“’You Are Not a Winner’ – Don’t Believe It!”

Some time ago, on a day like most other days, I got up and proceeded to make breakfast for myself. Noticing that the fridge was empty of cranberry juice, my preferred breakfast beverage, I grabbed a new bottle out of the cupboard, and with only a minor amount of wrestling succeeded in unscrewing the top. As you know, often manufacturers will try to entice you to purchase their products by awarding prizes to those who are lucky enough to buy one of their products, and evidently Ocean Spray was running one of those sweepstakes at the time, as there was a short message on the inside of the bottle top. This is what it said, in capital letters and a bold font: “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”!

            Now the cap did not say, “Sorry, this is not a winning cap”, or even “Sorry, try again.” No, it had to make it personal, had to gratuitously rub my nose in it. Not only had I not won a prize, I was not a winner. Ergo, I was a loser.

            Annie Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, knows what I am talking about here. She knows how easy it is to fall prey to the message “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”, to fall into the trap of thinking that we are never good enough.

            In one of her essays she writes of buying a used car, of her fear of being taken, of how she hired a mechanic to evaluate the car, of how she waited until it got a clean bill of health. She did everything right. But then, just a few days later, right in the middle of a busy intersection, the car just died. Traffic backed up; no one would help; people were yelling at her. It was, she writes, “my own private New York City.” She goes on,      

“It would be hard to capture how I felt at that moment. It was a nightmare. Bad Mind kicked in. Bad Mind can’t wait for this kind of opportunity: “I told you so,” Bad Mind says. It whispers to me that I am doomed because I am such a loser.” (Page 109).

It was not the car that got the blame here, anymore than that bottle cap took the blame for not being my ticket to some fabulous prize. Lamott blamed herself, Bad Mind told her that she had failed in buying that car, that she was inadequate, that she was a loser.

Where do we come up with this pattern of self-denigration? Where do we get the idea that we only have worth when we are a success, when things go our way? Where do we get the idea that we are what we do?

Is it true that our value, our worth, our identity, consists only of what we do and how well we do it at school or on the athletic field or on the job or in the home?

If you go to work each day for years and years, if you work overtime and put everything into your job, and then one day it happens that there are lay-offs and they let you go – are you a loser?

If you marry the person of your dreams and eight years later they walk out for a newer, more attractive in their eyes model, are you a loser?

If despite all your efforts to reach out to others you look around and see you don’t have as many friends as someone else, are you a loser?

If despite all your cleaning and decorating your house still does not measure up to Martha Stewart standards, are you a loser?

We all want to be winners. We work hard at it, constantly looking for clues on how to be winners. Maybe it’s the right clothes, the right car, the right people to hang with, the right activities to do with them. Because maybe if we succeed and win and keep winning then we will get what we really want, deep down: we will be loved. Because everyone loves a winner.

If there ever was a winner, there’s Jesus. He’s our winner, isn’t he? He is the one we want to pattern our lives on, the one we want to emulate. Wise, loving, courageous, strong, compassionate, he had it all, and we know he was a winner in God’s eyes. God even said so in the reading we had today: “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well-pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11)

And yet, look at the timing of God’s declaration of love and delight. It comes not at the end of Jesus’ life, at the point where he is faithful even to the point of suffering on the cross; it comes not at an earlier time, when Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, knowing even as he did so that he was walking to his death; it doesn’t come even earlier than that, after the Sermon on the Mount.

No, God’s declaration of love comes right there at the start of the Gospel, before Jesus has even begun his ministry, before he has done anything to earn God’s love and praise. God’s love comes first.

This is the Gospel message: you are love, accepted, God’s child. As it was with Jesus, so it is with you. God saying to you, you are not a loser, you are my beloved, with you I am well-pleased. God saying to you, I don’t care about anyone’s yardstick, you are my child, and I love you.

When Camden was only six months old we took a sort of pilgrimage to a holy place, a place that always had special meaning for me, my grandparents’ farm in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. My grandmother, Camden’s great-grandmother, was 93 and bed-ridden, at home with round-the-clock nursing care. We had feared that our visit would be too late, but the day finally came when we drove down that old shaded lane and parked beside the barn and walked out of the mid-August heat into the cool of the old stone farmhouse, and there she was. I held her great-grandson, all of six weeks old, out to her, and laid him in her arms. It took most of her strength, but she bent way over and kissed him on the top of his newborn-smelling head and crooned gently, “He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy.”

