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Christmas Is for Losers
by James P. Johnston, D.O.
Dec. 22, 2023
It was my senior year at Nease High School, and we were 0 and 8. That's zero victories and 8 losses. I was starting outside linebacker. It was a 2A school that just got promoted to 3A, but seemed to be comprised of mostly of blond-headed skinny surfer boys and skateboarders, thanks to close proximity to St. Augustine Beach. We were not accustomed to seeing all the linemen on the opposing 2A team wearing beards, as we saw in 3A varsity football!
We were playing the smallest team of the year, Bishop Kenny, and we were winning by 2 points. The crowd was going wild. 30 seconds left, and they had 80 yards to go.
"Don't get beat deep!" Coach Blue hollered. "They're gonna throw it long! Don't get beat deep!"
Shannon, my brother 11 months my junior, and I were in the deep safety positions for what our coaches suspected would be a long pass. We were high-fiving, and giddy with the thrill of victory. And in the final play of the game, Shannon and I would be the two players in the backfield! Our parents were so proud! A victory, finally!
The quarterback hiked and threw a quick pass to the receiver behind the line of scrimmage on my side of the field. It looked like he was going to run for the sidelines. I hate open-field tackles so I turned on the burners to try to close it for the tackle, but the receiver stopped, took a step back....
Uh oh. They were throwing deep. A high lofty ball to a 6 and a half foot tall receiver that by my calculation would reach the ball about when my helmet would reach his lower back! Oh yeah, I got this...
The hit made the crowd gasp!
But the receiver held on. First down from the twenty.
Oh no!
They were out of timeouts and everyone was frantic. They managed to hike the ball, with a couple seconds left, to the placekicker and the puny field goal kicker put it through the uprights.
We closed the year 0 and 10. :-(
Thanks to the Johnston brothers.
But it was only a few years before Tim Tebow would enter Nease High School's roster as a home-schooler, and lead Nease to a state title. And then a Heisman.
Places I lived always managed to make winners. When I was a student at Florida State, we were #1. When I was taking my kids to Ohio State games as a resident of Ohio for two decades, we were #1.
I just couldn't get on the winning team.
I've done my share of losing in life. It's made me empathetic with losers, for sure. But even I wouldn't be sympathetic at all with my 15-year-old daughter if she were to come to me with this story:
"Dad, you're not going to believe this! The angel Michael came to me last night in a dream and said God was making me pregnant. And my son will be His Son, and He will be the Messiah!"
Imagine. Not only was she pregnant out of wedlock, but to dream up a psycho story like that!?
To make it worse, Mary was engaged to a man at the time who insists he hadn't been with her!
If she held to the story after a lengthy interrogation, she'd be putting her nose in the corner while I hunted down every young man who'd ever looked at her twice, looking for a neck to wring.
Now, in the Jewish culture, that was a capital crime. The punishment for a single woman having sex with a single man was marriage: they had to marry and they couldn't ever divorce for any reason. Plus, the young man had to pay the father of the bride a fine to help remedy the humiliation he brought to the family. But the punishment for an engaged woman having sex out of wedlock was... death by stoning.
That's the big deal of Joseph's commitment to not publicly expose her. Matthew 1:19 says, that Joseph, "being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly." He kindly wasn't going to push for a trial. Mary's parents were relieved. Joseph planned to keep her pregnancy a secret as much as possible to try to protect her from the other stone-throwers in town. If people found out, they would likely assume the child was his and that he was simply impatient for the honeymoon day.
In that culture, pregnant Mary and her "baby daddy" Joseph shopping in the market would be a humiliating thing as people scorned and ridiculed them everywhere they went. "Losers!"
To make matters worse, Mary went into labor while traveling and they couldn't find an open hotel! Knowing that the roads were packed with people traveling for the census, Mary must looked at Joseph between contractions and thought, "Not much foresight there, honey bun." She had to deliver the child in the barn and the baby took his first nap in a manger, which is where they'd put hay to feed the goats, cows, and sheep.
"What a loser!" the passerbys must have thought.
I've had chickens and horses, and you know what the worst thing about barns is? The crap! I can't tell you how many times I went to the barn after a long day's work to feed and water the animals and shut up the chickens with my work clothes on, thinking, I'll avoid the feces. I won't get dirty. Then I'd come back to the house with one more pair of nice shoes needing to be washed of chicken feces, laying in the foyer.
When Jesus began his ministry at 12 years of age, his parents sought for him frantically. They were in Jerusalem for a religious feast, and Jesus missing from their group. How horrible they must have felt losing the young Messiah that Jehovah entrusted to them. They finally found him in the temple communicating with the masters of the law and the prophets.
When Mary and Joseph expressed their frustration, Jesus said, "Didn't you know I'd be doing my Father's business?"
Wow, was Jesus was starting his ministry at 12!? Seems that way.
But Dad wouldn't have it. The Bible says they told him to come with him and "he was subject to them" (Luke 2). The doors were shut on Jesus' teenage ministry.
