Our dreams of American soccer dominance have come crashing down around us, and it couldn’t have happened in more embarrassing fashion than this week’s loss to Belgium.
The 4-1 loss was as bad as it gets: President Trump’s interference leading up to the game earned us the wrath of the rest of the globe, and our in-game performance was a disaster. Our star player was nowhere to be seen, our goalie humiliated himself, and the rest of us - myself included - barely waited until the end of game before eating them alive with our criticism.
I cannot imagine being one of those players in the aftermath of the loss. If I feel like a failure when a meeting at work doesn’t go well, then these men - with the Stars and Stripes painted boldly across their chest - must feel about as low as humanly possible.
These next few weeks will test the strength of their roots.
Jesus’ parable this week is meant as an allegory for our faith in God, but every time I read the passage the first thing I think of is my faith in myself. I can feel quite self-assured, and then one little thing - even just a bad workout - and poof! Any self-assurance I have is replaced with self-criticism. My own roots can be much shallower than I’d care to admit.
I work on the 43rd floor of my office tower, and every few years the building’s fire safety director schedules a full building evacuation drill to make sure we know what to do in the case of a true emergency.
In a city still heavily influenced by the tragedy of 9/11, you would expect most people to take building safety seriously. But they don’t. Each year, every single evacuation drill plays out the same way: word slowly spreads that a drill is coming later in the afternoon, and the majority of the office clears out before it happens. No one wants to interrupt their day with a long walk down the stairs.
This year’s drill was particularly bad, since almost no one followed the one instruction we hear multiple times per year: Go down the stairs with your left hand on the railing. That’s the only way to keep the traffic moving. But despite barely ten percent of the office participating in the drill, we moved at a snail’s pace. Every man and woman for themselves.
In other words, we would be totally screwed in a real world emergency. Our roots are shallower than we’d like to admit.
“A sower went out to sow.”
Of all the parables in the Gospel, this one strikes me as the easiest to understand. We all know what it means to have shallow roots. To find self-worth in external recognition. To do the right thing only when it’s easy. To skip out on the evacuation drill. So what if I take a little shortcut?
The truth is that no one knows how deep their roots go until, as the Gospel says this week, the thorns grow up and choke them. Until that day comes, the only thing we can do is prepare.
I have no idea how the U.S. men’s national team is taking Monday’s loss. But there is no doubt that they are being tested, and I’d like to imagine that somewhere on that roster are the lucky few whose self esteem has deep roots. Whose self esteem is built elsewhere, outside of soccer entirely, in the way they show up for each other in the locker room or their role as a son or father.
A fire drill exists to prepare us for when the real emergency hits. Maybe bad workouts, rough meetings, and short tempers are meant to do the same thing: to strengthen whatever roots we got before something comes along to uproot them.
See you next week.
Emmett
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,
and when the sun rose it was scorched,
and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
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