Camden’s great-grandmother got it. At six weeks of age, no accomplishments behind him, no awards received, no achievements racked up: “He’s a good boy.” Loving him simply because he is.

“You are my beloved .. with you I am well-pleased.”

God’s message for each one of us.

So own it. And live it. 

Not a $20 Rolex

     It happened during a confirmation class trip to New York City several years ago. A group of our 9^th and 10^th Graders had made the trek to the Big Apple for an overnight program of education, worship and fun in the world’s largest Gothic cathedral, St. John the Divine. We had some free time the following day, and so traveled south through Manhattan to Battery Park, where we boarded the ferry for a quick trip out to the Statue of Liberty. It was an inspiring and educational event for us all, as we marveled at Lady Liberty from up close, then made a quick stop on the return trip at Ellis Island, the portal to America for many of our ancestors. But our education for the day was not yet over – as we disembarked from the ferry upon our return to Manhattan, we were met by dozens of street vendors hawking their wares, selling everything from postcards to miniature Statues of Liberty to bootleg DVDs to watches and even cameras. We had, I thought, successfully shepherded the group off the ferry and up the ramp, until a quick headcount revealed that we were one confirmand short. To our relief, he soon appeared – proudly showing off his brand-new, shiny, guaranteed authentic Rolex watch – a watch, he boasted, he had been able to get for just $20.

            You know the rest of the story. That watch ran perfectly – for two weeks.

            It was, of course, a counterfeit. A fraud. A piece of junk, a pale imitation of the Real McCoy.

            Our adventuresome and yet naïve young consumer knew what he wanted, the object of his desire was fixed in his mind. A Rolex Submariner. The perfect timepiece, the standard of excellence, a chronometer built to withstand water pressures of up to 100 feet, to keep time to within seconds each year, a symbol of the good life achieved. Or so the advertisements led him to believe.

            He knew what he wanted. He ended up getting much less.

            I often wonder if this is too often who we think we are. A $20 Rolex. Maybe shiny and spiffed up on the outside, but inside, a counterfeit, a fraud.

            Maybe we do this because of how we have been taught to underestimate our worth. Maybe you were abused by someone you trusted, someone who treated you as an object to be used to satisfy their desires, and so you came to similarly undervalue yourself and your worth. Maybe you were the one always picked last to be on sports teams, and you took this as a judgment not on your athletic abilities, but on who you, at core, really are. Maybe you absorbed the message our media continually bombards you with, that your value depends on how many luxury items you possess, how wrinkle free and unblemished your skin is, how youthful and sexy you are, how successful you have been in business, how healthy you are, how able you are to get things done, how independent you are.

                The great actress Dorothy Maguire was appearing on Broadway in Tennessee William’s play The Night of the Iguana. Just before curtain time on a Friday night, the theatre was disturbed by the shrill voice of a woman in the audience shouting, “Start the show! Start the show! I want to see Dorothy Maguire!” The woman was clearly emotionally disturbed, but after a moment of shocked silence, some in the theatre began to turn on her. “Listen, you old bag, get out!” someone heckled. “Throw her out! Start the show!” another jeered. The house manager came to try and reason with the woman, but she pulled away, shrieking, “All I want to see is Dorothy Maguire; then I’ll leave.”

            Suddenly, through the part in the curtains, Miss Maguire herself appeared. She crossed the stage and walked calmly over to the disturbed woman. She spoke quietly to her and then hugged her. The woman, who had recoiled whenever anyone else had touched her, drew close to Miss Maguire, got up from her seat, and together they walked toward the exit. Before they left the theater, Miss Maguire paused and turned to the audience. With grace and kindness she announced, “I’d like to introduce another fellow human being.”

            Dorothy Maguire testified to the truth about this woman, a truth that no emotional illness or abuse from others could take away – she was not a $20 Rolex. She was a fellow human being, a child of God, a citizen with the saints, a member of the household of God.

Just like each and every one of us.