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John Walker

Assistant Self-Supporting Priest

The Parish Church of All Saints Staplehurst

Tel: 01622 676282

Email:

Assistant Priest's Letter - March 2008

Dear Friends,

Win or Lose?

“I hate to lose, and I do whatever I can to win, and if it is ugly, it is ugly” - Pete Sampras

Anyone for tennis?

If so, is it only fun if you win? Writer James Alison tells a story about two families with a parent teaching a child to play tennis. They both adjust themselves to their children's level and gradually play harder and harder so that the children's strength and skill gradually grow. Neither humiliate them by thrashing them. But one wants to teach her child to win. She never lets herself be beaten and winds the child up to be really competitive by holding the prize of winning just out of reach. The other wants to teach his child to play. Sometimes he skillfully loses, without being patronising, so that the child can experience the joy of winning whilst learning that you don't have to win. That rivalry has limits. That the relationship is more important.

“Live to win, take it all, just keep fighting 'til you fall, day by day kicking all the way” - KISS vocalist/guitarist Paul Stanley

Anyone for living?

All species have a deep survival instinct. They do everything they can to secure their own survival chances. That's as true of humans as it is of the Siberian tiger or the lowliest of bacteria. And so we fear death. That's why we have to win. And by winning we create losers. Or victims. Not just in big ways, but in little, daily acts of survival. And not just as individuals. The pursuit of power and material wealth creates social, economic and environmental victims. Our dread of death affects how we live, yet winning does not remove our fear. We have to learn that rivalry has limits. That relationship is more important.

“If you try to save your life, you will lose it. But if you give it up for me, you will surely find it.” - Jesus of Nazareth

Anyone for playing?

There is another way. Jesus tells us why Easter is so vital in Matthew 10:38-40. He likens the cross to the second parent who wants his child to learn to play. There, Jesus deliberately loses to those who had to win to show that it's the playing - the relationship - not the winning, that counts. To do this takes great power, the power of one who is not a rival at all - but the one in charge. And he likes those he's playing with so much that he wants them to learn to lose too. To be free from always having to win so they can just enjoy playing.

And to know that there is no need to create victims in order to survive. For with the resurrection dawns the realisation that God has nothing to do with death. So that perhaps we can learn, bit by bit, not to be driven any more by the fear of death in our living. That rivalry has limits. That relationship is more important.

Love,

John