The Ashes is the ultimate sporting test. Australia versus England over 5 Test matches (each is 5 days in length) across 5 weeks.

The Ashes have been played every 2 years since 1882, play alternating between England and Australia. The teams contest the famous Ashes trophy, which has got to be one of the tinniest sporting cups in the world, standing at a minuscule 10.5cm.

Anticipation over the famed rivalry has been growing for months, and once the first ball was bowled on June 16, every eye in Australia was glued to the big screen all night, every night.

The already frenzied series burst the thermometer on the final day of the second Test, when England batsman, Jonny Bairstow was dismissed. The gentlemen of the Marylebone Cricket Club forgot their manners as boos swept across Lord’s Cricket Ground and tirades of abuse let slip against the Australian players. Commentators argued and the Aussie supporters applauded, as a solemn Jonny walked off the ground. 

Was he out? It’s not cricket! What about the spirit of the game? It was the umpire’s decision. 

For the 6 and a ½ Aussies who had their power cut and haven’t heard this most pressing news story, Bairstow missed a delivery bowled by Australia’s Cam Green. Our wicketkeeper, Carey, took the ball and with a single action threw it at the stumps. Bairstow, not realising, left his crease and was given out, stumped! 

According to the rules of cricket, he’s out. There is no murky area in the rules as to whether he should be out or not. When the ball is in play and the batsman is out of his crease, he can be run out by the fielding side. 

But according to the English (and a few Aussies too), it seemed as though Bairstow believed the over was completed and the ball was no longer in play, and so he started walking up the pitch to chat with fellow batsman and Captain, Ben Stokes. This so-called ‘sneaky’ play by the Aussies has been deemed unsportsmanlike and contra the spirit of cricket. 

The English believe the decision cost them the Test match (and the Ashes series?), but I’m not so sure. Stokes’ brilliant century came as a near direct response to the Bairstow decision. Without it, would Stokes’ have taken on the Aussie bowlers as aggressively and combatively as he did? It’s all speculation, isn’t it?

As Twitter raged and the gentlemen of the MCC lost their gentlemanliness, and the British PM attempted to ball a rhetorical googly, footage emerged of Bairstow attempting the very same move against Australian batsman Marnus Labuschagne, only 2 days earlier. And more than that, England’s coach, Brendon McCullum, is threatening to abandon the after Ashes drinks with the Aussies, despite McCullum employing the same tactics when he himself played for New Zealand. 

So there we have it, cricket is a serious sport played by professional sportsmen who use the rules to their advantage and claim ‘spirit and sportsmanship’ when those rules seem unfair. 

The cricket community is divided between those who follow the rules and those who want to follow the ‘spirit of the game’. Or to introduce a theological category, are you a law-based person or a grace-based person?

The reality is, if the shoe was on the other foot, the English public would be clapping and applauding, ‘jolly good play’, while we Aussies spat the dummy. That’s the temptation of human nature; there’s a smudge of hypocrisy in all of us. 

How much more is this the case on the bigger scale of life: we acknowledge and follow rules when they work in our favour, but we can be quick to jump to ‘grace’ when we feel as though these rules are harsh and unfair. Sometimes the rules are unfair. Sometimes the rules are misapplied. Sometimes rules are unequally practiced. 

On the biggest stage of all, how can we account for a God of justice and God of grace? How can the Lord of the universe consistently apply righteousness and judge lawbreakers, and yet offer grace and mercy to those of us (namely, all of us), who by the letter of the law are out? 

Sometimes we’re lazy and ignorant. A lot of the time we know what’s right and good and yet we decide to go the way. Cheating God’s ethic and pretending holiness is optional, is the status quo. It’s like we declare any ball from God a no-ball.

Here are a few stunning sentences from the Bible that give us the answer to the world’s greatest quandary, how can Divine justice and mercy exist and become our experience?

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)

“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in[h] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,[through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:21-26)

I think these Bible verses are worth contemplating because in the game of life, real justice matters and real grace is desperately needed. We can’t live without either but as in cricket, we side with one and not the other.

Are you a justice person or a mercy person? The reality is, we can’t live without a measure of ultimate right and goodness. Life requires axioms for real, secure, and free living. We also need grace, because we all fall far short of the glory of God. If I look at myself, I stand short of the crease, exposed and there’s no coming back from that. Thank God, he didn’t declare, not out. Rather, he walked in my place, taking all that shame and guilty verdict so that we can enjoy the cricket of life forever. 

That’s the thing with God and what makes Christianity, Christian. Jesus Christ is the Don Bradman of the universe, only better. He never played a bad shot. He never missed the ball and never stepped away from the crease. Every shot he played perfectly and yet he gave himself out. He bled out on a cross so that we be welcomed back into the game. No hypocrisy, no double play, no breaking the rules, but perfect justice and perfect grace.