The Good Captain

The Good Captain--January 26, 2017

"...looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart." [Hebrews 12:2-3]

It may well be "good to be da king," but it's hard to be the captain.

Mel Brooks famously declared, "It's good to da king!" again and again, playing different historical characters in his movie classic The History of the World: Part One, as he and his comedic cast depicted different scenes from the centuries.  And, yeah, as Brooks and company recount, kings throughout history get it easy--taking what they want, skipping out on the hard work, living in decadence at the expense of their subjects, and being able to get rid of anybody who dares question that comfortable arrangement.  In Brooks' vision, it is a darkly funny punch line that so often in the history of civilization, the people in power simply milk it for their own comfort and profit.

But to be the captain of the ship is a different story.  Even though in our heads, we may think of a captain simply as a boss, or "like being king... but on a boat," the critical difference between a good captain and a king is that the captain goes through the waters with the rest of the crew along with them, rather than sitting comfortably on shore while everybody else does the hard work.

A captain gets to tell the crew what to do, sure, and yes, a captain gets to determine where the ship is headed.  But the captain also then does work to get them all there, too. And if some on the crew don't like what the captain says, or don't understand why they are changing course, the captain just has to take the criticism.  You can't be thin-skinned and a good captain; you can't lash out with petty insults or passive-aggressive taunts.  You make the calls you need to make, and you make them whether you are popular or not... but you then you take the criticism, rather than getting vindictive.  The whole crew has to rely on one another after all, so good Captain Jack can't go making crew members walk the plank every time his feeling get hurt.  The responsibility falls on the captain to rise above the grumbling, not to get caught up in petty squabbles defending his authority.

 

Kings get to tell others to go off on voyages to seek treasure or raid the enemy ports while they recline in their palaces.  But a good captain throws his or her lot in with the crew, and leads from in the midst of them, going on the voyage with the people under his or her command.  That makes ship captains vulnerable, in a sense--they are susceptible to the same storms and enemy ships and seasickness and shortages that the rest of the crew face.  But that vulnerability is also what gives them authority and credibility, too.  You listen to your captain, you put your life in the captain's hands, and you follow what the captain says even if you don't understand, or even when it is difficult, because a good captain has earned your allegiance by suffering with you.  A really good captain will already have been suffering first, in fact--cutting back on food before the rest of the crew has to be ordered to ration their meals, staying awake at night and keeping watch worrying about things before the crew is even thinking about the things up ahead.

That is the critical thing about this life of following Jesus. Even though we sometimes use the title "Lord," for Jesus, please please don't make the mistake of picturing Jesus like one more of Mel Brooks' decadent kings or dictators.  Jesus is king, all right, but he is captain, too.  These verses from Hebrews capture some of that image--the idea of Jesus as the "pioneer and the perfecter of our faith," who "endured hostility from sinners" like us.  Jesus is Lord, to be sure--but he is not removed off in some far away throne room putting his feet up and living off of our labor.  No, quite the opposite--we live because of Jesus' work for us!  We live because of Jesus' willingness to go first into the fray, to be at the head of the charge.  We live because Jesus is rather like the captain of a ship on which we disciples are all crew--he commands our allegiance, our service, and our actions because he is alongside of us and ahead of us--leading us by being with us in our work.  He is the one moving us forward, and he has committed to sharing what we endure on the voyage.

That changes our whole picture of the faith, doesn't it?  I was listening to someone on the radio the other day, someone who purports to be a "religious" broadcaster (a particular quirk of mine is listening to them, as bad as their theology and biblical interpretation usually is). Anyway, as he was trying to give a broad-brushstroke overview of his understanding of the Christian message, it basically came out as something like this: "God sits in the heavenly throne room and has set up a list of rules and laws.  When you break the rules, God is mad at you and is ready to issue a royal decree of punishment over you--but if you pray this prayer to accept Jesus into your heart, you won't break the rules as much any more, and then God won't be so mad at you."

It struck me, listening to this "religious" radio broadcaster of many decades, that for some people out there, that might have been their first--or only!--introduction to the Christian faith.  And if so, you would be likely to end up thinking that Christians have a sort of Mel-Brooks-kind-of-kingship picture of "God" (or "god"?)--that this "god" is basically back at the palace issuing decrees, and woe to you if you should fail to live up to his expectations.  The radio voice's "god" was pretty much inactive except for having set up the rules once upon a time, and this "god" seemed to be pretty thin-skinned, too--only accepting you back into his good graces once you had mostly stopped with the rule-breaking. 

What shocked me as I listened was how inactive and practically absent this god was from the world in that picture.  Jesus wasn't "in" the world in this picture, among us and with us, and bringing about the Kingdom and the new creation, but was simply the name you had to pray a prayer to in order to avoid punishment from the celestial "king" figure.  This picture of "god" was a lot like Mel Brooks' "It's-good-to-be-da-king" kind of figure rather than a ship's captain going on the voyage with us.

And here's the thing: if your basic picture of the divine is someone sitting back at the palace (or "up" in heaven) looking for reasons to throw lightning bolts at you whenever you mess up, you are going to eventually think it's safer to just do nothing so that you don't accidentally break a rule or cross a line.  But if your picture is more like this passage from Hebrews, where Jesus is the one at the head of the movement, the "pioneer" who goes ahead of us and who shares the same journey we are on, well then, "doing nothing" or "staying put" are not options.  We are all on board the same ship together--staying put would mean letting the boat leave you behind on the shore.  That's not what we are called to!  The Christian life is not a stationary thing, that you achieve and then step back from, like building a house of cards that you never want to touch after it's done, for fear it will fall apart.  The Christian life is not a fixed point, but something in motion.  And we can bear the uncertainty of it all because unlike a Brooks-ian monarch, Jesus doesn't just stay back in the throne room and send us off to do the hard work.  No, our good Captain is there on the adventure with us. 

That makes--he makes--all the difference.

O Captain, our Captain--go with us today where you lead us, and let us dare to place our trust in you as we go.