Here goes...

I'm just beginning to get excited and nervous about going to the Champions' League Final tomorrow. It will be fantastic and I fully intend to savour every moment. This is a meeting of undoubtedly the two biggest clubs in world football. Here in the UK, we get use to thinking that Barcelona and Man United are just two out of many clubs in the Champions' League, alongside Chelsea, Arsenal, Inter, AC Milan, Real Madrid etc. I don't think so. Go outside these shores and I reckon there is more fascination with these two than any other clubs. Two vignettes to make my point. I spoke a couple of years ago at the Yoida Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea. There were around 10,000 Koreans there, and as a bit of a warm-up for my talk, I told them I was a theologian, but I also liked football. Sensing a bit of approval, I warmed to my theme, and decided to find out who they supported. I asked how may Chelsea fans there were. About 200 hands went up. I asked for Liverpool ...

It feels as though something very good and healing has taken place during the Queen's visit to Ireland this week. The Irish and the English are neighbours whose history is for better or worse tied up with each other. The bad blood between them doesn't need rehearsing, whether felt as '800 years of oppression' or outrage at IRA violence, but it has festered away for years, and left behind all kinds of tragedy and pain on both sides. And it is always tragic when neighbours don't get on. I am, I suppose, an illustration of the relationship. As the son of an Irish mother and an English father, who grew up in England but spent most childhood holidays feeling at home with family in Ireland, I have always felt a bit of both. I have both an Irish and a British passport. I happily support England at cricket, Ireland in rugby and both at football. My friends are mostly English, my wider family mostly Irish. And I know many others like me. Being such a mixture, I instinctivel...

At the moment, I'm working on the 'Philippians and Colossians' volume in the forthcoming " Reformation Commentary on Scripture " series, and came across this vintage bit of Calvin, commenting on Philippians 2.21: " For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ ." If there are any ministers, priests, clergy out there feeling a little hard done by, badly paid, unappreciated, wishing they were somewhere else, hear what Calvin had to say. Typically forthright - he calls a spade a spade, as usual - but there is perhaps some wisdom here: "It may seem at first sight as if it were no great fault to seek one’s own, but how insufferable it is in the servants of Christ, appears from the fact that it renders those whom it possesses utterly useless. For it is impossible that he who is devoted to self should spend himself for the Church... For it must necessarily be, that one or other of two dispositions rules in us: either that, overlooking ...