Two fires caught Glasgow’s attention last week. One was literal: smoke rising from a blaze at Glasgow Central Station that disrupted the heart of the city. The other was more familiar: the flare-up of anger and confrontation surrounding the latest Rangers–Celtic clash.
For a moment, the two seemed to echo one another — one a physical fire, the other the heat of football rivalry spilling over.
I happened to be preaching that day at St Silas, in the West End of Glasgow.
Just a few miles away, the city centre was dealing with smoke and disruption, while across the footballing world attention was fixed on another storm — this time of rivalry and anger.
The juxtaposition struck me.
Glasgow is a city where loyalties run deep. Walk through its streets on a derby weekend and you quickly realise that football here is rarely just football. It carries layers of identity, history, and belonging.
At their best, Old Firm fixtures display extraordinary passion. Stadiums vibrate with colour, noise, and devotion. Football can express something profoundly human: the longing to belong to something bigger than ourselves, to stand shoulder to shoulder with others in shared hope and joy.
Yet the same passion can easily tip into something darker. When rivalry becomes hostility, when anger spills into fighting, the game begins to reveal something deeper about us. It exposes how readily the human heart divides the world into "us" and "them." What happens in a stadium is rarely just about football; it reflects instincts that run through every human community.
I want to end with a striking image [not related to the Glasgow fire]. Fires often start small but spread quickly when there is fuel to feed them. The same is true of anger, resentment, and tribal hostility. Once ignited, they can move rapidly through a crowd, a stadium, or a city.
The gospel speaks directly into such moments. Scripture tells us that Christ himself "is our peace… who has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2v14). Jesus does not deny our desire to belong; He transforms it. Through the cross He forms a new people whose identity is no longer built on rivalry or inherited division, but on reconciliation and grace.
In a city where football loyalties run deep, that is both a challenge and a hope. The passion people feel for their club reveals how strongly we long to belong. The gospel offers that belonging in its truest sense — a unity that no rivalry can destroy, found ultimately in Christ.
What does FIFA's dispute reveal about leadership?
Some of the most powerful people in world football are currently arguing about power. And one of the things they …