World Cup Blogs 18: Nigeria

By the time I'm blogging about them, Nigeria are heading home.  Though, like Morocco, they hail from Africa and are out of the World Cup, the differences are stark.  Not least when it comes to the manifestation of the Christian faith.

Whereas the number of Moroccan believers equates, in known likelihood, to not many more than the Moroccan football fans that headed to Russia, Nigeria is a little different.

On returning home Nigeria will resort to playing internationals back in their national stadium, which holds just over 60,000 people.  Or they might play in their southern, second national stadium, the second largest in the country, which holds 45,000.

This second stadium has the same capacity as the Deeper Life Church that opened a couple of months ago.  If you spare a few minutes to watch this video I can contribute the following: 

There might be a thousand times as many people at that church, but our church can match them for the complication of parking for the service . . ..

World Cup Blogs 17: Morocco

In an earlier blog I told how my wife attained Morocco in her workplace sweepstakes. (Workplace sweepstakes are a vanishingly rare experience for Baptist Pastors so I have to live my excitement through hers . . .).  Not for the first time, Morocco have failed to set this World Cup alight - they have prevented my wife catching any gambling addiction bug -  but they do provide a happy byway for my blogging.

Morocco is obvious enough as a nation - it's on the North African Mediterranean coast spilling round the corner to the Atlantic coast.  Isn't it?

A couple of bits of what looks like Morocco are in fact part of Spain (Yes, Spain is in Africa too).  But then, moving round to Morocco's southern border we come to . . . um . . . Morocco.  Or is it Western Sahara?  On that issue many lives have been expended.

There is, then, a vast but sparsely populated chunk of Atlantic Africa which may or may not be a country, two countries or part of another country or some such combination.

Western Sahara does have a team (they also have a stadium but that's in the part most certainly claimed by Morocco so unusable to them).  Like many similar awkwardnesses, Western Sahara are part of the CONIFA group.  Here you will find Tibet, Northern Cyprus, Zanzibar and the like.  These nations (or otherwise) are the refugees of International Football.  This is typified by this year's CONIFA World Cup which was hosted by Barawa (an area in Southern Somalia).

Perhaps you are wondering how Barawa found the stadia in their war-torn bush country to host the tournament.  The answer is - they hosted it in and around London.   Here's Northern Cyprus playing Tibet - in Enfield.

You thought you understood Morocco?  You thought you understood International Football?  Human beings have made the world a complicated place. London somehow always ends up involved it seems to me.

World Cup Blogs 16: Mexico

During this World Cup Mexico is the star of North America.  Canada has only appeared once (1986) and this time the USA miserably failed to qualify.

Nor is this stardom anything new.  Mexico has appeared in the Tournament more often than almost any nation, including England and has hosted it twice.  The 2026 World Cup, now to be co-hosted by the three North American nations is not hosting match of equals.

Not of equals.

When I visited Cuidad Juarez many years ago across the border with Texas, USA the experience in the photograph was true then also.  On the left is the (clear) highway from the USA into Mexico.  On the right the highway from Mexico to the USA.  Getting to Mexico was not a problem, getting (in my case back) to the USA certainly was.  Donald Trump is simply an unpleasantly boisterous and arrogant version of an old truth.

The migrants in the Mediterranean represent the same stark inequalities, but the Mexican-USA border is the land-link which most illustrates the way of the world.  It was once the British Empire, of course (before I begin to sound self-justifying).  After the Windrush celebration this weekend I am very mindful of that. 

Again - keeping the World Cup in perspective - were Mexico to win the competition there would be wild celebrations yet the situation on this border would not change on the Monday morning afterwards.  America First.

They are not, however, the blindspots of heaven - a border that no Mexican, Briton, American or Somalian has any right to expect to cross - ever.  But by grace . . .

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

World Cup Blogs 15: Japan

Every World Cup is about much more than goals and results.  That Iceland, for example, are there at all I noted in an earlier blog is an amazing achievement.

Then there's Japan.  They have become famous in this tournament not for the players but for their fans.  Not for their fans during the game either.  But because (and difficult to imagine how counter cultural this is to me, and English football supporter) after their first game their fans were filmed cleaning up their litter before they left the stadium.

Bluntly, when English fans go to a tournament we are grateful if all of them have left the seats fixed in place.

If goodness is a powerful cultural weapon in a football tournament, how much more true are the words of the apostle Peter regarding goodness as a powerful weapon for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ:

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

World Cup Blogs 14: Iran

While Egypt clearly takes first place as the most Biblical nation in this World Cup, the runner up is equally certain - Iran.  In English translations it is generally called Persia and it figures in many later parts of the Old Testament.

