“Believe,” says Lasso

I’m not sure if you are one to watch programming on your device or the TV, but there is a series ready to start another season called “Ted Lasso.” The setting for this storyline is a professional UK football league. Football (what we would call soccer) is the situational setting, but the writers, directors, producers, actors, and some viewers say the series is not about soccer, it is about human beings.

The show is about what makes people tick inside, and what their interactions are with each other. Medieval theologians might say it is about the seven deadly sins. Modern psychologists might say it is about human behavior in reaction to circumstances and people dynamics. (Admittedly, that is a fit description for every drama on the page, stage, screen, or TV, but the dynamics in this story are engaging.)

Ted Lasso is a new coach for a hapless Associated Football Club, the Richmond Greyhounds, in the professional UK league.  Out of his work in American Football, he is hired by the new owner of the club, to work in a sport unfamiliar to him. The owner secretly hopes the club will fail and fold, in her design to get back at someone. So, though the show is about people not soccer, the undergirding drama springs from an impossible situation: How can a club doomed to failure begin to see victories against all odds? Perhaps the broader drama rises from the question: How can redemptive things happen for people when the people themselves have so many destructive tendencies at play among them?

Early in his tenure, Coach Lasso fashions a crude sign on yellow paper. It displays simply the handwritten word “BELIEVE” in large capital letters. He sticks it on the wall above the locker room exit with electrical tape. It is not even hung straight. The custom of touching the sign when exiting is slowly established. In the religious tradition, we use the noun “faith” which has everything to do with Lasso’s use of the verb, “believe.” It is beyond what one wants or hopes for; it is the confidence that the invisible, improbable future hope envision is assured. Lasso’s work philosophy is that leaders are dealers in hope. He attends not to the negativity that comes at him from all angles but to the possibility toward which he steps with assurance in an inimitable spirit of goodwill. He is attacked by the media, players, opponents, the fans, who believe neither in him nor the team. Nevertheless, he avoids reacting. Instead, he demonstrates belief in people, a good outcome, and himself.  Struggling even through his own demons, he moves forward. The eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews begins this way:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

In our own way, we should figuratively tap the sign over our door, and head out into the day with the strong commission: BELIEVE. There may be no sign of good things to behold; they may seem impossibly out of reach, but the followers of Jesus find that faith is the bridge to the impossible.