Have you heard of Tunstall Town Football Club? Probably not! They play in the Staffordshire County League and looking at their results this season makes for grim reading. So far they have lost all 17 games, conceded 171 goals and scored only 3. Some of their heaviest defeats have been 19-0, 16-0, 13-0 (twice) and 12-0 (twice). It sounds like you could drive several heavy-goods vehicles, side-by-side, through their defence. During the 19-0 defeat the combined age of the goalkeeper and four defenders was 300 years! Apparently they love playing even when they get thrashed week after week. Their 70-year old club secretary-manager-defender says that their team is the team players who don’t want to retire play for.
Tunstall Town FC was founded in 1949 as a works team for a local tile manufacturer. Over the years the club have had promotions, cup success and a season almost unbeaten. The team currently above them in the league, Cheadle Town reserves, have 9 more points. Presently Tunstall Town are bottom of the league and there isn’t a league beneath them to be relegated to. What losers! If Hanbury Hill was in Tunstall perhaps we might have considered going along to offer them some Christian support and encouragement!
The season of Lent is a good time to be introspective, inward-looking and remember that we are all losers! It is the time before Easter when we seek to discipline ourselves to receive more of God and less of self. It provides a good opportunity to spend more time praying, studying, examining our relationship with Christ and reminding ourselves that we are lost without him. We have failed to live according to God’s standards in Scripture. We have been won over by other interests that have relegated the priority of our Christian discipleship.
The good news for Tunstall Town is that their next match is just around the corner and it isn’t long before they can improve upon their desperate condition. The good news for us is that Easter is also only a short time away and we will then be able to rejoice that we are lifted out of our desperate sinfulness - not by trying to improve ourselves - but by trusting that Christ’s death and resurrection gets us out of our dreadful state.
Paul knew what it meant to be a loser and winner. He wrote ‘whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things...’ (Philippians 3:7-8).
Steve Taylor, a songwriter, wrote a song called ‘Jesus Is For Losers’. It includes the words:
Just as you are
Just a wretch like me
Jesus is for losers
Graced from the blood of a tree.
Just as we are
At a total loss
Jesus is for losers
Broken at the foot of the cross...
May God bless you all,
Andy
