus suffered real and painful loss eternally. He comes to us bearing the marks of this loss in his hands and side to keep us from denying the lethal games we play. 

And yet, the Ultimate Loser who has suffered great loss is not defined by this loss. He may have lost our game, but that's because he never really played our game: It is as if he were playing another game all along and frees us to do the same!

"...when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

                        then I was beside him, like a master worker;

            and I was daily his delight,

                        rejoicing/laughing before him always,

            playing in his inhabited world

                        and delighting in the human race (Prov. 8:30-31)."

Jesus eagerly extends an invitation to play an older and happier game--one that he has been playing from the start. He extends the invitation for us to play with him without the slightest hint of resentment or hesitation, even to those of us who have played so poorly and so violently for so long.  

This is impossible for us to grasp. And that is why Scripture and the church rightly insist that it is a gift that is given - to be received not grasped. We call the gift faith.

Lent opens us up to this gift. It is the invitation to recognize Jesus among those who have been labeled the least, last, and lost and to join him as he plays a different game in their presence. There is nothing wrong with winning in this world--but when we occupy the space of the loser we can begin God's perspective, and that the world's games can be fearful, blame-shifting, and scapegoating that ends in killing God and our neighbor, even ourselves. In fact, maybe we are not playing the game at all: maybe it is playing us. 

In God's playground, 

Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

- Gerard Manley Hopkins