So, I went to church yesterday. Obviously I needed some spiritual sustenance since, as both Wimbledon and the World Cup were resting, we found ourselves in the literally horrifying situation of no actual sport happening. Except for the Grand Prix, the cricket, the Tour de France, the rugby league… Oh.
Now I am what’s called a Reader at my church, an odd role where I’m not a vicar, but I do have to dress up in robes. To be honest, to an outsider, there’s not much difference: person + dress + church = vicar. In fact, though, I have the uniform, but not the same authority.
I’m not alone in this. Referees, for example, wear the same shirt – but they don’t get treated the same. It’s impossible to believe that Mark Geiger, getting harangued in the England-Colombia game, wielded as much power as Bjorn Kuipers refereeing the quarter-final against Sweden.
Clearly, real authority lives somewhere else. So if a title like ‘referee’ doesn’t automatically confer respect, and if a uniform like a vicar’s doesn’t necessarily indicate authority, how can we tell, in a world of clamouring voices, which ones we should listen to? Who are the real leaders?
This was a problem even for Jesus. He once went to preach in his hometown and the people couldn’t get past the fact that he was just the son of the local carpenter. So they didn’t listen, they took offence and treated him like some worthless upstart.
Jesus taught that we recognise people worth following not by what they say or look like but by what they do: by their fruits. Do they say kind words or do they do kind things? Do they ask for commitment or do they offer commitment?
It’s pretty obvious that in the leader of our nation, and I refer of course to Mr. Gareth Southgate, we have found a man worth following: someone who’s not all beard and waistcoat but full of integrity.
I suppose I ought, therefore, to round off with something like, ‘so, whatever happens this week, we, as a nation, can take pride in that’.
But I can’t. Instead, I’ll say this. It’s been good to see England led so well and so fruitfully at the World Cup, with real, earned, deserved authority.
And because of that…it’s coming home.
It wasn’t. It didn’t.
Thats me there in uniform at St Olave Hart Street, with the Rev. Oliver Ross, then my vicar and now Rector of Malmesbury Abbey.