Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey and the Paschal Mystery
On Jackie Robinson Day and Good Friday, the writer reflects on faith that seeks to destroy evil. Is there any other kind?
Today, we depart from the typical folderol found on this here Substack.
Therefore, well-beloved, understand, how the mystery of the Pascha is both new and old, eternal and provisional, perishable and imperishable, mortal and immortal.1
Baseball is my passion, professional wrestling is amusement, but I am a writer and editor by profession and a philosopher-theologian by training, the latter of which is reflective of some of my core commitments.
The confluence of Jackie Robinson Day and Good Friday, then, is smack dab at the intersection of some of the most essential Brent Sirviö.
This past winter — though, looking out the window today wouldn’t convince anyone that we are actually beyond it — I was watching 42 when one of my daughters, 8 years of age, wandered into the room, saw what was on and asked what I was watching. I said it was a baseball movie about an extraordinary man who broke baseball’s color barrier.
She was very confused by that. Understanding that I was about to approach a very difficult topic, made moreso by her age, I had to think for a moment about how to explain that for years, the American and National Leagues wouldn’t allow Black players on their rosters for no other reason than the color of their skin, which was reflective of society’s institutional and overt racism…and so on and so forth. With Jackie Robinson, it’s never just about baseball and a dude: it’s about taking a societal evil head-on and crushing the head of the serpent.
I paused the movie and talked her through the situation as best I could, that Jackie Robinson wasn’t just a supremely-talented baseball player, but he changed the way Baseball was played forever, and his courage and example helped spark changes that led to us as a country addressing horrible things that took place in America. (I didn’t have the heart to tell her many of those horrible things still do take place.)
She understood and watched with me, and the movie left a pretty significant impression on her. She talked about it at school with her teacher, she recognized it as ‘that movie with the one baseball player’. In fairness to her, unless it’s Narnia or Star Wars, her familiarity with movie titles leaves a lot to be desired.
Robinson was the man on the field left to be mocked, ridiculed, threatened, hated. He was in every respect the suffering servant, sent to accomplish the business of justice and reconciliation by one Branch Rickey.
It should also be stated for the record that while Isaiah’s suffering servant songs are often linked to Good Friday and the Christ-event, the author/s, writing some 500 years before Jesus arrives on the scene, are not writing about Jesus.
As has been documented elsewhere, Rickey’s Methodist convictions compelled him to do something about the color barrier. We should also be honest in that he recognized the practical aspects of tapping a previously-overlooked-by-commission audience. 42 plays this aspect up, while playing his moral compass down. These things need not be mutually exclusive.
Let’s be honest, though: there were plenty of money-driven owners and stakeholders in baseball (were, are, same difference) and none of them had the wherewithal to challenge convention. It took something more than fiscal savvy to break the color barrier.
The combination of Rickey’s stalwart leadership and vision, and Robinson’s ability to perform his job at a high level2 while enduring the vitriol of an entire, considerable segment of a nation with the patience of a saint — a man on fire who simply refused to burn — led to transformational changes on the ball diamond and throughout American society.
Faith, persistence and patience can and should lead to extraordinary outcomes, up to and including the very destruction of evil. These things also lead to death.
So the slaughter of the sheep, and the sacrificial procession of the blood, and the writing of the law encompass Christ, on whose account everything in the previous law took place, though better in the new dispensation.3
The game is better for Rickey and Robinson’s sacrifice. Our nation is better, though there is still work to be done. Already, but not yet.
And their work is, in the microcosm of metaphor, the work of Father and Son, striving to reconcile creation. Work that is completed in the emptiness of a tomb.
Melito of Sardis, On the Pascha
Hey, you try slashing .810 against Major League pitching under the most optimal of conditions. Jackie Robinson did that while getting brushed back, cleated, jeered and under constant threat of harm.
Melito, again. Those of us fluent in Evangelical strands of Christianity recognize that they really don’t spend enough time thinking about things like paschal mystery. We just like macabre depictions that make us feel awful about ourselves and the fire insurance, neither of which really have anything to do with religious devotion at all.