Love Loss

Learning to love our failures to find real success

9/13/2017

Luke 6:20-26 Raising his eyes toward his disciples Jesus said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

                I’m going to tell you something today that’s a little surprising or maybe even shocking. And that is we should love our losses. I am convinced that hidden inside the “agony of defeat” is a great good, namely, we grow as a person. Of course, we all want to win and do well. Danny Quintana loved his touchdown run last Thursday against Charleston. You looked good, Danny. Dalton Smith was smoking hot on the golf course yesterday. Watch out, Jordan Spieth. And Kate Goldtrap is happy her hair didn’t catch on fire twirling the burning batons. But as good as it feels to succeed, I believe it’s even better to fail. Why? Well, because in loss and failure, we gain more wisdom, we grow in virtue, and we garner more grace. Let me give you a few personal examples of how I’ve learned to love loss.

                When I was in high school, I played soccer and was on defense. And in one game I even scored a goal, as a defensive player! Unfortunately, the goal was for the other team. I tried to kick a ball away from our goal, but it curved back into our goal. Yeah, I was bending it like Beckham. I was the “Player of the Game” but for the other team. I learned something from that loss – I should find another sport to play. When I was a senior in college, we had to take comprehensive exams in philosophy, over everything we had learned in four years. I sat in front of three teachers and they asked me questions. I was sweating bullets. There was only one question I missed, and it’s the only one I remember: how would Aristotle describe the virtuous man? All the questions I answered correctly – my so-called “successes” – are long forgotten. But our losses are burned into our brains and we never forget them. When I was in seminary the bishop sent me to study Spanish in Mexico. The only Spanish words I knew at the time were “taco” and “bean burrito.” I felt like a little baby learning his first words; it was hard and humiliating. But I learned fast. Y ahora, yo puedo hablar en espanol sin problema! Que chido, no? My point is simple: we hate to lose and we love to win, but we gain so much more grace and wisdom and glory from our losses. We have to learn to love loss.

                 In the gospel today, Jesus teaches the same shocking truth: our losses are really great gains, indeed, we gain heaven. He says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, and denounce your name as evil…your reward will be great in heaven.” In other words, when it looks like you have failed in the eyes of the world, that’s when you’ve succeeded in the eyes of heaven. Why? Well, because that’s when you grow as a person, when you gain more wisdom, and when you garner more grace. To put it in one word, you become more like Jesus. How so? Think about it: by all earthly standards Jesus was an utter failure: he died a humiliating death as a common criminal on the cross, all his friends abandoned him, he was poor and pathetic in people’s minds. But that was his moment of greatest glory: because that’s when he was most pleasing to God. No one loved loss more than Jesus; he knew that was the moment of great gain.

                 Boys and girls, I know this is a hard lesson to love your losses. Gosh, that goes against the grain! Everyone loves a winner and no one loves a loser. But I want you to think differently and love your losses. For instance, don’t be afraid to try something new, like Mr. Casey’s “Earth Club,” or Mrs. Marsh’s “Quiz Bowl,” or Mrs. Elskin’s “Drama Club,” or the “Pure Heart Girls.” You may do well, or you may do poorly. But you will grow as a person more from your failures than your successes. Today, we will start praying the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Don’t worry, I’ll say it really loudly and drown you out so no one can hear you if you mess up. But I promise you: it’s the parts where you say it wrong that you’ll remember best, you’ll feel like me in Mexico: taco, bean burrito. But by the end of the year, you won’t even look at the sheet of paper. Look at the losses you have suffered personally: they can be a great good in your life. If you come from a family where there’s a divorce, you may grow up to be a marriage counselor, or at least not have a divorce in your own marriage. If your family has legal problems, you may grow up to become a lawyer and help others legally. If your father has cancer, you may grow up to become a doctor and heal people. If you go to church and the priest gives boring sermons, you may grow up to be a priest and give good sermons. Bad sermons can inspire vocations to the priesthood! But do you see what’s happening? What looks like loss, failure, surrender, defeat, humiliation, rejection turns out to be the beginning of glory and greatness, just like it did for Jesus.

                 Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, had many failures before he finally found the right filament. He purportedly said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Great attitude. It’s only when we love our losses that we finally find the way to win.

Praised be Jesus Christ!