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

Character

Creed

Romance

23 April 2024

6 min read

‘Marriage is martyrdom', seriously?

Arguing relationship requires sacrifice ignites a sleepy tutorial.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Quizzical-looking students look across a tutorial to others.

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

It is late afternoon on a rainy Monday. My students mooch through the door, filling up the seats in our overheated, clinically modern tutorial room. They are a particularly young class this term – nearly all teenagers still. The setting feels entirely the wrong for poring over texts that are thousands of years old, texts written by some of the earliest Christians, now displayed on flashy laptops and smartphones.

The first excerpt is short – part of a hand scribbled note by Ignatius of Antioch. He wrote it even as he was marched to his execution at the hands of the Romans.

Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die… Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall be a human being.

Ignatius shows no fear despite facing his impending martyrdom, I explain, because he goes to his death as one who was utterly convinced by the hope of resurrection. To him, death was life, and life was death.

From the mixture of expressions on the faces around the room, I can easily tell which members of the class have attended Professor Behr’s lectures on this week’s material, and which members of the class have attended only to their mattresses and duvets. (‘Twas ever thus with undergraduates.) “Let’s look at Professor Behr’s own chapter on the subject,” I suggest, adding with a certain emphasis, “It was your required reading for this tutorial.”

Reading Ignatius, along with some other texts from this period, Behr summarises the argument as follows: earthly life is a transitory thing, and driven by the fear of death, it becomes all too easy to focus on and hang on to this fleeting life. However, the Christian hope is that the self-sacrificing death of Christ, who gave up his life in the service of others, has transformed the reality of death. Death is no longer just the end of this life but the beginning of another one – a better, eternal life. And this, for each Christian, becomes the impetus to pursue one’s own journey towards self-sacrifice, towards laying down one’s earthly life for another, following in the example of Christ, just as Ignatius wished to do. Behr writes:

“Through Christ’s having ‘changed the use of death’ we are able to change the ground of our existence from necessity and mortality to freedom and self-sacrificial love…”

I glance around the room. A few students seem mildly interested, some others are gazing at their screens, scrolling. Perhaps their curiosity has been piqued by the chapter that they are meant to have already read? More likely they have zoned out and are flicking through TikTok. One guy at the back stares glumly out of the window, mouth half open, the one next to him is dismantling a ballpoint pen.

“Any thoughts?” I ask the room. Every pair of eyes is on me, and I know that there are thoughts – the silence is thick with them.

A few moments later, however, and all their eyes are on me. Why? Because in the second part of his chapter, Behr takes this argument of self-sacrifice, of death to life, and uses it as a lens through which to examine the specific human phenomenon of marriage. I read out a few well-chosen excerpts – juicy ones that include the words “eros”, “sexuality” and even “ecstasy” – and it is no surprise that a room full of drowsy teenagers becomes somewhat more alert.

It is through the natural human desire to be united with another person, argues Behr, that we are truly drawn out of ourselves, and by doing so we learn to give out of our own lives for the sake of the life of another. To commit one’s life and one’s body to another in marriage is the epitome of dying to self, even a kind of martyrdom. And, if marriage leads to parenthood, then the opportunity to live a life of self-sacrifice only increases. However hard it might be, those who are married, parenting, or both are driven by love to place the lives of their spouses and children before their own.

“Any thoughts?” I ask the room. Every pair of eyes is on me, and I know that there are thoughts – the silence is thick with them. But who will be brave? Patiently I stare them down. Eventually someone cracks, and a hand creeps up into the air.

“Yes, go ahead…” I encourage.

“Well… I think you should never be in a relationship where you have to do that!”

“OK.” We’re off. “Never have to do what, exactly?”

“Like, be expected to give up your life for someone else. Like, it’s your life. No one else has a right to ask for you to sacrifice yourself.”

The conversation went on from there, the class getting more and more animated, a polemic against the idea that marriage, or just long-term relationships in general, should involve the sacrifice of one’s ‘self’. A spouse, they insisted, should be someone who affirms and celebrates everything that you are, and who supports you in whatever dreams or ambitions that you want chase. And children? Well, they should only be brought into the equation to fulfil your dreams, not to limit them. Marriage is many things, but it should not be a sacrifice, less still a martyrdom.

Well, let us not be too hard on the optimism of youth. The optimism that imagines marriage and family life will be something that gives, and gives, and will never take anything away. How can they know – those who have never been awake at 3am with a projectile-vomiting toddler, and those who have never had to calmly negotiate over where all the money goes? It is the optimism of those who have never had to pass up on a job or an opportunity because it doesn’t fit in with the spouses’ promotion or the kids’ schooling. These, and a thousand other moments of self-sacrifice: the gritty realities of a daily choice to stick in a marriage (or any kind of long term relationship) and make it work.

This is a much slower kind of martyrdom, a decision made not once but daily, in a society where such decisions are frequently undone.

But is this gritty reality a giving up of life, or an embracing of it? Perhaps, like Ignatius, in this kind of death to self we actually find life. In a committed union, we carefully place our lives in the service of another, not because they expect us to, but because out of love we choose to. This is done, of course, in trust that the other person will do the same in return. There is no suggestion, either here or in Behr’s chapter, that someone should stay in a union where that placing of oneself is being merely used and abused. But where two people find a true mutuality in that laying down of self, well, love has funny way of making limits feel like a kind of freedom after all.

“Hinder me not from living…” writes Ignatius, as he is marched to his certain death. His eyes were filled with the image of new self, a better self, that would come to him all at once and suddenly through the laying down of his life for what he believed in. With a faith so strong, this may have been an easy kind of martyrdom – a decision made once, which could not, by him, be undone. But let us also hinder not those who choose to unite their lives to another. This is a much slower kind of martyrdom, a decision made not once but daily, in a society where such decisions are frequently undone. One day some of these young people will feel the call to this kind of death, and that in this death there is life. Hinder them not to die.