True witness

Jesus said: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  Matthew 6:5-6

When I first began to take a serious interest in football (London, SE 25, Selhurst Park, the home of the mighty Crystal Palace, at that time in what was known as “the Third Division South”) the idea of professional footballers having a spiritual life, of being “religious”, was unthinkable. True, the match day programme used to contain little biographies of the players, and I do remember that our left-back, Alfie Noakes, bred bulldogs in his spare time. But beyond that I can’t remember a single detail about any player’s personal life, religious or otherwise.

There was, I think, a Blackpool player called Jimmy Armfield, who was known as a Christian – who in fact played the organ at his local church (and who narrowly missed being part of the 1966 world-cup squad). But his was the only name from top-class football that sticks in my mind.

Today, over sixty years on, it’s very different.

Many players routinely cross themselves as they run onto the pitch, or drop to their knees in prayer when they score a goal, or have a religious slogan on their tee-shirt. We read that some clubs have, alongside resident chaplains, regular prayer and Bible-study groups. (Some people think it’s part of a “quiet revival” that is taking place in this country, particularly among young men. Adherents of other religions, especially Islam, can of course be equally zealous.)

I find myself rather torn when I see these displays of religious commitment.

There’s a part of me that says, “How good to see these young men, thoroughly modern as they are with or without their tattoos, so obviously committed to their faith. Unashamed of Jesus! Good for them! - a great witness!”

And then there’s a part of me that calls to mind the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 6:5-6, where he warns his followers not to aim “to be seen by others” when they pray. No, he tells them, “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen”. Religious devotion is essentially a private thing, not for display.

Not for one moment would I suggest that these players are “hypocrites”, as Jesus says of those who “babble like pagans” – who am I to judge them? But there does seem to be something of a conflict here with the clear teaching of Jesus.

The question goes deeper, in fact, than the matter of public display. I find myself asking: When these players pray, publicly or not, what do they actually pray for? One player I read about said he prayed once that God would help him to score a hat-trick and… well, guess what happened!

I think this is more serious than the business of making a public display. If a Christian, any Christian, wants to ask for God’s blessing on what they do, surely the top priority is to ask God not so much for “success” in the obvious sense, but for grace to act always with Christlike honesty and integrity.

If you happen to be a professional footballer, for example, how about: “Lord, help me today to play to the highest level of skill of which I’m capable - and to commit no deliberate fouls, to pull nobody’s shirt, to grapple with no opponents in the penalty area, not to argue with the referee, not to appeal for a throw-in when I know perfectly well the ball came off my boot…” (one could go on for a long time!).

In a nutshell: the way to publicly declare our allegiance to Jesus is to live our lives in the likeness of Jesus: humbly, graciously, honestly… to act in such a way as to cause people to notice unawares, not to thrust our allegiance in their faces.

To be fair, the people Jesus is critical of in these verses seem to be people who you might call “professional pray-ers”, synagogue leaders or hard-line Pharisees. And he certainly isn’t teaching his followers for all time that coming together for prayer is wrong. No! You only have to read Acts to see a growing church which was also a church committed to meeting together for fellowship of different kinds: the purely “private” Christian simply doesn’t exist.

But… well, you get my point.

Father, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me - not only in what I do, but in what I am, and in what your Spirit is making me. Amen.