Today is the feast day of Saint Thomas Becket, and I am thinking about football.
Let me explain.
The story of Becket’s martyrdom is quite famous, involving as it does a king and four of his knights. Briefly: King Henry II named Becket the Archbishop of Canterbury. As Henry’s Chancellor prior to this, Becket had a fairly luxurious life and a good relationship with the king. But upon his appointment to Archbishop, Becket changed: he became a penitent, focused on prayer and almsgiving, and turned away from his previous life entirely.
This would have been all fine and good until Becket’s role as Archbishop vexed some of Henry II’s demands. Henry II wanted more control over the church and a weaker clergy; Becket resisted. The two men clashed to the degree that at one point Becket was convicted of contempt of royal authority and sent into exile, where he continued to noisily object to Henry’s doings; after a compromise was mediated, Becket was allowed back to live in England and continue in his position.
The conflict continued until, famously, Henry II wondered aloud some version of the following in front of four of his knights: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” They interpreted the words as a command and went to Canterbury Cathedral with swords drawn: there they brutally murdered Becket by the altar in view of several monks, some of whom were also injured in the attack.
After this, Becket’s martyrdom became infamous for several reasons: the scandalous and grim manner in which it occurred, the witnesses to the murder, the public outcry, and the implicit responsibility of Henry II in the act. Henry later publicly repented; he was canonized only a couple of years after his death and his memorial remains an incredibly striking testament to his martyrdom.
I woke up thinking about this story after several weekends of college football, and after the common post-victory speech from winning football players. They point up at the sky; they lift their faces. They say, “I just want to praise my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for this victory today.”
This isn’t a wrong thing to do, per se. It’s always good to thank God. But I’ve written before on this blog about how we rarely see the losers of a football game doing the same. Nobody stands, having missed a field goal, points at the sky, and says, “I’d like to praise my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
I understand this is part of a larger cultural tendency. And, troublingly, a larger Christian tendency over time. We thank God for football wins and Maseratis and new homes and new jobs; we imply, whether purposefully or not, that these things are directly correlated to God’s blessing and God’s favor. But this is a strain of the prosperity gospel sneaking in, if we’re not careful, for we can be blessed and also crushed, blessed and also suffering, blessed and also destitute.
I grew up in a tradition that didn’t spend much time on the saints. But as I grow comfortable in a church that now attends to their stories more, I’m surprised by what an antidote they are to this sort of attitude. Because the saints were not having great experiences! They were not winning in any worldly sense of the world! They suffered horribly, many of them powerless before machines of empire and colonialism and oppression—and yet praised God, and yet thanked God, and knew that closeness with God and not the fruits of God’s blessing were the ultimate reward.
Paul views misery not as an if, but as a when. 2 Corinthians 4:8-12 gives us language for what we can expect of the Christian life: to be hard-pressed, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. This isn’t the thumbs-up after a football game; this is the gore smeared over the floor of Canterbury Cathedral.
I worry frequently that our modern Christian culture views faith as a perpetual form of “winning”: winning in terms of being blessed, winning in terms of worldly profit, winning in terms of control and authority, winning in terms of conquering all things through faith. To be clear: victory is coming, and has indeed come.
But that victory came at the hands of a God who was crucified and resurrected, who experienced everything Paul details above. A God who Himself was not spared being struck down, and who invites His followers to share in His suffering.
The life of faith is not for the faint of heart. Those who find it so may want to reexamine Hebrews 11:35-40:
There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised,since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
To persevere and to keep the faith in the face of doubt, trial, suffering, and loss: that is what victory looks like for the believer. Other blessings are welcome, of course, and celebrated, but we must not lose that first concept in pursuit of the second.
Samaritan's Song 
