What a great summer of sport this could be! Already, England have trounced Australia in the rugby, Murray is still in contention at Wimbledon (at least, he was on Friday morning), the (cricket) test match begins on Thursday, the Rio Olympics are starting in less than a month. What a feast for the sports enthusiasts amongst us.
Four years ago during the London Olympics, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, wrote a poem to capture the nations’ feelings about Team GB. She wrote: “We are Mo Farah lifting the 10 000m gold… We are Sir Chris Hoy… We are Nicola Adams.” Of course none of us have made the sacrifices these athletes have made. And if you asked us to compete we wouldn’t have a hope. But when Mo Farah wins, the nation celebrates. He is Britain’s champion and his victory is their victory.
A Christian is someone who feels this way about Jesus. We are part of Team Earth. Problem is, we are a bit like the English football team – constantly defeated by our enemies, temptation, disease, evil, sin and death; these always get the better of us. But, we have Jesus. We have a Champion. We have witnessed his life, his death and his resurrection. In life and in death he played for us. On the cross he took responsibility for everything that belongs to us – even our sins and our death. It looked like certain defeat, another ignominious loss, but Jesus played a blinder and burst through death and into life again. He is our Champion so his victory is our victory. We may look like “a bunch of losers” and we know we haven’t expended a calorie of effort in the victory. Nevertheless we sing like we’ve won because, through Jesus our Champion, we have:
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)