I have a Confession to make. I realise that it’s our national sport, and that everyone good Englishman is supposed to like it, but I have less than zero interest in football.
When I started school, all the other boys were obsessed with it: every school breaktime, so long as we were allowed outside, out came the football, and off came the jumpers to use as goalpoasts, and the argument began about which side got to be England, and who among the players got to pretend to be Beckham, Owen, and Shearer.
I on the other hand, had no interest from the beginning. On the exceptionally rare occasion I was dragooned into playing, I was put in goal, because I couldn’t run fast or kick the ball with any degree of accuracy. I was quickly kicked out of goal whenever there was anything important to do like actually kicking or throwing the ball or defending against penalties. I did not then, nor do I now, have any interest in football.
It may be a surprise then, that one of my favourite films is, in fact, a football film. No, before anyone suggests it, it isn’t Bend it like Beckham, which I’ve never (in fact) watched, but The Damned United.
For those unfamiliar with it, it’s ostensibly about Brian Clough’s doomed tenure as the manager of Leeds United in the summer of 1974. But, like all good sports films, it’s not really about the sports – football is just the backdrop for the real story: the real story is the partnership between Brian Clough and his Assistant Manager Peter Taylor.
Clough and Taylor, as they are in the film, are chalk and cheese. Clough, the flashy charismatic show-off, Taylor the perceptive behind the scenes man. Clough with the raging temper and massive ego, Taylor the calm and humble voice of reason who tries to keep him in check. Early in the film, the two build up their first team (Derby County) together with great success – with Taylor sniffing out the best players, and Clough getting them to play their best. But when Clough moves to Leeds without Taylor, it all falls apart: he makes the wrong hires, he winds up the players, and he gets sacked after just forty-four days on the job. Eventually He and Taylor reconcile, they go on to manage a new club, and outdo even their past successes.
Without Taylor, Clough didn’t hire the right people to play for him and he couldn’t keep people on side, without Clough, Taylor couldn’t get the players to play their best: they needed each other, and that is the genius of the film: it uses the football to show us how much these two men – almost total opposites in every way – needed one another to succeed.
If you were to look for an example of this in the history of the Church, and in fact in the bible, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example than Saints Peter and Paul:
Peter was almost entirely unlettered: a fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee, who had followed Christ from the very beginning. Paul was an educated expat: born a Roman citizen in the city of Tarsus, a student of the famous Rabbi Gamaliel, a Pharisee, and (at first) a vicious enemy and persecutor of the Church.
Not only were their backgrounds and personalities different, but their missions were fundamentally different also. Paul was chosen to preach the Good News to the Pagans – he was the missionary, the man who never stopped moving from place to place, spreading the Good News everywhere. Peter was the Rock, appointed to guide the Church by “feeding the sheep” (a reference to the Prophet Jeremiah 3:5 - I will send you shepherds after my own heart, to feed you with knowledge and truth”). He went only to two places that we know, and stayed there as leader: Antioch in Syria, and then to Rome. It was in these two places, Antioch and Rome, that Peter and Paul would meet and minister together.
But, being opposites, their relationship was not always a happy one: at Antioch they had a falling out. In the next chapter of Galatians, Paul writes:
But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned.
What did Peter do that was so wrong? He started to eat only with the Jewish Christians, and not with the Gentiles Paul had converted, and others (including Paul’s close friend Barnabas) followed his example. So Paul criticises Peter to His face – he has failed to treat the Gentiles, the non-Jews, as brothers.
Unlike Taylor and Clough in the Damned United, the falling out isn’t the end for Peter and Paul – they join forces at the Council of Jerusalem to welcome gentiles into the Church, they both end up in Rome, sharing the ministry there together, they both chose the same successor (St Linus) to lead the Church in Rome after them, and they both died as martyrs (tradition says) on the selfsame day – the 29th June, the day when the Romans celebrated their founders Romulus and Remus, when we now celebrate the founding of the Roman Church.
What are we to take from this? Look at the icon of Ss. Peter and Paul on the front of the newsletter – see what they’re doing: they're embracing, sharing the kiss of peace. Like Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, Paul and Peter bring something to the table we can’t do without.
Peter is the rock, the shepherd, the keeper of the keys; Peter is Authority. Peter is the Church as an institution. Without Peter the Church falls apart, breaks up into disunity and infighting: just look at the thousands of different Protestant churches and sects that break apart and fight one another over the slightest difference. Nothing holds them in unity, they are built on sand rather than on the rock, and they can’t hold together. Look at the Orthodox Churches: Moscow and Constantinople have once again broken Communion with one another (not the first time this has happened) and the Orthodox Churches are once again at loggerheads with each other. Without Peter there is no unity, because without him you build on sand rather than on rock!
Yet, without Paul, the Church risks closing itself off. Paul is the missionary, the outstanding teacher of the faith. Paul goes from place to place sharing the Good News. A Church without Paul is one that forgets that its purpose is not to sit atop the rock like we were living in some kind of isolated fortress, but to invite others to climb on and make their home here too.
We, as the members of the Church need the authority of the institution to feed us knowledge, to bind and to loose, to hold us together in unity of belief and unity of love. But we also need the spirit of Saint Paul – driving us out to the whole world to share the love of Christ with those who have not yet encountered Him, to Baptise the nations and build up the body of Christ.
So we celebrate Peter and Paul together, to remind us of the two pillars of our faith: that we should be united in confessing Christ in unity with his chief shepherd (Peter's successor) and on fire to share that Confession with the whole world.
Comments