Kirk Reflections 30th July 2023.

Rev. Erick du Toit brings today's reflection from Kirkliston Parish Church, Scotland.

MORE THAN CONQUERORS (ROMANS 8: 26-39)

All of us prefer winning over losing. All the world loves a winner. “There is no prize for second place” an old adage assures us. And most of us believe that without question. Once in a while, though, the world embraces a loser. Seldom did this happen more dramatically than at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.  Some of you may remember Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards. At that time Eddie was a 25-year-old plasterer with thick glasses and a goofy grin.

He entered the Games as England’s only (and first-ever) ski jumper. But Eddie was not very skilled. He fitted the description of a born loser: someone who gets a paper-cut opening a Get Well card. Eddie looked decidedly non-athletic. In his yellow ski-jumping suit he looked more like Winnie the Pooh than the sculpted athletes we usually associate with the Olympics. Eddie’s training had been sub-standard and his equipment was second-rate. The airline lost Eddie’s luggage when he travelled to Calgary. On the day of his competition, the Olympic security agents almost did not let Eddie in at all because, they later said, the chunky man’s coke-bottle glasses had such thick lenses they were certain he was an imposter. But he did get let in eventually. He didn’t do very well. Outside magazine said that in the air, Eddie looked like an “errant slush-ball.” When it was all over, Eddie came in 56th place out of a field of 57 jumpers (but then, the 57th man had been disqualified).

But all the world loved Eddie. Johnny Carson had Eddie flown down to Burbank to appear as a guest on The Tonight Show. TV crews and newspapers from around the world clamoured to interview Eddie. Once he got back to England, he was treated like a full-blown celebrity who parlayed his fame into a tidy sum.

To state the merely obvious, Eddie was the exception, not the rule. And even with all the attention paid to him, few people would have held Eddie up as a role model. When someone is as skilled as Michael Jordan, it doesn’t take long before you hear slogans such as “Be Like Mike!” But no one would say, “Be Like Eddie.” Because mostly we identify with those who win even as we distance ourselves from those who lose. If your favourite basketball team manages to defeat a rival team in a big game, even those of us who were nowhere near the basketball court may quite happily declare, “Hooray! We won!” But when your team loses such a game, we are apt to say something like, “Shucks, they lost.” Just how is it that we win but they lose? Similarly in school a student on Monday may be glad to hold up a maths test and say “I got an A!” even as the next day she may look at a history test and say, “The teacher gave me a D.” We are quick to align ourselves with victories but equally quick to put some daylight between ourselves and defeat.

Given all that, we are glad to discover the apostle Paul’s ringing assurance at the end of Romans 8 that we are victors, winners, cosmic conquerors. In fact, in verse 37 it may very well be the case that Paul coined his own Greek word in a zestful attempt to express the enormity of everything he has written so far in this landmark chapter. In verse 37 Paul says not just that we are conquerors but he attaches the Greek prefix huper, from which we get our word “hyper.” We are not just winners, Paul explodes, we are hyper-winners. (commentary link)

So what does it mean be a hyper winner…?