One Bible Book is set entirely in Iran - the Book of Esther.  And one of the Bible's most famous stories also happened at least within its Empire - Daniel's deliverance in the lions' den.

The Iranian National Team have, as their most common nickname, the Lions.  This is very suitable because historically - and not just via Daniel - Persia was closely associated with the lions that populated its vast and wild countryside.

Today, apart from the odd zoo, there are no Persian lions in Persia.  The only wild population of them is found in a Reserve in India.  It is a sad story replicated over so many species of large animals.

God shut the mouths of the lions one night in the Persian Empire.  But in the end the human beings of Persia and elsewhere have brought the Asiatic lions to the brink of extinction.  The world is a poorer place when the only living expression of a lion is on the banners supporting a football team: the World Cup, we note again, is not the answer to everything.

World Cup Blogs 13: Iceland

I pulled the car up, climbed out and took this photograph.

Of course there are countless mountain passes where one could do such a thing and see rocks and more rocks.  But this was not on a mountain pass.  It was on a flat road through what might be, in most parts of the world, fields, meadows, houses, farmland or woodland.  This is Iceland though, and this is rock, and volcanic rock at that.

That Iceland, with a population similar to a London Borough, should be at the World Cup while the world's four most populous nations are not is itself quite miraculous.  That they have achieved so much not only from a small population but in such a geological and climatic background is almost incredible.

In their opening game Iceland scored and drew with the famed footballing nation of Argentina.  How do they do it?  Perhaps the picture holds a clue.

For looked at quickly and without local insight the sight stretching off into the distance is, somehow, green.  This was deep winter and if you visit Iceland in summer the green can be overwhelming so that the rock is invisible.  It is, of course, moss.

When dried it could be used for bedding or to insulate housing structures.  Life is so persistent, so innovative, that a large area with no soil at all can still be very green.

The Icelandic football team, together with nature, remind us that a promising environment is not necessary for success.  

It is a thought that, as a Christian in London in 2018 I find uplifting too.

World Cup Blogs 12: Germany

One of the great values of international sport is that it brings people together, albeit in a competitive way.  However, when Argentina recently cancelled a game they had scheduled in Israel we were reminded that sport is not really above politics but is merely allowed brief glimpses of an unrealistic utopia.

Germany are winners when it comes to the World Cup.  But the country faces battles and has worked very hard to redress its 20th century story, a story which put paid to many sporting events.  There was no World Cup tournament in 1942 or 1946.

One, I think, very moving and impressive feature of Germany are Stolpersteine.


In the pavements of several German cities, towns and villages you may find them - in English literally stumbling blocks.   Stolpersteine are embedded stones with a small plaque on top. On the plaque is the name of someone who lived in a building nearby and who was taken away by the Nazis in or before World War II, never to return. Gunter Demnig, an artist from Cologne, made it something of a life's work to place these wherever research shows people were deported.

I photographed those below in an anonymous inner city street in Frankfurt am Main. Seven people whose 'crime' was to be Jewish.

Such is the irrational injustice of anti-Semitism that if I had stood in that street in the war as a Briton - the declared enemy - though I may well have been killed as a spy, I might have talked my way into a prisoner of war camp. 

But had I been a Jew, and that was my home city, perhaps the very street I grew up on, I would more certainly have been killed and my family with me.  We must never let the warm waves of sporting internationalism fool us into thinking that injustice can be eradicated by donning football shirts and kicking a ball.  It might help.  But justice costs more than that.

World Cup Blogs 11: France

France are one of the teams you hope to get in the office sweepstakes.  They are a strong possibility to win the World Cup (my wife got Morocco . . .).

Here is a nation that has a strong identity, a famed language and a colourful history that has at times made it as important as any nation on earth.  It's relationship with the Christian faith is very mixed.  It was the home of the popes for a while (or one of the popes for a while too - another story), and still today hoardes of Catholics flock to Lourdes.  On another side of the theological ocean was John Calvin and later the Huguenots.  Then the revolution sent France into a secular tailspin which I feel leaves it artistic, monumental, important but somehow a little empty of a soul.

But in the hectic life of London (Londres, sorry) and in the materialistic 21st century as we all start to share the secular spiral away from true hope, let's enjoy some moments of peace from a 20th century French institution.  The World Cup draws people of many nations, but whether it benefits them is not so clear.  Here's another way:

World Cup Blogs 10: England

Let FIFA,the governing body of the World Cup,  tell the story . . .

