Reading

From UU minister John Corrado:

In a culture that worships winners

some people say the church is a place for losers–

and they are right!

This is a place for losers.

This is a place for people who have

lost their hair,

lost their teeth,

lost their place,

lost their memories,

lost their savings,

lost their jobs.

It’s a place for people who have

lost their parents,

lost the love of their life

and even lost their children.

It’s a place for people who have

lost their way,

lost their faith,

and, worst of all, lost all hope.

This is a place for losers—us!

Let’s see who we are

and how we are and how much we need and can help one another.

We are the losers.

God bless us, everyone!

Sermon

For many people, myself included, last Sunday marked the beginning of one of the most hopeful times of the year. A time of rebirth and renewal, a time of dreams, a time of “anything is possible.” Last Sunday was the opening day of the major league baseball season.

I cannot recall a time when baseball didn’t matter to me at this time of year…probably because it has been the only time of the year when the baseball team of my youth…and my adulthood…the baseball team that plays in Cleveland with the inappropriate nickname of “Indians” always has a chance to win it all.

In a league where there are 30 teams, the likelihood of my favorite winning the World Series is slim. In fact, they have not done so in more than 50 years—over two generations ago. And, of course, I am aware that rooting for professional sports teams is nothing more than rooting for multi-million dollar corporations…corporations which care nothing for me. Still, though, there is a familiar hopeful yearning I feel every April, and almost immediately I fall into the habit of scanning the daily box scores and searching for late-night highlights on ESPN.

My wife Susan, now that she has lived with me for over ten years, has grown accustomed to this rite of spring, but she has mostly resisted getting involved with my baseball passion. Experience has taught her to stay away. You see, a few years back the baseball team from Cleveland was playing the Florida Marlins in the World Series and Susan got caught up in the drama. The best of seven series see-sawed back and forth until the seventh and deciding game. With two outs in the ninth inning, my team was still ahead by one run, but the Marlins were threatening to tie it up. Familiar with the foibles of Cleveland baseball, I knew that things were going to turn sour. Susan was feeling the stress and started shouting at the screen in support of my team. With the perspective of one who has been down this road many times before, I mustered up the calmest voice I possibly could and said, “Susan, it will hurt me far more to see you upset than it will to see Cleveland lose. Cleveland will lose this game, and when they do, I think we should just quietly turn off the TV and go into the kitchen to make dinner.” Cleveland did lose the game, and the series, and a fan named Susan. So when I mentioned to her last week that I planned to watch Cleveland play, she said, “But Mark, Cleveland stinks.” I gave her back the laugh she had hoped to receive, and proceeded to sit through another loss that left me agitated and let down. So why do I do it? Why do I put myself through the inevitable disappointment?

The question was raised again for me recently by a discovery that I made during the NCAA basketball tournament, a time of year referred to by marketers as March Madness. During a three-week span, over 100 men’s and women’s basketball games are played in the course of two tournaments that decide the national collegiate champions. Because so many games are being played, their starting times are staggered to allow for live coverage of the final minutes of each match-up. As I watched the rapid succession of fourth-quarter action one afternoon this year, I recognized a familiar feeling of disappointment. After the network switched to the final minutes of each game, I would quickly surmise the situation, determine the power imbalance, and choose my team. And consistently, painfully, my teams were losing. I’m not talking about one or two times. I’m talking about nearly every game. Loss piling upon loss. “Why is this happening?” I wondered to myself. “Why do my teams always lose?” And then, I opened my eyes to the obvious answer—the truth of truths. My teams almost always lose because I am almost always pulling for the underdog. As I followed the national coverage from game to game during the NCAA tournament, my support was always given to the team that seemed to need it the most…the one who was losing. But you know, there’s a hazard in rooting for the losing team: they tend to lose.

I know with viewing sports, one of the causes of my consternation has been my assumption that it matters who wins, and that I actually have some say in it all. When approached this way, being a sports fan is a road to utter helplessness. I subject myself to a storyline over which I have no influence. Sure, I can voice my pleasure or frustration from the stands. Or I can talk to my TV. I can hash out my perceptions with other fans, or even write letters to sports publications. But ultimately, my opinion means virtually nothing. The games will be played whether I watch or not. The team of my choice will win or lose whether I care or not. And life goes on regardless.

So again, I have to ask, why do I do this to myself? Why do I allow myself to care, only to see my object of affection being trampled again and again? When I discovered that today’s reader, Roger Evans, was a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs, another team well-known for its futility, I asked him why people like us bother to care. He said, “Maybe in all of us there is the hope that the underdog will have that one moment of glory in which the spotlight shines and the underdog can bask in an unexpected victory…or maybe there is something in watching someone who loses all of the time and yet comes back for more, determined that this time things will be different.”

