Watching the star tennis players competing is for me fascinating and instructive. Recently we may have seen on television Roger Federer and James Blake in the U.S. Open Championships, with the stakes in favour of Federer, and Blake at times, it seemed, unable to escape the thought that his losing was inevitable, but at other times playing as a victorious man should and even causing Federer to lose his customary cool on a few occasions.
At that level of tennis it is the battle of minds that is the most important - can you believe that you are going to prevail in the end? I remember several years ago now Pete Sampras seemingly being beaten soundly by his opponent Richard Krajicek and then suddenly raising the level of his game, taking six consecutive points to break a tie in his favour and going on to win the match.
It was an astounding reversal, and it seems to me, a great illustration of faith.
The Christian also has unprecedented levels and possibilities when he is backed up against a wall by the forces of evil. There is every appearance of impossibility for him but there is always the provided way through.
He must reach for a spiritual level of his life's game if he is to prevail. By the end of the twentieth century, the Church had lost a number of games and is now in the new millennium fighting for the survival of the Christian mind from a position four points down on a tie. The characteristic language and thought-forms of a Christian civilisation have been all but lost, but if we faithfully continue the contest, the way through will be found.
The Scriptures often point to the reversals accomplishable through faith. Fearful hearts are directed to be strong, the conditions of the blind, the deaf and the dumb are restored, and the hard parched ground is watered and made fertile, according to the prophet Isaiah.
The context of such passages in the book of Isaiah was perhaps originally the hope of restoration of a defeated and exiled people. Today we refer to the defeated and exiled Christian mind of our time, and announce the living hope of its restoration.
It is we who must take heart and hope and in the way James Blake at times did in his tennis game, reach out with the reach of prayer for a spiritual level of combat, in order to prevail in the hope of the restoration of the Christian mind.
St. James in his New Testament letter worries that the Christian congregation to which he addresses himself is shutting out from itself such a possibility of spiritual combat.
Some are beginning to ally themselves with the conditions of their own age. (He who is married to the spirit of this age becomes widowed in the next, said the famous Dean Inge.) In disregarding a shabbily dressed congregant while paying special deference to the well-heeled, they reveal themselves not to expect those reversals which we should be eagerly expecting and praying and working for.
They were forgetting to care about whether individuals whose condition needed to be reversed, and who had come into their circle of responsibility, were being helped by them to apply the salve of Christ or hindered by them from doing so.
If the letter of St. James reflects the social strata of Jerusalem before its fall in A.D. 70 this is particularly poignant. Their current life and times would not be lasting very long in the form they knew.
Christians are charged to fight with a greater spiritual reach than the limited perspectives of our own time will allow to us.
Jesus Himself reached out to a Syrophoenician and her daughter, as well as a deaf man from the Decapolis region in need if healing.
Now Jesus' own ministry in Palestine was to the Jewish people, and yet these events show that He was not confined to the principal community He came to. We might even know of the tradition that as a boy He accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to England:
"And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?"
asked William Blake. The question perhaps will never be answered in this life - and doubtless there are now other "Satanic" things to think about in England and the West than the industrial "mills" of William Blake's time.
What we do know is that during His ministry to the Jewish people Jesus did sometimes meet with Gentiles, and also sometimes went into Gentile territory. Perhaps He went there this time to be alone with His disciples and escape the pressure of the crowds for a time.
But when the woman came to Him, not claiming for herself that she had as much right to His powers as others did, but simply asking for His help for her daughter, He ministered to her and her daughter's needs. In so doing He went beyond the expectations of His time or those of His disciples.
Perhaps like Pete Sampras in tennis He reached spiritually and found that extra power at the time of His own weariness. That is an illustration to us of the kindness and mercy of God to us Gentiles, who historically were always among those fighting against God and His chosen people.
In a real sense all of us Gentiles are included among the people of God because of the "extra reach" to us of God in Jesus Christ.
That "extra reach" will be the lifeblood of the continuation of the Christian mind in this millennium, and of the Church in any recognisable form.
By the help of Christ, we who are members of His Body are the ones who have to make that extra reach, apply that faith, achieve the reversal, and win the match.
