Article

Creed

Death & life

Football

Trauma

1 October 2025

5 min read

The derby, the downpour, and the death of a hero

At Anfield, grief and glory collide

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A mural on a side of a pub shows a footballer making a heart sign.

Diogo Jota commemorated, near Anfield.

Liverpool FC.

My wife and I went to our first game of the season recently: Liverpool v Everton, in the pouring rain. The stuff of dreams.

It’s a bit of a walk from the train station to Anfield and the whole way, I’d been so excited to get that first glimpse of the stadium, the fans, the atmosphere, the buzz. We turn a corner and suddenly you can see Anfield looming large between rows of houses. One more street and then we’re there and … flowers on the floor. Tributes to Diogo Jota.

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead.

We get a pie, a programme for Jo’s Mum and Dad (who lets us use their season tickets; thanks Jeff and Janet), find our seats. Kick off. Flags wave from the Kop as they normally do and … there’s one of Diogo Jota.

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead.

10 minutes in and Ryan Gravenberch scores a beautiful goal to make it 1-0 and Anfield is roaring. Then 20 minutes hits and everyone stands up to sing Diogo Jota’s song (“Oh, he wears the number 20 …”).

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead.

I hadn’t forgotten that Diogo Jota had died, but being at Anfield made me remember that Diogo Jota had died.

Being at Anfield – seeing the flowers and the flags, singing his song – all of it hit me and my wife unusually hard. With each new reminder of Jota’s death, I was taken back to the moment a mate messaged me to ask if I’d seen the news of his car crash. There I was again, no longer at Anfield watching the footy, but stood in my house, staring at my phone in disbelief.

For the last year or so, St. Mellitus College (where I’m lucky enough to teach) has been hosting a series of public events to celebrate 1700 years since the Council of Nicaea. The events have been fantastic and, one of the perks of the job is that I’ve had loads of chances to learn from some of the best theologians alive at these events.

In March 2025, Professor Trevor Hart was giving one of the public lectures for this project. The next day, I and the rest of the staff team had a chance to speak with the professor about his paper. One of the things that struck me in the conversation was what he said about trauma.

One of the key characteristics of trauma, he said, is that it interrupts our sense of time. I’m going about my day and – all of a sudden – something triggers my trauma response and the past (that thing or event that causes my trauma) is made very present again. I see it and feel it as if it I’m living it for the first time again; it is re-present-ed to me.

And this is exactly what happened to me, 20 minutes into the Merseyside Derby.

Look, I’m not saying I have PTSD about Jota’s death or anything like that. I didn’t know Jota; frankly he’s not mine to grieve and I don’t want to co-opt the loss that Jota’s friends and family will be feeling.

But, our first trip to Anfield since Jota’s death gave us something of a taste of how trauma re-present-s itself. The past became all too present as I stood there, thinking about the moment I heard of Jota’s death.

But, for a Christian theologian (like Hart), this aspect of trauma is very significant. Because this is exactly what happens in the sacraments.

The sacraments are bits of Church life in which Jesus Christ is really and especially present. Different Churches will disagree on exactly which events or rituals constitute the sacraments but most would say that baptism and Holy Communion definitely do.

Let’s take Holy Communion (sometimes called the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper) as an example. Again, this will look different in different Churches, but in holy communion bread and wine is blessed and said to become Jesus’ body and blood. And here we see the rupture of past and present. The body and blood of Christ, broken and shed on the cross before being raised again, is re-present-ed here for me, now. It is made really present (both in the physical and temporal sense of that word).

Time and space collapse in on themselves as Jesus Christ – who created time and space in the first place and so can do what He wants with them, thank you very much – bends them to His will just to be present here, and now, with me.

I wonder whether something similar happens in trauma, too? If trauma, too, might function as a sacrament, of sorts? If the moment of the past rupturing the present when trauma responses are triggered is precisely where Jesus Christ seeks to meet and really be present with those people?

It certainly felt like it in the roaring, red cathedral of Anfield Road. The moments of remembering Jota’s life and having his death re-present-ed to us felt genuinely … sacred.

And look, it was the Merseyside Derby, our first in-person game of the season; I was obviously excited, so maybe I was just primed to be emotional when these memories of Jota appeared. Maybe. Who knows? But it would be entirely in keeping with what the Church knows of God’s character that he meets with us precisely at those points where time and space begin to fall apart: in the sacraments, and in trauma.

There will be flowers and banners and songs for Jota for some time yet. Whenever we drive from our house into Liverpool city centre, we drive by a huge mural of Jota that’s been painted onto the side of a pub.

It won’t be possible to forget Jota, and there will be lots of prompts to remember him. And in those moments of remembering, time and space may well continue to collapse in on itself. I may find myself once again in my house, staring aghast my phone. And I may well find that Jesus Christ is there with me too.

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Article

Christmas culture

Creed

Middle East

Royalty

13 December 2024

6 min read

Magi: where did the wise men come from?

The origin story of the Middle East's ancient king makers.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

An arts and crafts image of the three kings adoring the new born Christ.

The Adoration of the Magi.

Edward Burne-Jones, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve probably heard they weren’t really kings, but the wise men or magi had some impressive royal connections. Far from being one-off royal visitors to the infant Jesus, the magi had a long history of involvement with monarchy, crossing paths with illustrious kings including Cyrus the Great of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Nero.

