Defeat

I have one lingering image of defeat from my childhood...and it's from the television. Specifically, ABC's Wide World of Sports. My home was never really one where we watched a lot of sports on television, but every once in a while, the TV might be on when Wild World of Sports came on. And there was the voice of the narrator: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition... This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!" And the image that sticks in my mind is the one that showed up under the words, "the agony of defeat." Do you remember it? It was a snow skier, tumbling down the mountain, head over heels, an image that, to this day, still symbolizes defeat.

The skier was a man named Vinko Bogataj, from Yugoslavia, and the event was the 1970 Ski-flying World Championships in Germany. It was his third jump and about halfway down the ramp, Bogataj realized the ramp was "running" too fast. He attempted to change his center of gravity as he shot down the ramp, but it was not successful. Instead, he shot off the end of the ramp, out of control, flipping and tumbling until he broke through a retaining fence and came to an undignified stop. Despite how horrendous the crash looks on film, Bogataj thankfully suffered only a minor concussion.

Defeat. We don't like that word. We are a nation of winners, a culture of overachievers, a society measured by success. Failures need not apply. And so, when we hear Wesley's fifteenth question, "Am I defeated in any part of my life?", we want to shout out, "No, of course not!"

And so we come to church and largely pretend we have it all together. We smile and we clap along with the music. When anyone asks us how we are, we reply (as if on auto-pilot), "Fine." And many of us hide the pain that lurks inside, the sense of inward defeat we feel.

I'm not saying we're always like that. But when we have been defeated, that tends to be our response. Don't let anyone know. We don't want to be the skier whose defeat is replayed every week on national (or even local) television, so we'll keep it to ourselves, thank you very much. We are winners. The enemy's been defeated. We shall overcome.

And all of that is true, wonderfully true. But we can only "win" when we admit defeat. That's one of the paradoxes of the cross. Jesus didn't look like a success on the cross. No one puts together a business plan and says, "I think my ultimate goal is to be killed in a violent and horrible way." His disciples tried to talk him out of such nonsense. It didn't make sense. And yet, only in Jesus' "defeat" can we find hope. Only in death is there resurrection. And only in surrender, in admitting that we are powerless to beat the enemy on our own, can there be victory.

We need to find defeat—defeat of our ego, defeat of our pride, defeat of our sense of absolute independence—if we are going to find "the thrill of victory." Because only when we give up and stop fighting against what Jesus wants to do can we find "the life that is truly life."

And, when other defeats come, we can own up to them, admit them, even confess them, knowing that Jesus will rescue us, will forgive us, will still love us...even if others do not. Am I defeated in any part of my life? Yes, I am, but thank God, I am not having to walk through it alone. And I know the end of the story, where God wins and shares that victory with all who call him Lord and Savior.