March 1, 2015 – Mark 8:31-38
Mark 8:31-38
A Self Larger than Self – Kingsman
Second Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In the new spy film Kingsman, Colin Firth has the job of recruiting a young person for
a position in a secret spy organization known as the Kingsman.
The Kingsman are a private English spy organization dedicated to fighting crime.
Firth plays Harry Hart and he recruits a young, unlikely candidate named Eggsy.
Now the Kingsman all seem to come from a fairly uppercrust British background –
they all seem to be descended from aristocracy.
But Eggsy doesn’t come from that world.
Eggsy is not descended from royalty.
Eggsy comes from the wrong side of the tracks.
Eggsy is a street kid.
The other Kingsman are skeptical of Harry’s recruitment of Eggsy.
Even Eggsy himself is skeptical.
Does he have what it takes to be a Kingsman?
Harry thinks so. Eggsy is unsure.
Eggsy thinks maybe his circumstances have made him what he is.
He thinks of himself as a quitter who will never get anywhere.
He joined the marines as a young man but dropped out.
He got involved in drugs and petty crime and figures he is going nowhere fast.
At one point early on, Harry has Eggsy look in a mirror and says,
“Tell me what you see.”
And Eggsy says, “I see someone who has no idea what to do with his life.”
So Harry tries to impress on Eggsy the possibilities of transformation.
“Did you see the film Trading Places?” he asks Eggsy.
“No,” says Eggsy.
“How about Nikita?”
Eggsy shakes his head.
“Pretty Woman?” Harry suggests?
Eggsy just looks confused.
“My point is,” says Harry, “that the lack of a silver spoon has set you on a certain path that
you needn’t stay on. If you’re prepared to adapt and learn, you can transform.”
To which Eggsy replies, “Yeah, like in My Fair Lady.”
And Harry says, “Well that was surprising. Yes: like in My Fair Lady.”
Well, yes: it is quite like My Fair Lady.
Except I don’t remember quite so much violence and maiming and killing in
My Fair Lady – although it has been some time since I’ve seen the picture.
So Harry invites Eggsy to enter the ultra-competetive training program along with
other young recruits, all of whom come from the aristocracy.
Eggsy is teased by the other recruits who are all competing for
a single position within the Kingsman.
But in the process, Eggsy learns the value of teamwork – he begins to get a taste of
what having a purpose higher and larger than yourself can look like.
And it suits him.
For sure, the film is about the possibility of rising above what circumstances have made you, as in, yes, My Fair Lady.
At one point Harry quotes Ernest Hemingway to Eggsy with
a line that surely inspired the whole script:
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man;
true nobility is being superior to your former self.
It’s not being descended from certain people that makes you noble in Harry’s eyes;
it’s transcending your circumstances to become all that you can be.
I would say, really, the truly noble is growing into something larger than yourself.
I’m sure Jesus had wished Peter had seen this film before their little conversation today.
Poor Peter: he rebukes Jesus for Jesus saying that he is going to be rejected and suffer and die.
Peter can’t get his head around that!
Peter wants Jesus to be successful!
To be a great military messiah!
And defeat the Romans!
But Jesus is saying to Peter,
True nobility is not hating your enemies but loving them.
True nobility is not saving your life at the expense of someone else’s but giving it away.
True nobility does not look like a crown but a cross.
True nobility is about having a much larger conception of what life is and
where it is to be found, and what your true self is and where it is to be found.
Not in hoarding life, but in giving it away.
There is more, much more, infinitely more to life than we think.
Life is not about being at the centre, but finding our place as part of the whole.
And so Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their cross and follow me.”
The cross stands for God’s plan to save this world and bless every person in it.
It stands for God’s program of self-giving love.
It stands for sacrifice willingly given for the sake of the neighbour,
for the sake of justice, for the sake of peace.
It is absolutely not about being a doormat or passively accepting abuse.