Of course, Roger and I are not alone in rooting for lost causes. To some degree, we are all susceptible to the lure of the underdog…no doubt because we are all underdogs ourselves. I’m not just talking about sports and simplistic ideas of winning and losing. I’m talking about life itself. Think about it: there is perhaps no greater underdog than a human—a creature that has evolved enough to be able to contemplate its own future demise, a living being acutely aware of its own march toward death. Though we may not know the details, each of us does know that our individual lives will end, for the cycle of life demands that we eventually return to the elements. Maybe this knowledge—this acceptance of the temporality of our lives—no matter how much we may try to look away, is what can lead us to revel in the tenacity of the underdogs who refuse to resign themselves to defeat even when their circumstances seem most bleak. Who among us has not felt a stirring in the heart and a rush of adrenaline upon hearing the stories of people who have battled the odds to overcome illness, or addiction, or painful life circumstances? These stories speak to us because they remind us of how tenuous life can be and how much one person’s struggle can be so much like our own. It’s true, we all are underdogs. I’ve been thinking that if we could acknowledge and celebrate this fact, we would be more likely to fully devote ourselves to the losing team most in need of our support…the losing team that is humanity itself. If we were to fully embrace our shared underdog status, you see, recognizing that privilege is only a façade that distracts us from how much we truly share, we might discover a compelling motivation to work for justice for not only ourselves, but for all of our brothers and sisters.

Not that this would be easy to do. Most of the time, life seems far too big to even think about. Just making it through the daily grind of our living is all we can do. It can seem as though our only option is to just watch it all fly past…that no matter what we do or say, our efforts will have little impact…kind of like adding a tiny drop of water into a vast ocean. When our efforts appear to offer little reward, sitting on the sidelines becomes far more attractive than participating in what seems to be a losing cause. I know I have often viewed life this way, as though it were a spectator’s sport. Even though I have cheered loudly for the folks who need support, and booed those who seem to be disregarding the needs of others, without getting into the game myself, I have done little to change the situation. I have been, in effect, simply shouting at the TV.

If life has any meaning it all, and I have to believe it does, then there must be significance not only in victory…which, however one defines it is rare and difficult to sustain…but also in defeat, which is the storyline to which most of us are accustomed. If we choose to turn away from defeat, to ignore the struggles of others, we disregard a significant portion of our own lives…we are missing the common ground out of which we all emerged and to which we will all return.

I like how Mary Oliver expresses this idea in her poem “Rice.” She writes:

“It grew in the black mud.

It grew under the tiger’s orange paws.

Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.

Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.

The grains cresting, wanting to burst.

Oh, blood of the tiger.

I don’t want you to just sit down at the table.

I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.

I want you to walk out into the fields

Where the water is shining and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.”

Choosing to fill our hands with the mud of our lives, like a blessing, is not the easiest choice to make. It seems far easier to just sit down at the table and eat. But when we choose to ignore the mud, we are refusing to see life for what it is…a temporary opportunity to participate in the unfolding story of a mysterious and complex world. Rooting for the underdog can mean much more than cheering from the sidelines for a losing team. I think we truly root for the underdog when we realize that the underdog is each of us…when we discover that life is inherently more about defeat than it is about victory…when our ability to see our lives as connected to all our companions can compel us to act, to contribute to the storyline…maybe not enough so that “victory” can be declared (whatever that means)…but enough so that helplessness is temporarily overcome…enough so that we leave behind our roles as bystanders and become the participants life calls us to be. I think these opportunities arise when we fight our tendencies to turn away, when we see the true underdogs of our world--the disadvantaged, the underprivileged—as not just our companions, but as ourselves.

This life provides each of us with countless opportunities to support underdogs—the underdogs that are our fellow humans, the underdogs that are our animal companions, the underdog that is our planet, the underdog that is ourselves. I don’t think we are responsible for everything, but I contend we are responsible to the impulse that encourages us to root for the underdog in the first place…the impulse that reminds us that while this life that we share may not be perfect, it is worthy of our engagement…it does call us to participate…it does call us to do as William James promised he would when he said “I will act as if what I do makes a difference.”

Each day in countless ways we face the choice that has faced women and men throughout time. Either we can contribute to the unfolding stories of our lives and the lives of those with whom we share this planet, or we can remain on the sidelines bemoaning another loss of a team for which we are not even playing. I can’t help but think that the more rewarding choice is the one spent in the company of the underdog, because that is the only choice where the story-line changes…where the unexpected breaks through…where the possibilities can transcend the limitations.

It is this choice that can transform our lives…the choice where we do more than just sit down at the table, eating and being content… the choice where we walk out into the fields, where the water is shining, and the rice has risen. Where we can stand far from the white tablecloth and fill our hands with the mud, like a blessing.