Originally a tribe of the Medes who lived in Northern Iran 600 years before Jesus’ birth, the Persian magi were hereditary priests. Writing around 425BCE, Greek historian Herodotus tells us how these magi became known throughout the ancient Middle East for their ability to interpret dreams and knowledge of the stars. They were followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and were responsible for the holy fires central to Zoroastrian worship.

To the Greeks, the Zoroastrians and the magi were exotic objects of fascination. Many later Greek written philosophical and occult works claimed Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) as their author. Much like some twentieth century Western conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Greek and Roman conceptions of Persian religion often had only a passing resemblance to the original. This may have included the "mystery cult" of Mithras that would become popular throughout the Roman Empire in the first century. This also means that references to 'magi' may not refer to the Persian magi, but to other astrologers or dream interpreters who lived to the east of the Mediterranean.

A hundred years before Herodotus, we find the first mention of magi in the bible, in the Book of Daniel. This was the period of Jewish exile and captivity in Babylon. Jehoikim, King of Judea and descendent of Kings David and Solomon, was defeated in battle and killed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and many Judean nobles were taken as prisoners. Daniel was one of these hostages and is taken to the Babylonian court, where God gives him the ability to interpret the king’s dreams. Impressed by his abilities, Nebuchadnezzar puts Daniel in charge over all his wise men. It’s unclear what relationship these Babylonian ‘magi’ had with the Medean ones, but strong Medean influence on the Babylonian court suggests that the Babylonian wise men could well have included Zoroastrian magi.

Daniel remained in the Babylonian court, until the Babylonians were invaded by Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return from exile and to begin restoring Jerusalem.

Cyrus' Persian Empire lasted for two hundred years, until it was invaded by Alexander the Great and his army in 331BCE. Alexander sought the advice of magi, but had many of them violently killed and extinguished their holy fires when he razed the Persian capital, Persepolis in revenge for the Persian destruction of the Acropolis by Xerxes 150 years earlier. Alexander’s Greek successors were characterised by bloody rivalries and in-fighting and were later overthrown by the Parthian empire, which would become Rome’s most formidable rival to the east. The magi consolidated their king-making reputation during the Parthian period, with a council of magi (the Megistanes) responsible for choosing Parthian kings.

The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too.

By Jesus' day, there were ‘magi’ throughout the Middle East, and it was in this context that Roman historian Pliny the Elder records the journey of Armenian magi to visit Emperor Nero in 66CE. By this time Parthia and Rome were a century into their protracted struggle and had just fought a five-year war over the Armenian succession. Despite suffering a humiliating defeat, Rome saved some face through a very one-sided treaty that had Parthia choose the next Armenian king, but with the Roman Emperor getting to place the crown on his head! Nero turned this to his advantage by having the new King Tridates I come to Rome to receive his crown. Tridates, who was a Zoroastrian priest as well as a king, came with a huge retinue including other magi and thousands of horsemen to receive his crown. The huge procession culminated in the magi king bowing before the emperor and acknowledging him as his god.

The visit of the Armenian magi has clear resonances with the familiar account of magi visiting the infant Jesus found in Matthew’s gospel. Given the many embellishments added to the magi story over the centuries, it's hardly surprising that some have suggested that the magi story was a fabrication and a remixed version of King Tridates’ visit to Emperor Nero. It’s a compelling theory, but I’m not convinced by this. If magi were stock characters in the ancient near east, and were also really interested in monarchs (who were often also treated as gods), then it wouldn’t be that surprising that there’d be more than one royal magi visit with emotionally charged religious overtones. What makes a fabricated magi story less likely to me is what the gospel writer Matthew’s Jewish audience would have thought of the magi. Although the Greeks and Romans were enthusiastic about foreign gods and exotic wisdom, first century Jews were not. To them and to early Christians, the magi would have been charlatans and followers of a false foreign god. A visit from some foreign astrologers would have been an embarrassment rather than the type of story you'd choose to make up.

So, who were the magi in Matthew's gospel? The two dominant theories have been that they were either Persian or else they were a later fiction. More fanciful theories include origins in India, China and even Mongolia. Another perhaps more realistic possibility, convincingly argued by Fr Dwight Longernecker in The Mystery of the Magi is that the magi were from the Arabian kingdom of Nabatea. The Nabateans were known for using irrigation to farm the desert and for controlling the trade routes across the Arabian desert. Two cash crops in which Nabatea dominated trade were frankincense and myrrh. The wealth generated from this lucrative trade was used to build Petra, the world-famous valley city of rock-face monuments. The Nabateans had close connections with Israel and may have been familiar with the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah. They would also have been interested in the Judean monarchy and would have been natural visitors to the paranoid king Herod. Herod's mother was a Nabatean princess and the Nabatean king Aretas IV needed to shore up favour with Herod so the Nabateans would have had an interest in any new King of the Jews.

Barring some improbable Indiana Jones style archaeological discoveries, we’ll never know for sure who the wise men from the east were. But to me there’s something deeply fascinating about these mysterious visitors to the infant Jesus. Partly they seem to represent higher things – with their wisdom and wealth correctly put in divine service. It can seem as though their excellent learning and astronomical skills have cracked a cosmic puzzle, with the magi following the star and dodging a despot to find the baby at the end of the treasure hunt. This doesn’t hold up - the magi’s knowledge isn’t the object of wonder. The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too. But God uses the foolish things to confound the wise, and inside the crackpot mess of horoscopes and divination, God leaves the magi an invitation. To accept the invitation is to take a risk – to risk the long journey, the wrath of Herod and even to risk being wrong. But as they accept this invitation, they realise its an invitation to meet God Himself.