It is about choosing to love from a position of strength, it is about the strength to love,
it is about being strong enough to willingly be in solidarity with the vulnerable, and
it is about the suffering that results when one identifies with the least and the lost.
The cross in Jesus’ terms is noble.
It ennobles everyone, including the giver.
True nobility is about being superior to your former small self and giving yourself to
a cause and a purpose and a much larger self – to Christ, and his body,
and the purpose of that body: to love bless and heal this whole world and
every person in it.
The good news is that everyone is invited to join this program.
The good news is that you were invited in your baptism to find your true self in this
larger noble self, which is Christ and his body.
The good news is that you have a place in that purpose as part of the whole.
The good news is that this will benefit and give life to the whole world,
particularly those that need life.
The interesting thing about Kingsman in a way is the plot the drives the drama forward –
the interesting this is the villain, and this particular villain’s evil scheme for
world domination.
His name, ironically, is Valentine, and he is played by Samuel L. Jackson.
Valentine wants to make the world better by eliminating most human beings from the planet.
As he says, “Mankind is the virus, and I’m the cure.”
So his plan is to distribute free SIM cards to everyone on the planet – but unknown to everyone,
these SIM cards will allow him to trigger an electromagnetic impulse that will
stimulate the aggressive areas of the human brain,
causing everyone to kill each other until no one is left living.
So: while Eggsy is trying to rise above his former self into a much larger, expansive one,
Valentine’s ploy is to drag everyone down and make them much much less than they are,
into killers – so that he can be at the centre.
Well, I’m sure I’m not giving anything away when I say that ultimately Valentine is foiled and
world catastrophe is avoided.
Unfortunately the cost is a lot of bloodshed –
although Harry, at least, does lose his life for the cause.
Eggsy finds his life, emerges from his shell, as it were,
although his training is very difficult and painful.
As one of the trainers says near the beginning of training, “You are about to embark on t
the most dangerous job interview in the world.”
Well, I’m sure Peter can relate to that.
What Jesus says is pretty much identical:
if any would be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
You will find your life – by giving it away.
Jesus has some funny math.
But what he means is that your true life, your true self, is much larger than you think.
Your true self actually looks a lot like him, the true fullness of what a human being can be.
Your true self has a place in something much larger, something much more noble,
something much greater than we often imagine –
saving the world one Community Meal at a time,
saving the world one Kids Club at a time,
Saving the world one friendship at a time,
Saving the world one kind act at a time.
Jesus has faith in Peter – faith that Peter can change.
He has some hard words for him this morning – he calls him Satan! –
but he knows Peter is capable of transformation, of rising above his self,
like Eggsy capable of emerging from his tiny shell into a much larger life.
We all think, probably, too little of ourselves.
We have a hard time confessing what the Psalmist knows to be true,
that we are, each of us, wonderfully and awesomely made.
We have a hard time accepting that we are making this special by just being us.
But we are, and we do.
Jesus thinks much more highly of us than we think of ourselves.
Just as Harry sees much more in Eggsy than Eggsy sees in himself,
so Jesus see much more in us than we see in ourselves.
When Harry asks if he’s interested in the opportunity to become a Kingsman,
Eggsy replies, “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Well, neither do we.
For “those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, will find it.”
That’s a hard kind of logic to understand.
I think you can only know it by experience.
When you give your life to someone, you experience the thrill of finding your true life,
what you were truly meant for.
When you give your time in love to a noble cause,
you experience the thrill of finding your true life.
When you give your life to those around you in love, you find your true self.
When you give your life to the vulnerable through the ministries of this congregation,
you find your life, you find your self.
For you discover as you do these things, like Peter long ago, that you grow into a self that
your self was tailor made for, the life of Christ,
whose life for sure is much larger than ours, but whose self we are invited to
grow into, day by day, as we emulate him and bless as he bless,
as we feed as he fed,
as we ennoble as he ennobled,
as we heal as he healed,
as we love as he loved.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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