After our school football tournament today, I half hoped that I would be writing about victory, which I suppose, in a way I am but simply not the victory that I had hoped for. I could tell the boys in my team were disappointed.They just don't make tears like that in a movie. They had worked so hard in every game, dominated their semi final, missed several clear scoring chances, while the opposition had defended with a mixture of skill and help from the crossbar and post without ever troubling the goalkeeper at the opposite end of the pitch. But ten seconds form the end of the game, a breakaway produced the only goal at the wrong end and there was just no time to recover. Thieves have been jailed for less. In the end we played off for third place and won a hollow victory against the only other team that had looked like potential winners but had suffered a surprise defeat in their semi final. As one parent commented, it was the final that never was and I suppose there is some consolation in beating the team most thought likely to win the whole competition, but as Alan Hansen once said, 'first is first and second is nowhere.' Where exactly that leaves third, I'm not so sure but it's probably somewhere! So we ended with three victories and one defeat but I know which one the boys and their parents will remember.The tournament is now in its fourth year, in memory of one of the boys in our school who tragically lost his life in a road accident, just before that Christmas. He was a fine footballer, a keen supporter of the Red Devils and not short of a word or two of banter on a Monday morning, after the previous weekend's games. That's why his mum and dad agreed that there was no better way to remember him than by holding the annual football competition for the local schools and each year, they come along to present the prizes to the winners. And of course that is where the real victory is, when the children tasking part, wipe way their tears of failure or success and realise that it is not just about winning or not winning but about being part of an event which preserves the memory of someone who was their age when his young life was ended, somebody who would have taken victory and all its plaudits in his stride and would have wiped off the dust of defeat and walked on. And yet as the years pass, I'm acutely aware that fewer and fewer of the children who arrive to play, will even remember the little boy whose name graces the cup or shield they might take home, yet each year I like to remind them in whose honour we hold the tournament and why, even though they want to be competitive on the pitch, and rightly so, at the end of the day the most important part of the event is that we never forget Neill nor the folks he left behind.
And I know if he was here today, he would want to tell you about the other great victory that happened in his life, some weeks before he died, when he experienced forgiveness and the salvation that Jesus won at Calvary for all of us. I reckon that really puts things into perspective for while there is no doubt that winning a match on a football field brings its own rewards and feelings of happiness, victory over the power of sin creates a joy that no sporting event can ever create within us. Every time we hold the event I remember that he left this world victorious and his dad, even in his moments of greatest sadness and depression, also knows the joy of victory that only God can give. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian church, writes 'But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Even way back in Deuteronomy we know of God's power and desire to help His people when we read, 'For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.' And of course the ultimate victory is the one that Paul makes clear when he writes 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'
I should have felt more sad today after the tournament, but I didn't. That's because the greatest victory had already been assured and noone can change the result.
