‘You can’t please all the people all of the time,’ sighed God, as the sports results came in on another Saturday afternoon. Not everyone’s prayers for victory could be answered. Not that so many prayers are uttered these days – though desperate times bring desperate measures.
A sporting theme this month, only slightly apologetically. For it’s the time of year again when those who devotedly follow a football team, or of other sport, can have their hopes of a title or a promotion teetering on fulfilment, or they may be staring into the jaws of relegation. As Bill Shankly, one-time Liverpool manager, famously said, ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death… I can as-sure them it is much more serious than that.’
We live, post-Easter, in the season of resurrection – death and life, paradoxically in that order. The 
other famous quote about death, attributed to Benjamin Franklin – ‘nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’ – reminds us should we need it of the inevitability of death. Yet the Christian faith counters this with an assertion of ‘the inevitability of life’.
Life simply does not give up. You think you’ve thoroughly weeded the garden, yet more weeds spring up (not the form of life we would want, but life nevertheless). David Attenborough’s Blue Planet feeds us pictures of strange life forms colonising the most challenging of environments in the deep ocean. Spring buds surround us. Life doesn’t give up. No wonder God didn’t after the Cross.
Crystal Palace is my team (well, it has to be somebody’s). Palace now hold the ignominious record of having had the worst start to a season in the history of the English football league: last season they lost their first seven games without scoring a single goal. Their messiah was Roy Hodgson; they weren’t relegated. Football messiahs come and go. But because of Easter, the Christian Messiah is for life (eternal life) not just for Christmas – and for all teams’ supporters, all tribes, all nations.
If you’re a fan of football, rugby or whatever, I hope your team ends the season well. And if the whole thing bores you and you can’t wait for the football to end, you’re nearly there (and there’s no international football tournament this summer to spoil the peace). The inevitability of life – whichever way you look at it.
