Lent 3: Master of my Fate, Captain of my Soul

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 Psalm 22.23-31 Romans 4.13-end Mark 8.31-end

You will remember the famed story of the wind and the sun. And their argument over who could remove the traveller’s coat. Where the harder the wind blew the tighter the traveller drew his coat around his neck. And then the sun just shines, and the traveller takes off his coat and puts it in his bag.

When St Paul describes the cross as weakness:  ‘God’s weakness is stronger than human strength’, We may be inclined to think in these terms: The cool suavity of the sun, infinitely more impressive than the desperate bluster of the wind. And we might hear Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek and picture Arnold Swarzenegger cooly taking the punch of the ordinary mortal, before lifting him up off the ground by his neck or reaching for his Uzi 9mm. As Sting said, ‘an Englishman will walk but never run’; The British love an amateur, love an underdog, love the charm, the camp, the seemingly-unconcerned.

Americans, classically, love the braggart, the self-made man, full of sound and fury, grit and hard work.
The British, traditionally, prefer someone who’s just inherited everything – our famous distaste at the nouveau riche –  only British people would understand or find amusing the remark made of poor Michael Heseltine: ‘The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture’ Still, I doubt Lord Heseltine’s children will need to buy their own furniture.

Modesty, likewise, is a British tradition. In no other language would you say, “it’s quite good” or “it’s really not bad”, meaning “it’s very good”. We are very far from either humility or Christ’s weakness here though. More in the realm of manners than ethics. There is in fact something quite self-protective about British modesty. By playing ourselves, things we like, down, we reduce the risk in someone cutting us down to size. It also suggests our own sophistication: If this kobe beef served with an 1869 Chateau Lafite, is only ‘pretty good’, we must be pretty smart. If this twice-baked goats-cheese souffle is something I just threw together, I must be really quite good at cooking.

It’s unlikely Jesus ever drank an 1869 Chateau Lafite. And this is not the humility or weakness we find at the heart of our faith. But likewise, the victory of the cross is not a victory of endurance. It’s not some man-up test. It’s not about courage; still less poise.

I noticed in a café in Roehampton before Christmas a poster with a famous poem written on it, regularly recited by Nelson Mandela while in prison, quoted by Churchill in ’41  and more recently by Aung-sun-su-chee. It reads:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole, …
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the Bludgeonings of chance
My head is Bloody, but unBowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

It’s a curious mixture of Christian and anti-Christian. I won’t go into depth here; It has inspired. But it’s a different message to the cross. And the difference matters.

So if we were to imagine ourselves in the dreary underworld of reality television. I occasionally catch glimpses of shows Rhiannon has in the background, of American housewives in wealthy suburbs. We might imagine people who put their sense of worth, value, and make judgements of others on the basis of stuff: cars, houses, money etc. The things of this world, their situation. Speaking broadly, we might classify this as superficial. After all, all these things can be taken away.

Secondly, we might imagine a person who finds their sense of worth in their relationship to other people. Who they’re married to, who their friends are, who likes them, who respects them, what power and influence they have.

This can also be taken away. So the Nelson Mandelas, the Aung-sun-su-shees, Dante or Oscar Wilde; All prisoners and exiles, have to find within themselves the means, the worth, to remain themselves. As Whitney Houston sang: ‘Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.’ These people are the masters of their fate, The captains of their soul. They don’t need anything or anybody, but themselves.

But not so with Christ. He had entered the desert. Rejected the things of this world. Material possessions he could do without. In the passion he is abandoned by all. The trial scenes before Herod and Pilate are mirrored in the trial of Peter and his promise not to deny Christ. But. Peter denies. Judas betrays. The crowds cry crucify. On the cross Jesus will find no affection or respect to sustain him. His human relationships fail him. 

But in the face of this hardship does he rely on himself, the captain of his soul, to win through? Does he endure through strength of character, an unbreakable inner core, to win the prize? I think this is not the way to see it. The point is not that he trusted in himself, but that he trusted in God. He humbled himself. He sacrificed himself. He gave up the mastery of his fate. He resigned the captaincy of his soul.

As we follow Christ to Good Friday, we are encountering weakness and failure. He does not convince people. He doesn’t win through like a hero. He’s tragically executed. The story has gone wrong. This is not Marvel; it’s not Hollywood. It’s not Baloo the bear, or Superman flying round the sun; The central story of our faith is a man edged out of the world. There is no last minute reprieve. This is the weakness of the cross: To be on the wrong side of history; The wrong side of society. To be powerless and foolish. Can we side with that person?

It is very hard for us to take ourselves out of the centre of our story. To think nothing of ourselves and everything of others.

One of the things that makes Christianity so unlikely, is that it’s central character and the God it describes, is one who to most of the world fails. As we’ve seen recently in Mark’s Gospel, faith is a sort of secret, by which those who are close to Jesus understand what is happening but those outside don’t. This is most of all true with the cross. To the secular, the sceptics, the rationalists, the faithless, all those who measure by the standards of the world – it’s a failure. So that’s that then. We didn’t think Jesus could really be anything other than a man.

But to those who believe, it’s the necessary, most inspiring, part of God’s revelation. How else could God have shown the redeeming love he has for all creation? How else could God shift our notion of power from total self-reliance to total self-giving? How else could God shift our ethics from strong self-mastery to the weakness of self-giving?

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The truth that we know better today than a year ago, is that everything is taken from us. Our possessions, our friends and family – all people, and finally ourselves. The wisdom and power of this world. We cannot rely on things, people or finally even ourselves. I’m sorry – you are not the master of your fate. But in the cross we have a hope. That as one man found when he put all his faith in God, he was sustained, he was raised by God. So we can believe that as we give up everything, so will we receive the gift of that man and that God: what is only still a whisper, halfway through Lent, in the midst of our desert: Resurrection. After the wind has blown, and blown and blown, the sun will simply shine.  Amen.