Jesus' loser parents simply weren't going to let Jesus start His ministry, and Jesus waited until 33 years of age before he got started, after his father had passed away. When he was 33, at the wedding feast in Canaan, Jesus seemed a little stuck in Joseph's rut of mediocrity, refusing to do a miracle even as his mother prodded him on (John 2). When Jesus flat out refused to do the miracle, Mary turned to the servants, "Just do what He says." They obediently waited at Jesus' side until Jesus finally did the miracle. Her faith put God on the spot! Finally, Jesus turned his water into wine and the ministry of the Messiah finally began. At 33, thanks probably to his loser Papa. (What would the world be like today if he had begun his ministry at 12 as it appears Jesus intended?)
Were these the best parents Jehovah could find to raise the Messiah?
I'm sure God's proud of his holy angels who never sinned, and his holy "Enochs", that only man we know of who went to straight heaven to be with God before the death and resurrection of Jesus. (All the other repentant sinners had to go to Abraham's bosom in the bowels of the earth and couldn't go to heaven until the sin debt had been paid.) God loves sinlessness! God loves obedience! God loves moral perfection!
But the sinless ones are not necessarily His favorites.
Remember King David? Before he was a warrior slinging stones at giants, he was the "odd one out." He looked different than his big brothers. The Bible describes his as freckled with reddish toned skin. The prophet Samuel told David's Papa, Jesse, that he was going to pay them a visit and Jesse was ordered to present all his sons to the prophet. Now back then, you did what the prophet said! The prophet was famous, like the Vice President. Maybe, Jesse thought, the prophet was going to pick one of his sons for an important job!
All Jesse's sons were presented to Jesse but God informed the prophet that none of these would be King. "Do you have any other sons?" Samuel asked Jesse.
It had to have been embarrassing for Jesse to get caught disobeying the prophet. "Just little David. In the field. Keeping the sheep."
I imagine Jesse blushing. That was a lousy excuse. Didn't they have fences back then? Why didn't Jesse present all his sons before the prophet as instructed? One look at David, and Samuel could see he didn't look like his brothers at all. I suspect Jesse doubted whether David was really his! After all, in Psalm 51, David confessed, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and In sin did my mother conceive me." In Psalm 69, David says he was despised and shunned by his family, and an object of scorn. There are two passages that name two of David's sisters, who are said to be the daughters of another man besides Jesse, a man named Nahash (1 Chronicles 2:16-17; 2 Samuel 17:25). There was clearly shame associated to David's existence, and that explains Jesse's reluctance to bring David before the prophet. David's mother was probably in an adulterous relationship with Nahash about the time of David's conception, but Jesse forgave her and took her child as his own. But it was inescapable: David was the like "the red-headed stepchild" of the family. What a loser! But the odd-child, the one probably conceived in his mother's adulterous relationship, that's the one God picked to govern Israel!
The Bible says that David didn't sin all his days except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (I Kings 15:5). But what David lacked in quantity he made up for with quality. His sin? Two capital crimes. His sin of having sex with a married woman Bathsheba and murdering her husband Uriah consumed about a year of David's otherwise God-honoring life.
When David was on his deathbed, who did God pick as his successor? Was it a child from David's wife Michal, the daughter of Saul, who certainly came from the best stock? Was it a child from David's wife Abigail, who was certainly one of his holiest wives and well-honored by David?
No. It was Solomon, the son of Bathsheba the adulteress and David. A birth that culturally would be forever stained by the disgusting sin that founded his parents' relationship. By all moral and cultural means of judgment, Solomon was on the lowest rung on the ladder of life. But God picked him to be King of Israel.
God loves sinlessness. But He has a special place in his heart for losers. Losers who desperately need grace.
Jesus told the parable of a despised and degenerate tax-collector and a Pharisee. The tax-collector was a Jew who gathered money from the people on behalf of the occupying Roman Army. The tax-collectors were hated. The Pharisees dressed in fine robes and were masters of the law. Outwardly impeccable. They were on opposite ends of the social spectrum, and both were in the temple, praying. The tax-collector was at the altar, striking his breast, praying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." The Pharisee was in the back, also praying. "God, I thank thee I am not like this sinner. I keep the law, I tithe, I teach others your commandments... Not like that loser!"
Jesus said that the Pharisee went home a condemned sinner. The humble loser went home forgiven. Redeemed.
"God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4).
This Christmas, don't be the Pharisee, condescending to the humble and penitent losers among us. Unforgiving. Critical. Harsh.
Don't be that wealthy couple living in the finest hotel on the outskirts of Bethlehem, looking down on the losers making all that ruckus in the feces-scented stable.
Salvation doesn't come in moral perfection, public praise, an acclaimed legacy, a famous ministry. He didn't come for the perfect. He came for the sinner. Losers in need of redemption. How did God do it?
God made a way in a manger. In a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.
And that's where our salvation is found.
Be the humble loser. They're God's favorites.
James P. Johnston, D.O.
YourHomeMedicalCare.com
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