Believing In The Victory
Col 3:1-4 1 Cor 15:54-57 1 john 5:4 Matt12:20
What you don’t know is that I played table tennis at league level for a number of years.
Low league level it was.
I used to turn out regularly for the Worthing Town Hall D team which played in Division 9 of the Worthing and District Table Tennis League.
My career was not a glittering success.
In one game against the Goring By Sea Conservative Club I was being given such a beating that a member of my team stood up and quoted from the league rules that if a player was being hopelessly outclassed, his opponent should ease up a little.
In fact, I never managed to win a game until one night we were up against the Upper Beeding Cement Works Reserves and I was holding my own against a sprightly woman in a red track suit and cherry red lips.
The scores were 15-15 in the final set – the first one to twenty one would be the winner.
My opponent went to pieces. I took the lead 16-15, and again 17-15 – the rest of my team were on the edge of their seats with excitement She doubled faulted twice 19-15 and then I fluked another winner to leave me on five match points.
Victory was mine, it really was mine.
Then I remembered who I was.
Then all my many defeats seemed to flash before me eyes
And try as I might I could not win that one final point.
My opponent became as Wonder Woman before me.
The ball became the size of a pea, my bat full of holes.
I lost the next seven points on the trot.
I guess I just did not believe victory was possible.
There are two sorts of people, it seems to me.
There are Manchester United type people, who just come out on top in everything.
Then there are Derby County type people for whom life is a continual fight to avoid relegation.
For most of us, deep down, the latter tends to be more often the case, and we end up not being quite sure what victory is , so we end up never really expecting it.
Thus we come to church this morning, feeling good about things, but not really celebrating Easter Day with the sort of joy, let’s say of a multi ,million lottery winner. might experience.
It’s all a bit more measured and maybe that’s because we’re not quite sure how the victory of Christ actually touches us.
Josh Hillman was a little scamp from my long ago days in Haywards Heath and one Easter Day, the churchwardens foolishly allowed him to join the offertory procession.
They allowed him to walk down the centre aisle carrying the ciborium, the cup containing the wafers to be used for Communion.
Josh carried it as if he was the captain of an FA cup winning team.
He danced down the aisle brandishing the sacred vessel high above his head, waving to his mum with his free hand.
The lid fell off with a loud clang and the wafers spilt over the floor.
I don’t think he was ever asked again, but you see he didn’t mean any harm.
He was just so excited at having been chosen.
We don’t talk much about victory for we have suffered too many defeats in our lives.
Victory has been thwarted too often through our own weakness and sin or by the way others have got in the way when we stood on the threshold of something good.
Five match points and still we couldn’t do it.
There are rumours in the bible that the resurrection of Jesus is a victory not just for him but for us too.
“Death is swallowed up in victory” shouts Paul “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”
“If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God” writes John in his first Epistle “our faith is a victory that will overcome the world”
The prophet Isaiah looked forward to a day such as today with all his heart “He will bring justice to victory and in him will the Gentiles hope”.
The victory lies in believing that death never has the final say.
It lies in believing that when he died at Calvary, Jesus went ahead of us into the darkest corners of our experiences – and come out on this morning holding light and love in his hands.
And that he offers that gift to us, no matter how good or bad we are.
That doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes easy.
But it does mean he is continually with us in our darker days and will never let us go.
Believing that is all that needs to happen for our Alleliua’s to really ring.
For us to be able to approach Easter Day with joyful abandonment.
Let me take two contrasting characters from the Easter Story.
Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot.
They were both followers of Jesus.
They both so wanted him to be the one to make a difference in their lives.
Mary Magdalene really did hope that it might be true.
So much so that she laid her life on the line before Him.
All her failings and shortcomings, she let him have without reserve.
She confessed her inability to win at anything.
And Jesus shared his victory with her because she had created the space in her life for him to do so.
Judas Iscariot had high hopes of Jesus leading a political uprising.
He thought victory would come with the strength of a muscular messiah.
This need to be vulnerable began to worry him.. This desire to gently draw in the outcast.
This loving of people until you had nothing left to give.
He held the money box you see and was not going to relinquish that or anything.
So he withheld himself and fell in line with the authorities.
And Jesus did not share his victory with Judas because Judas would not let him.
It’s OK if our celebrations this morning seem a bit restrained.
It’s OK if you’re thinking about the implications and still remain a bit unsure.
The victory he has won means us stepping out of the safe place of denial and recognising our failings. It demands of us a travelling on into places where we might fail again.
But not for eternity.
For eternity there is victory assured if you want to make room for it.
Imagine it’s a bit like a stone in front of a dirty great big cave into which no light has ever shone.
It’s a bit like a day coming when that great stone is pushed away and that dark hole is suddenly full of light.
Takes a bit of shifting. You’ll have to bend your back a bit.
But now there’s more than just your hands, more than just your strength.!
There’s the grace of a risen Lord.
RH 23.3.08