No.128
However, we tend to forget that we
are not God. We are Adam and Eve.
For Adam and Eve, by contrast, their
first complete day of life was a day of
rest, from which they then proceeded
to work and live. We work from
rest; not rest from work. I wonder
whether that perspective might be a
welcome and vital corrective to our
increasingly frenetic working lives.
The day of rest is essential in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, for it leads
us to worship, and, through that,
reveals more about God. And the
same must be said of sport.
I am reminded of the film Chariots
of Fire, the story of Eric Liddell,
Christian athlete and later
missionary, who famously refused the
opportunity to win a gold medal in
the 100m race at the 1924 Olympic
Games because his race was on a
Sunday. ‘God made me for a purpose’,
says Liddell in the film, ‘but he also
made me fast, and, when I run, I feel
his pleasure.’
Our sport, our leisure, our rest, played
with the right attitude, are things that
can bring pleasure to God. They can
be as much a part of the daily round
of thanks and praise of this College as
The Trusty Servant
what goes on here in Chapel.
Now, sermons are like Winkies games:
everything can be won or lost in
the dying moments. In a bid for a
muscular Christianity, I had thought
of getting you all to your feet to sing
my favourite sporting hymn:
Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life
End over end, neither left nor the right
Straight through the heart of them righteous
uprights
Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life.
Make me, oh make me, Lord, more than I am
Make me a piece in your master game plan
Free from the earthly temptation below
I’ve got the will Lord if you’ve got the toe.
But, we’re not a rugby school, so that
won’t do.
So, perhaps, Alan Bennett’s great
sermon from Beyond the Fringe:
When that One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
It matters not who won or lost,
But how you played the game.
Actually, no jokes are required. For
sport is man’s joke on God. You
see, God says to man, ‘I’ve created
a universe where it seems like
everything matters; where you’ll have
to grapple with life and death and
mortality and, in the end, you’ll die
and see that your frenetic labours
mattered little.’ So, in reply, man
says to God, ‘Well then … within
your universe we’re going to create a
sub-universe called sports, one that
absolutely doesn’t matter, and we’ll
follow everything that happens in it
as if it were a matter of life and death.’
The last word should go to Dr
Moberly and his ‘Isthmian Games’:
‘We have reached the end of another
season of refreshment and leisure,
and are again girding ourselves up for
a long course of industry and labour
… God has also allowed us to reach
a new beginning of our Christian
course, a time of new prayers, a time
of repeated communions, a time of
fresh duty, a time for pressing forward
in all the holy activity of early piety
… Let us think of God’s unspeakable
mercy, who still bears with us, gives us
time and space for repentance, calls
us by every motive that can prevail
on man, not to despise the riches of
His goodness and long-suffering, but
to repent of our childish and youthful
sins, and yield ourselves up in soul
and body to His service!’
Patrick Maclure
(I, 52-57; Secretary of Wykehamist Society, 88-04; Aide to the Warden
and Headmaster, 04 – 14) died on 28 th September 2019
Charles Sinclair (B, 61-66; Warden, 14-
19) gave this address at a dinner to mark
PSWKM’s retirement in June 2015:
It may surprise you to know, Patrick,
that you have spent 52 years of
your life connected with this place.
I have excluded your years before
Win Coll, your years of National
Service in the prestigious KRRC and
your Bursarship of Downe House.
I have included 19 years as Master
and Bursar at Horris Hill, on the
grounds that it was (and still is) one
of the great feeder schools to Win
Coll. In fact, you brought on so many
Wykehamists at Horris Hill that we
have a well-triangulated picture of
you from those days. ‘Terrifying’ and
‘scary’ are words that occur often.
‘He had a loud, booming voice and
if he shouted out your name in the
6
corridor, it was enough to stop your
heart.’
You were known as Pesky after your
many initials, and a ‘Pesky Rocket’
for having annoyed you was to
be avoided at all costs. It wasn’t
only the boys that suffered: legend
has it that one of your booms was
launched so successfully on a clutch
of swifts making too much noise