By Rev Nicholas Sykes

For the first time in over six years we have not been able to watch the US Open on television because for some reason Weststar TV has found ESPN to be unavailable to its Channel 11, and this has been a huge annoyance in our household. (We can watch some on another channel now.)

Watching the star tennis players competing has always been for me fascinating and instructive. At that level of tennis it is the battle of minds that is the most important, the primary issue being: Can you believe that you are going to prevail in the end?

This seems to me to be a great illustration of faith. What does one do when one is backed up against a wall?

The local news of course is that the famous or in some quarters infamous Cayman Islands are backed up against a wall of debt, or of economic unsustainability.

Equally the news for some time has been that the whole earth is backed up against a formidable wall of extinction by global warming. Now, the Christian 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.

Towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Church has lost a number of games and is now fighting for the survival of the Christian mind from what seems to be a losing position, say four points down on a tie.

Isaiah chap 35 points 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. The context of the passage was perhaps originally the hope of restoration of a defeated and exiled people.

Today we refer to the Christian mind of our time, exiled as it nearly is from communities that have hosted it for centuries, and announce the living hope of its restoration. It is we who must take heart and hope in the way a tennis star can sustain for his game, and reach out with the prayer reach we are given for a spiritual level of combat, in order to prevail in the hope of the restoration of the Christian mind to our communities.

Mark 7: 24-30 presents the Gentile Syrophoenician on behalf of her daughter, and the deaf man from the Decapolis region in need of healing. Now Jesus’ own ministry in His incarnate manifestation 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 reflect on the tradition that as a boy He accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to England, giving rise eventually to a fine hymn;

“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 built here among those dark Satanic mills?”

That question perhaps will never be answered in this life. What we do know is that during His public ministry to the Jewish people Jesus did sometimes meet with Gentiles, and also went into Gentile territory as we see in this passage. 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 a star tennis player He reached out 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. For 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 Christ.

Our responsibility to reach out

In our own time, too, that divinely empowered “extra reach” will be the lifeblood of the continuation of the Christian mind in this millennium, and of the Church in any recognisable form. With that “extra reach”, we are called to have faith that the walls of our time, whether of atheistic thought construction, global warming issues, or even the mountain of Cayman Islands debt, can all be tackled and in time surmounted.

By the help of Christ, we who are members of His great and far-flung Body are the ones who have to make that reach, apply that faith, achieve the reversal, and win the match.

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org