Losers

A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of a baseball cap display of the two NY football teams: Giants and Jets. The Jets hats were all marked with a 50% off sign.

Our society certainly has a weird way of devaluing losers.

I mean I get that in the law of supply and demand, Giants hats (especially now that they won the Superbowl) are going to be in higher demand because more people want to be associated with the winning team. I get why the store does it.

What I don't get is why that's the case. I am a Duke basketball fan, whether they win or lose. (And yes, they often win, but I didn't know that when I started liking them.) I never would've gone out to buy a Duke hat just because they won the championship in 2001 or 2010, if I wasn't already a fan. It seems to me that if you're going to like a team, you should just like them. Always. Not just because they won the play-offs or the Superbowl this year.

The thing about winners and losers is that it can change on a dime. The Packers came into this season as 2011 Superbowl champs. They played a great season, with only one loss before the play-offs. They seemed like they were on a good path to repeating their victory this year. But just one game was enough to turn a very winning team into a "loser." (Disclaimer here: I didn't actually watch any football games, except half of the last quarter of the Superbowl. All my knowledge of football is from checking scores online and Facebook chatter.)

There was this guy Phil at my high school. Really little guy, about locker-stuffing size, carried a suitcase on wheels instead of a backpack...perfect for being picked on. And so he was perceived as a loser. I talked to Phil a couple times in lunch lines and he was a really nice guy. But because he was a "loser" in the eyes of the school, he was devalued. Might as well have been wearing a 50% off sign like those Jets hats.

It's interesting, then, to see the kinds of people Jesus hung out with. Not the rich; he turned that guy away. Not the well-educated Jews; he fought with them a lot. No, Jesus hung out with the B-list at best. Those fishermen he called disciples? They were fisherman because they hadn't made the cut to become rabbis, so they learned the family business instead. And that's the "coolest" of Jesus' companions. The cheating tax collectors, adulterers, Samaritans, and prostitutes were all the clear losers of Jesus' day.

But he flipped the winner/loser notion on its head when he said that the last will be first. That if you want to be first you should serve everyone. That he came to help the ones who need help, not the ones who think they're already good enough.

Now I'm not saying that the Pats were the real winners of the Superbowl. I mean, in sports you do have to get the most points to win. (Except golf. Don't do that in golf.) But winning or losing doesn't make you any more valuable. And being a "loser" in life means you're just the kind of person Jesus loved to hang out with.