(Picture from BBC sport here)

I don't follow football, don't understand it, don't desire to, and fail to understand why such vast sums of money are expended to employ gorwn men to let off steam, but there you go, that's just me.  If pressed to select a team to ally with it'll either be Spurs because that's where I was born, and at least they're Premiership so it's not three embarrassing, or Northampton Town because that's where I grew up and they still hold the record for being the only team to go 'up in three seasons, down in three seasons' in the relatively old days of four divisions numbered thus.  But yesterday I have to confess to having been a smidgeon interested in Havant & Waterlooville taking on Liverpool at Anfield, to having been very pleased the minnows took the lead twice, and to being fascinated by the impact this match had on players and hard nosed sports commentators alike.

Before the match the commentators had, it felt, written off the visitors, slightly patronised the manager by asking him how excited he was to be at Anfield, and were showing it only because it appeals to our British love of the underdog.  Afterwards they were fullsome in their praise of what had been an exciting match, of the very best of British footballing culture - inclduing swapping shirts and a standing ovation for Havant & Waterlooville.

So they went out of the cup, but they made a difference along the way.  Few enough full time professionals get to score at Anfield, never mind take the lead twice in one game.

I still have almost zero interest in the beautiful game but as a parable of what happens when minnows refuse to be cowed by the mighty, how losing is really winning, and how you make a difference by being yourself, I am well impressed by it.

I also have to preach at the Women's World Day of Prayer in March.  This year the principal reading is the Lukan story of Mary and Martha.  Flicking through my Bible the other day, I noticed that this story lies sandwiched between the Good Samaritan and the Lord's Prayer.  So why locate it there?  The Sunday School answer is based on chronology, and that may be true, but I was fascinated to discover this (I'm well slow on the uptake, me!).

Last year, in my Mary & Martha trilogy sermon, I'd noted that this encounter occurs after the Good Samaritan story, and that the original readers having just been told about neighbourliness might have been a tad shocked when Martha emerged as making a lesser choice by being busy offering practical service.  Now I am trying to work out how they might have reacted to this next bit about prayer... really fascinating.

Maybe if I take it as a slightly bigger whole, I get a sense of spritual and practical in balance?  Not quite sure what I'll preach yet, but another new insight on a Saturday night!

Tonight my local vicar rang and asked me to preach on Ash Wednesday.  He said I could change the gospel if it didn't fit what I wanted to preach about as a 'way in' to the Lent Course or I cuold use the set reading.  This year we are going to be using Life Calling from Church House publishing, an exploration of vocation.

I was reluctant to change the gospel reading if everything else is bog stnadard lectionary - it wouldn't make a whole heap of sense.  Having checked the two offerings, I opted for John 8 (the woman 'caught in the very act of adultery') and am contemplating possibly doing a sermon in two parts - part narrative/enactment from her perspective, and part traditional and in relationship to calling.  After all this woman was called to account by the powers that be and then called on to a new way of living by Jesus.  Whether I'll quite have the timerity to do an 'enacted' first half, I'm not sure, though if it worked it could be very powerful.

I just went back and read what the Bible actually says - always a good idea - and realised how I've spent a lifetime locating this incident in the wrong setting.  So, I suspect, have many people I know.

In my mind's eye, this event takes place in open countryside where the audience is essentially the men dragging this woman before Jesus.  (Sound effect meaning you got that wrong).  What the gospel says is Jesus went to the Mount of Olive then to the Temple where he sat down to teach people.  Enter angry mob with terrified woman.  A very different scenario.

I then found myself imagining the Ash Wednesday service or the upcoming Lent studies... there we all are in church, just getting to a really holy bit when a few highly respected church officials barge in dragging with them some poor unfortunate caught in the act of some contemporary moral crime (adultery or otherwise).  How would we react?  How would I react if I was leading the service or leading the study?

Of course, the Temple environs were nothing like a twenty-first century church, and the general impact of a few more folk, albeit angry ones, arriving would have been very different.  But it did make me think.  Some folk had gathered to listen to Jesus, maybe had come specially and were really eager to hear what he had to say.  How did they feel about what happened?  What impact did the events have on their lives?

Having realised this, I can't unrealise it, can't go back to my rural image, so I have to begin again to think through this story.  I'd still like to try the sermon in two parts, because actually I now think that it is quite important to note that this event occurred on officially holy territory - and ask myself, and others, what that has to say about our conduct when we are in our holy huddles.

Thanks God for stirring me out of complacency - yet again!

**** RESEARCH WARNING **** 

BUT NOT TOO HEAVY

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I have just been responding to some comments on something I wrote about implied readers - fair critIcisms of what I'd done but not stuff which made me back off totally, because now I've done a bit more reading I know there is a whole range of these unreal readers - implied, ideal, constructed, imagined, single, plural, targetted and so on.  As I typed my reply, I was conscious that I was constructing a reader for my answer, inferring certain characterstics of him/them (two real, male readers) and of myself as the writer/narrator.

This is the trouble isn't it - you start thinking about something and it takes off on its own.

Who is the implied/imagined/constructed reader of this blog?  Who is the implied/constructed/imagined writer?  How close is either to reality, and what is that anyway?  Aaargh, I think I need to go and lie down in a darkened room!!

So, last night was kids' club again - becoming a regular feature at the moment because the official leader still hasn't arranged any other female help.  Overall it went quite well - though I'd still like to improve the dicispline a bit to make for an overall happier atmosphere.

Lots to make me smile...

One lad told me he'd heard on Radio Leicester that there were going to be 18 nuclear power stations built in Leicestershire.  Having checked all BBC websites there was clearly no such announcement - though of course there was something about wind turbines on the isle of Lewis...  I can't envisage one nuclear station in Leicestershire, never mind 18!

Two of the children announced that they were going out together.  As the other girls quizzed her, the eleven year old counted carefully and then said they'd been going out for.... one week and three days.  Ah, bless.  The boyfriend preened suitably as his peers looked on!

We ended the evening with a paper aeroplane competition that I'd organised, having downloaded some intructions from the internet.  After ten minutes of industrious folding and colouring we launched all the craft.  Despite all the proud boasts of the lads that their designs were way superior to anything on-line, it was one of the girls with a classic paper dart whose plane flew the furthest.  Of course.  As we were clearing up to go home one of the lads asked if he could take the instructions with him, and carefully gathered up as many different designs as he could find (albeit getting into a squabble with another lad over one set), so I guess that was a successful activity.

For next week I've found some fun three-dimensional 'monsters' for them to make - so we'll see whether it is kids or construction who are more monstrous!

I am enjoying getting to know these children better, so will actually miss them once the leadership issues get resolved and I revert to monthly visits.