In Which Jesus Throws The Game

Is that a familiar idiom? At the risk of insulting anyone’s idiomatic intelligence, to “throw the game” means to lose it on purpose. The typical context is that of personal financial gain – someone pays an athlete or team to deliberately not win for the sake of skewing the outcome of a large wager. I suppose that if it’s skilfully done you might not notice; it would just seem as if the losing team didn’t play well enough to win. But it might also elicit a “What was going on in that game?” response, at least from a knowledgeable observer. In the Jesus story we’ll be exploring this Sunday, it feels like Jesus throws the game. In particular, it seems like he deliberately sabotages the fans of his hometown crowd who really want him to win the “messiah contest”. I think it’s a fascinating and heartening story for anyone that is exploring what it might mean to encounter the Divine in more than one framework, and I look forward to exploring it with you.