The Martyr and the Rooster

After football practice, quarterback Cooper Calhoun's backpack spills open in the locker room, and his teammates Michael and Devan discover a Bible inside. They immediately start teasing him, calling him a Bible thumper and asking if he is a believer. Cooper explains that the Bible belongs to his brother, who left it at a Bible study, and that he is only returning it. That part is true, but when the boys ask directly whether he believes, Cooper says no, even though he does. As his friends head off for pizza, Cooper mutters to himself in disgust at what he has just done.

The next morning, Cooper sits alone on a park bench, and Pastor Wilson Knox happens by on his morning walk. Cooper admits that he caved to a little teasing and denied his faith, folding, as he puts it, like a weak offensive line in a blitz. Instead of scolding him, the pastor tells him the story of Mr. Thuza, a man whose name means angel, who ran a Christian orphanage in Burma, now called Myanmar. When the local government tried to wipe out Christianity, burning Bibles and destroying churches, Mr. Thuza was thrown into the Sanwing prison camp simply for being a Christian.

In the prison, Mr. Thuza quietly serves everyone around him. When a troublesome prisoner named Ohnmar tries to spark a fight with a guard by claiming his food ration was stolen, Mr. Thuza steps in and defuses the confrontation, producing the ration and taking the blame for the mix-up. Ohnmar admits afterward that he left the food out on purpose to cause trouble and demands to know why Mr. Thuza stopped him. Mr. Thuza simply answers, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Ohnmar sneers at his faith, but Mr. Thuza offers to tell him more anytime. A kind worker named Cho warns Mr. Thuza that Ohnmar is dangerous, but Mr. Thuza replies that Ohnmar is hungry for more than food, and that everyone in the camp matters to God, even Ohnmar and the prison supervisor.

That supervisor, Mr. Thaung, summons Mr. Thuza and tries to recruit him as an informant, reasoning that a man so trusted by the prisoners could gather valuable information. Mr. Thuza refuses, saying the founder of his faith died because a friend betrayed him, and he will not turn to betrayal himself. The supervisor coldly points out that after this meeting the prisoners will assume he is a snitch anyway. Sure enough, the other prisoners turn on Mr. Thuza, stealing his blanket and shoes, fouling his food with dirt, and beating him. Through it all he never complains. He keeps caring for the sick, doing other men's work, and even taking their punishments.

His faithfulness does not go unnoticed. One day Ohnmar brings him a blanket and reveals that he has ordered the other prisoners to stop stealing from him, because he has figured out Mr. Thuza is no informant; if he were, the supervisor would have rewarded him. Ohnmar still insists the prison proves there is no God, but Mr. Thuza answers that this is where he sees God the most, because this is where God is needed the most. That same evening, Cho warns Mr. Thuza that something big is coming.

That night, Ohnmar leads a riot, storming the guardhouse and taking a guard hostage at gunpoint. Mr. Thuza rushes into the chaos, begging Ohnmar to stop. Guards fire tear gas, everything dissolves into smoke and confusion, and a single gunshot rings out. When it is over, the hostage guard is dead, and no one knows who fired the shot. The supervisor assembles every prisoner in the yard and demands to know who started the riot, threatening to punish them all, one by one. Into the silence, Mr. Thuza steps forward and declares that the fault is his.

In his office, the supervisor presses him: he knows Mr. Thuza did not start the riot, and he wants to punish the truly guilty man, Ohnmar. But Mr. Thuza insists the prisoners are in his care and he should have done more to prevent the uprising, and that it is better for one man to be punished than dozens of innocent men. The supervisor shows him a directive from the state ordering a death for a death and warns him the state will not care about the difference between failing to prevent a riot and starting one. Asked why he would protect scum like Ohnmar, Mr. Thuza gives a startling answer: "He gave me a blanket." Then he quotes the words about the greatest love of all being to lay down one's life for one's friends. The supervisor hopes Ohnmar's conscience will not let an innocent man die in his place, but when Mr. Thuza stands before the firing squad and the prisoners are given one last chance to speak, Ohnmar and everyone else stay silent. Mr. Thuza's final cry is "Father! Forgive them!" before the shots ring out.

Cooper is stunned, but confused. Mr. Thuza never denied his faith, so why tell him this story? Pastor Knox explains there is more. After the execution, the enraged supervisor lined up everyone in the camp, pointed a pistol at each person, and asked if they were a Christian. Everyone said no, including Cho, who denied it loudly and clearly even though he was a true believer. Then the pastor makes his confession: Cho was him. Years ago he was a traveling preacher who joined a humanitarian aid group that worked inside overseas prisons, which is how he came to Sanwing and knew Mr. Thuza. When the moment of truth came, he was terrified, and he denied Jesus Christ.

Afterward he fled home to Providence, North Carolina, shut himself in his house for three months, and begged for forgiveness, convinced he could never receive it. Then, early one morning, he heard a rooster crow, and he remembered how Jesus told Peter he would deny him three times before the rooster crowed. Jesus forgave Peter so completely that Peter became a leader of the early church, and Pastor Knox realized that if Jesus forgave Peter, he had forgiven him too. He tells Cooper that feeling bad about his failure is actually a good sign, because it means his conscience is working and Jesus is helping him grow stronger for next time. They should always try to be like Mr. Thuza and stand up for their faith, but when they fail, Jesus still loves and forgives them. Cooper asks if that forgiveness is for him too, and the pastor tells him to just ask.

Later, back in the locker room, Michael and Devan spot a Bible in Cooper's things again and pounce. This time Cooper tells them plainly that he returned his brother's Bible last night; this one is his own. He is a Christian, he says, and Christians do not just carry Bibles, they read them and tell others what is in them, and from now on that is what he does too. His friends razz him with a new nickname, Reverend, but Cooper takes it with a grin, joking that with Michael's tackling and Devan's math grades, the team needs all the prayer and miracles it can get. Laughing together, the boys head out for pizza.