The contemporary history of the world's favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body

So there we have it.  England are not only at the World Cup - England is the origin of the sport that the World Cup is about.

Though England is not the largest or most populous of nations it has been the place where many benefits to humankind have begun apart from sports like football, rugby and cricket.

Only this week I was reading about the start of the (now worldwide) Hospice Movement - in England.  Penicillin was a great discovery that certainly delays many of our admissions to hospices and the like.  Viagra (no further comment).

Of less life-saving significance the textile industry spawned many inventions including the sewing machine and polyester.  Then there's pencils, bone china, typewriters, radio, the world-wide web, carbon fibre, tin cans for food, light switches, stainless steel, the tuning fork, DNA sequencing, the seismograph, seat belts and toy building bricks (Lego later obtained the patent and the rest is history).  Yet this list is but a tiny sample.

Of more direct interest to this blog are those Christian ministries which started in England.  The Salvation Army, the Baptist Missionary Society (followed by very many others),  Methodism, the Quakers, the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.   These spiritual gifts to God's world are much disregarded today and are quite similar to football (and Lego bricks) for though beginning in England many of the blessings from God are today valued more and used to far greater effect by other peoples of the world.

Losing what you launched is a nuisance for football and toy bricks but in things spiritual it is catastrophic - so here's (part of) the dying prayer of one of the great shapers of England, Oliver Cromwell:

Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And if I may, I will come to Thee for Thy people.
Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good…and many of them have set too high a value upon me, while others wish me dead and would be glad of my death.
Lord, no matter how thou dispose of me, continue to do them good….Forgive their sins and do not forsake them, but love and bless them ...
Teach those that look too much on Thy instruments to look more upon Thyself. And pardon ....the folly of this short prayer and give me rest for Jesus Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and Thy Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, for now and forever, Amen

World Cup Blogs 9: Egypt

Egypt may not be the World Cup's stand out football nation but for a Christian blogger going through the World Cup nations Egypt is unquestioningly the Biblical centrepiece.   After Israel and (arguably) the predecessors of Iraq, Egypt is the next most mentioned nation in the Scriptures.  One of the Bible's greatest stories - the Exodus - began there; another, the story of Joseph, is almost entirely set there.  Abraham visited there, Jacob retired there, Moses was born there, Kings David and Solomon had dealings there (no, they were not Egyptian as some speculators have suggested) and we could go on.

In the New Testament, Egypt is mentioned only a couple of dozen times and nearly always with reference to the Exodus or quoting Psalms about those days.

Except twice.  On the Day of Pentecost people from Egypt were among those present at the outset of the Christian church's missionary story - long before Croatia that we looked at a blog or two ago.  But the other New Testament occurrence of Egypt is what sets it apart from all other the nations at this World Cup - God walked there.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’

There are timing issues with this toddlerdom of Jesus.  The truth may be somewhat greater than that God walked in Egypt.  It could be - it is likely to be - that Egypt was where God learned to walk.

Whatever Egypt achieves in this World Cup we may be sure that it is not going to be the most mind-boggling thing to think about when we think about Egypt.

World Cup Blogs 8: Denmark

Should England not do well - I can hardly believe I used 'should' there, as if there is some doubt - a decent option (historically speaking) is to transfer support to Denmark.  It's been awhile but there was a time when England and Denmark had the same King.  More accurately, what is now England was then the Danelaw and subject to the Danish throne.  That was King Canute (Danish: Knut).  He famously sat on the beach to show that, for all his power, he could not hold back the incoming tide.

Denmark remains a monarchy, and other Danish kings have had pause for thought about their limitations too.  Here's the Marble Church (Frederik's Church) in the royal district in Copenhagen, a picture from my most recent visit to the city.  Marble, but made largely of limestone - not enough cash available you see.  It isn't just the tide that earthly kings cannot control.

Over its entrance is written 1 Peter 1:25, The Word of the Lord endures for ever.  How good it is to remember that our passing lives are lived in the context of something that will be as true when we die as it was when we were born.  

This church also speaks of other monarchical frailties.  It was opened about 125 years ago.  This means that it has currently been open for fewer years than it took to build!  Lack of funds and effort meant it was 150 years from foundation stone to opening.  It is a monument to what the Word of a King cannot do - except the King of kings.

Unfortunately we look in vain for a Biblical prophecy of English sporting success . . .  150 years perhaps?