To be honest, I have been discouraged. This season has not started as I might have hoped – as a chaplain in professional sport sometimes we derive a lot of encouragement and energy from meeting with players and studying the Bible or doing life at some point during the week. It has been difficult to get things going – perhaps its all the new faces, maybe its just a different generation, maybe its me. But Saturday night, I was reminded of something that is much more vital in terms of our chaplaincy work. You might even say it is more vital in the space of our work as Christians. Let me share this with you in the telling of a short story.
He walked with a casual gait. It had been a long, difficult game. Away from the confines of home, it was the team’s first win of the season. A smile. But for him, the game held so much more significance. Two years ago, almost to the day, this young man had left the same stadium but in an ambulance. His leg broken in two different places, he would need emergency surgery to save his leg. His dreams of playing football in jeopardy. April 22. It was Good Friday, but for him perhaps it was too difficult to call anything that day or in the days to follow good. There were many questions about whether there would ever be an Easter-like resurrection for Steve Zakuani.
Zakuani is stretchered off in 2011.
I don’t know if he remembered me – whether jumping in the back of the ambulance to pray before he left the stadium for the hospital, or visiting post-surgery and praying around his bedside, or helping get him to the airport and home to Seattle on a private plane or taking his father to the airport. But as I spoke with him in the hallway after the game, I encouraged him to keep working hard, to keep coming back. Sometimes, this is what our faith needs – we need an encouraging word in our lives to keep us working hard and seeking the Lord. Whether in the midst of discouragement or adversity, we need to keep coming back or as someone once put it “it’s not that saints never fall, but they get back up.” By the grace of God, we fall down, we get up.
As I drove away from the stadium and pondered the seeming full circle that two years had brought, I was moved to consider my own discouragement. Maybe I felt that the “ministry” work was broken or some of my own hopes and dreams shattered. Maybe I have simply fallen into the trap of wanting to influence a lot of people, rather than being content to work in the lives that God has called me to for the moment – chaplain or pastor, we sometimes want to touch as many lives as possible. But numbers aren’t important. Accolades, or recognition, or “success” (whether from a worldly perspective or Christian subculture perspective) isn’t important. The important thing is being present, being faithful to this call. The important thing is to keep coming back, back to a place where God can use us in whatever way He chooses, or in whatever way He chooses not to – it’s His prerogative. Coming back until He asks us to go or do or be somewhere, something, or someone else.
God help Steve. God help me. God help us in coming back.
Blessings,
Rev. Brad Kenney
In the hours immediately following last April’s injury, Zakuani was at risk and needed surgery immediately to relieve pain and pressure from the break. I know many on the Sounders were holding their breath – this was their prized draftee and a promising young player; career, even life seemed to hang in the balance. Mullan had no idea of the extent of the injuries until the game was finished and he was heading home.
For those that know Mullan, he’s a wily veteran with an extensive playing career, but ‘dirty player’ is not a title that would be used in the same sentence for one of two players in the league to have earned five championship rings. He joined the Rapids to help them win the coveted Major League Soccer Cup, and that he did in his first year with the club.
Fast forward to today, the return trip to Seattle and one of the most difficult places to play in the league – but when 38,000 fans are ‘booing’ you every time you touch the ball, it can seem a lot more. I did feel that the fans were professional enough – any team will ‘boo’ the villan. I was wondering if there would be more pugilistic kinds of threats or danger toward Mullan, but it seems that the game went without incident in any sort of regard to that direction – although there will always be extreme fans 
Personally, though, there is some disappointment for me as the Rapids team chaplain. Perhaps I am too idealistic. Perhaps I am too romantic. Perhaps my desire for the beautiful, storybook ending just isn’t to be hoped for. I had imagined Brian Mullan walking over to Steve Zakuani at midfield, with the entire of Seattle watching as the two shook hands, hugged, and forgiveness and grace at center stage with tears and confetti while the Sounders faithful sang a new hymn of football reconciliation. But such things were not to be today – but maybe another day. We can only hope and pray.
