This summer I have become a Cricket father. I never thought it would happen because I can’t stand the game but as fate would have it, I now do a lot of standing at the boundary!
As an act of repentance I have to say that learning a few of the basics has made me aware how complicated bowling, batting and fielding can be. Appreciating the difficulty level has captured my interest. Also, because the game is slower the mistakes are more obvious and the results more decisive. I have also noticed that umpiring a game of Cricket requires patient concentration unlike any other form of refereeing.
I was taken this week with the story of the Sri Lankan vice captain Kuma Sangakkara who was mistakenly given out eight runs short of his double century in the second test against Australia. It was pretty devastating from all accounts. What caught my attention was the after-game apology from umpire Rudi Koertzen and Sangakkara’s subsequent response: mistakes happen – move on. And they did so acknowledging each other’s world-class abilities.
Doing a compare and contrast with the Rugby World Cup and New Zealand’s early departure we see a different response. I’m not sure of all the details, but the referees association seemed to recognise that mistakes were made, but stood by the referee’s reputation. Rugby fans noted the same mistakes but wanted to hang the guy.
Despite the amount of money invested in the game, the game is still a game. And at the heart of such sport are mistakes. As far as I’m concerned it’s the mistakes that make team sport interesting. What we fail to remember is that these events include refs and umpires who make mistakes too!
For many of us life can be defined by single events or mistakes that become the lens through which we see ourselves and we think everyone else sees us too. I’m not sure why this is. Failure at one point in life need not taint the past and the future. As in Cricket, mistakes do not undermine the value of the entire game. Certainly we can let the team down, but then so does everyone from time to time. Some are just subtler than others.
At the heart of the Sri Lankan’s response to the umpire is redemption - not redemption in the sense of clearing a financial debt, but rather saving someone from a past error. The act of saving means that despite what was done, a person is restored to full status and honour among others.
God does this for everyone through Christ. God took the errors of humanity, past, present, future into himself through Jesus and allowed them to die on a gnarly cross. Those things that kill the life we ought to have in the present have been done-away-with for all time. Just as Jesus got back onto his feet a few days later, so God sets us back on our feet as full participants in life.
As with the South African umpire, redemption is there for us too – if we choose it.
© Digby Wilkinson 2007