Still Quarrying: World Cup Jiggery-Pokery

 I suppose it was inevitable.  Any big event happening in the USA and Donald Trump will not only be interested but will also seek to influence events to his own advantage.  It starts with him watching the USA playing Bosnia/Herzgovina and he is upset that a USA player is red-carded.  Instead of moaning to his mates as most of us would do, he phones the President of FIFA, the games ruling body.  ‘It was not a foul,’ he says.  

Now I don’t know how DT can make a judgement like this.  First I’ve heard he is a fan.  (If it was Sir Keir Starmer speaking we would at least listen.  He knows something about the game.)  But DT is in touch with the President of the ruling body and not only gives an opinion but asks if something can be done about the red card.  After a riffle through the rule book it is discovered that a red card can be suspended for a year.  So it’s all clear for the man red carded to play against Belgium who are reported as being furious.

Now I’ve been watching football all my life.  This kind of jiggery-pokery might have happened before but not not my knowledge.  And it didn’t do the USA any good.  Belgium were so fired up that they blew the USA off the park.

It’s not the first time that self-serving politicians have left a stain on what we call ‘the beautiful game’.  I could write a book on the way money and political propaganda have driven successive World Cups - (Thereby hangs a threat!) - to the extent that I just can’t recover my old enthusiasm for it.  Football used to be called ‘the working man’s ballet’.  Not it’s at the mercy of the money men and the reputation boosters.  When did football become so fashionable?

But the wee voice inside my head says: ‘What did you expect?  You with the theology degree!’  In his poem ’God’s Grandeur’ the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins looked out at the world  and saw it wearing ‘man’s smudge’ and bearing ‘man’s smell’.  But he doesn’t end there. There is a note of hope.  He writes : ‘Nature is never spent’.  By that he meant that the Holy Spirit is eternally present and His work is never done: ‘There lies the dearest freshness deep down things’.

High thoughts from where we began with the ‘fiba’?  But Hopkins does not exclude anything from the ‘dearest freshness deep down things’.  There can be change for the better in everything.  When the doors are closed on cabinet rooms and gates shut in football stadiums the Holy Spirit is not excluded.

Still Quarrying: Surface Or Substance.

 There is no doubt that the World Cup is the poorer for the home coming of the Tartan Army.  The most colourful, joyful in song, generous contributors to local economies as bars and restaurants were eagerly patronised.  It’s just a pity that the outward display was not matched by what happened on the field of play.  Again we are faced with the inescapable truth: we are just not good enough.  

This got me thinking about the Church.  It’s possible for us to generate liveliness, variety, even imagination and up-to-dateness.  But does the substance measure up to what is on the surface?  

In a book of his sermons the American theologian Richard Lischer recalls a post-worship encounter with a young woman who approached him rather aggressively with the question: ‘What does this church have to offer me?’  I’ll let him tell you the rest:

‘ . . . I recited the most attractive features of our “program”.  She looked at me with pained forbearance.  “Well, that’s nice, but I’m looking for a church that can help me die.  Do you think your church is up to that - and what about you, Reverend?’

I have some sympathy with Richard.  Sometimes in the immediate aftermath of a service it is not easy to cope with big challenges like this.  But the young woman struck a chord that resonated in his head for years after.  Like the time, years ago, when a young man in a hospital asked me: ‘What is the purpose of your church?’

So what would you say?  Paul once recalled his first visit to the people of Corinth in which he laid out his priority: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you  except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’  (1Corinthians 2:2).  However attractive our “program” sooner or later those we are seeking to reach have to come up against this.  What makes us a church in the first place?
  We can dangle the carrot in front of them but sooner or later it will shrivel and deliver less than it promises.  Paul knew not only what would help people die but also to live a quality of life made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.