Virtual Methodist

No Psalm this Sunday... Instead this is a dialogue that I'll be performing with another member of the congregation at our 11am communion service this morning... It started out life as an episode in a piece I wrote for New Irish Arts and the Centre For Contemporary Christianity in Ireland years ago, entitled "I Witness". It was based on the testimonies of various people that Jesus encounters in Luke's Gospel, with this piece being taken from Luke 7: 36-8: 3 . Man:      Although he insisted on associating with undesirables, we Pharisees didn’t wash our hands of him entirely… Various friends of mine invited him to their homes… But the rabble even followed him there… On one occasion a woman came into the banqueting room after the meal and knelt down at the bottom of his couch… She was bawling her eyes out… and with her kisses and her tears she washed his feet, before drying them with her hair and pouring perfume on them… It was disgusting… She was as good a...

Well, professional (?) football on a Sunday has at last come to Northern Ireland . And it is a little ironic that the first game would be in the heartland of Protestant East Belfast, with a match between Glentoran and Bangor at the Oval. Now, I'm a little ambivalent about strict sabbatarianism. Certainly the increased commercialism on Sundays has resulted in pressures on shopworkers to work on Sundays when they would rather be at church or at home with their families. The increasing number of amateur sports clubs running sessions on Sunday mornings has taken a toll on family attendance at church. And if Sunday football exacerbated any of that I would be deeply opposed to it. But I confess (and I appreciate that in some circles this is a serious confession as a minister of the gospel... tho' since I am Methodist, some wouldn't expect anything better of me...) I enjoy watching a game of football or rugby or many other inds of sport on TV on a Sunday afternoon. But Sunday saw...