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Good morning. Only 3000 Sottish fans will be at Wembley tonight though thousands more have travelled South to support their team, as several hundred Welsh fans managed to get to Baku for their fine win over Turkey on Tuesday. But behind the teams and those in the stadium there are of course literally millions of English, Scottish and Welsh emotionally engaged in these matches. Sadly, Northern Ireland did not qualify for this stage. For most people national identity is a fundamental part of their being. A vital part of who we are- but one of the great gains in recent years is a much greater awareness that we all have not one but multiple identities. I regard myself as a citizen of the United Kingdom and I am deeply grateful to live in a state based on certain fundamental rights and freedoms. But I am also Welsh by nationality, European by culture and Christian by religion. If my family originally came from the Caribbean or India I would also regard their heritage as part of my identity. Each one of these identities can matter to us but should there be an order of priorities. Are some more important than others? As a Christian I want to say yes. My Christian identity should trump all the others. Many Muslims feel the same about their religion when for example they say they belong to the Umma, the world wide community of Muslims. It is good to have loyalties, to one’s family-blood is thicker than water as the saying goes- or club or country but from a religious point of view that cannot be our highest loyalty. The great philosopher bishop Anselm in the 12th century defined God as that than which a greater cannot be thought. If that is the case idolatry might be defined as giving ones total loyalty to that which is less than ultimate. The problem is that these lesser loyalties can be so strong, and our own personality so bound up with them, that they do not easily give way to what is higher. I am still challenged by a remark I once heard from someone who was caught up in one of the fratricidal wars in Africa. He said, with remorse. ‘I am afraid the blood of my tribe was thicker than the water of my baptism’ He knew that his Christian identify should have made a radical difference, but it hadn’t. And one way or another, most of us are pretty tribal; we align uncritically with some groups and not others. Sometimes we are too reluctant to lift our minds to wider, higher loyalties.