View from the Vicarage

High Summer

July brings with it this year a flurry of major sporting events. In addition to Wimbledon and Test matches we have European football and of course the postponed Olympics, scheduled to begin later this month in Japan.

Something for everybody to enjoy as we all eagerly await the lifting of covid restrictions.

Sport has proved to be a strange form of reconciliation over the past few years. Nations that have been pitted against each other in war or at least frozen out by past encounters, find themselves lining up against each other on the football field or cricket pitch. The enthusiasm and partisanship engendered by sport so often transcends political and religious divides.

The athlete competing in the games is an example of running the Christian life that is used in the Bible. The apostle Paul writing to young Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:4 states that anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules.

Paul depicts the Christian life not as a leisure or spectator activity but as fierce competition.

Rigorous training is necessary if the victor’s crown is the goal. A casual approach to the Christian life is not acceptable any more than the training required for a 10,000 metres final in the Olympics.

The dictat that the winner must obey the rules speaks volumes to sport today. Major sports are overloaded with VAR and minor rules that continually delay the game so that minor transgressions can be sought on video.

Despite this over dependence on the rules we still enjoy the sport and some wonderful athletes have emerged in all major sports. Even the important issues of diversity and equality are being resolved in the sporting arenas around the world. Well ahead of diversity and equality in law, medicine, and the church.

I do hope you will be able to indulge yourself this month and enjoy some exciting sporting moments in your favourite sport.

This month the Lower Dever benefice says farewell to Rev Mark Bailey who departs for Hertfordshire. We wish him well and look forward to South Wonston joining us in an enlarged benefice.

We welcome Rev Rob Rees as curate to our benefice. Rob has just completed his training and will be ordained in Winchester cathedral on July 4th. J A Rennie