I saved up my energy this week recovering from the blight of Covid to come to a long ago booked non church related gathering in Manchester. I nearly didn’t get here though due to points failure between here and Leeds. But we were kept entertained by a very jovial and honest Liverpudlian train guard who told us keeping us on the platform in Dewsbury was as exciting as it could get!
Coming back to Manchester always feels like coming home. This city changed me when I arrived to train for ministry in it scarily 30 years ago this September. Today getting off the train at Victoria it seemed extra busy. Not just with hen nights starting early but something else… then I remembered today is the F A cup final at Wembley - a Manchester derby. And people were coming into the city to watch it in the pubs and on big screens…
Spoiler alert - Manchester City 1 Manchester United 2!
City before all the money were a community club at Maine Road across Platt Fields Park and they were at the heart of that community. You couldn’t park near college on the road on a Saturday. Then money came and the Eithad and yes success but it all changed. I supported City for a bit. I remember my first college placement church in Manchester at Barlow Moor which was very impoverished. All the youngsters supported United. They had to have the newest kit else they’d be bullied at school. In a service, naively, I told them I supported City. A little lad came out and kicked me in the shin. My supervisor said “don’t diss their team .It’s the only hope they have.” Football can be a religion.
Wasn’t it the late Liverpool manager Bill Shankly who said “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
I think as the city hots up tonight I will escape! The bars are all full…
I was glad to be able to get into the cathedral before it closed. I love the fire window in the military chapel. It was designed by the artist to commemorate the cathedral’s rebuilding after the blitz and represents the flames of the fires caused by the bombing. It’s a simple design but very effective, especially on a sunny day with the sunlight illuminating it – you could easily convince yourself that the street outside was ablaze. The window was destroyed by the IRA setting off a bomb in June 1996 and it had to be reconstructed by the artist. We were in the city when that bomb exploded and I’ll never forget it. The power of God’s fire powerfully at work in the world. Manchester people would celebrate their resilience and community.
None better to demonstrate this than Emmanline Pankhurst, a daughter of this city. She fought for the vote for women. We can’t now imagine that some in our society were denied suffrage. That’s why I won’t tell my people who to vote for but I will encourage us all to engage in the process, to seek God’s Kingdom, to question candidates and to vote on 4 June even if you scribble on the ballot… remember those who haven’t got the vote and others like Mrs Pankhurst who fought for it.
In the end what is it we worship or stand up for? A cause? A football team? A conviction things have to change? God? A political party? Rishi Sunak? Discuss! There’s a vibrancy about this city I would like to bottle and take home…
For Manchester is the place where people do things. It is good to talk about doing things, but better still to do them. ‘Don’t talk about what you are going to do - do it.’ That is the Manchester habit. And in the past through the manifestation of this quality the word Manchester became a synonym for energy and freedom and the right to do and to think without shackles. Sir Edward Abbott Parry, What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester By One Who Has Done It, 1912
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