I am belatedly coming to realise that what divides clergy from laity, vicar from curate, organist from choirmaster and bishop from dean is not doctrine or the role of women in the ministry or whether Amazing Grace should ever be sung in church at all, but something far more fundamental - the doings of football teams.
(Football, in case there are readers of this blog on the planet Uranus, is a game in which a lot of people, usually grown men, kick a ball around a field and try to get it to pass between two sticks with a lid on while somebody else tries to stop them from doing so. There are a few more rules, but that is the general idea.)
Now I have searched for any reference to this activity in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, which is more up-to-date, but in vain. The tribes of Israel might, in their wanderings, have dropped in on a game of buzkashi ...
(Buzkashi, dear Uranian reader, is a precursor of football played in Central Asia, either on horseback or yakback, the aim of which is to pick up the carcass of a headless goat or sheep and deposit it in a designated place. It is a jolly interesting game, unless you are a goat or, for that matter, a sheep)
... but, if so, there is no record of it. And certainly there is no record of their ever having played football. For one thing, they were far too busy avoiding being persecuted, enslaved or exterminated to have the time to spend on such trivial pursuits.
So, if there is no biblical precedent for it, why is it the dominant topic of conversation in any place where men foregather, such as the choir vestry?
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