In the movie, The Eagle Has Landed, Michael Caine plays the part of a German commando leader sent on a mission to assassinate Winston Churchill.  Both the book and the movie are based on a true, if far-fetched story.  The plot, of course, did not succeed.

There’s a point in the movie when it becomes obvious that the mission is doomed to failure.  Too many things have gone wrong; too many people are getting suspicious; and there’s just no way that the plan can be carried out successfully.  One of the members of the commando unit is arguing that they should simply abort the mission and try to make their escape.  But Michael Caine says something like this: “Things have reached the point where we are no longer in control of the events; the events are controlling us.  We’ll stay and see this thing through to its end, whatever that may be, and we’ll do it because we must.”

There’s a sense in which that statement, (“things have reached the point where we are no longer in control”) rubs us the wrong way.  This notion – that events are controlling us and that we follow a certain course of action because we must – goes against the grain.  All of us like to think that we are in control of our lives.  We believe that taking control of ourselves is a good and positive thing, particularly when we’re talking about freeing ourselves from the grip of addictions, compulsive behaviors, or exploitive or abusive relationships.

Yet, it is also true, that regardless of how successfully we take control of ourselves, there are many other forces acting on us that we cannot control.  We often f eel overwhelmed by events.  It is probably one of the more common experiences of life: we lay our plans, we have a vision of what we want our life to be, and then things just happen.  We are dragged along, sometimes compliantly, but more often than not, either kicking and screaming or simply numb.

 We are at the mercy of the “changes and chances of this fleeting world.”

We bring up our children as conscientiously as we know how, and we wonder what went wrong when they get themselves into bad relationships or tangled situations as a result of making choices that they never learned from us.  Or we give years of loyalty to our company, but the a recession or a merger comes along and our job disappears.  Or we get married ,and sometime after the wedding we discover that t he person we married is not who we though he or she was.  Despite our best intentions, the relationship spirals out of control, and we find ourselves in divorce court wondering how we got there and why we couldn’t keep the marriage together.  At those times, like the German commando in the movie, we recognize that we are not controlling events, but events are controlling us. We do things, then, not because we want to, but because we must.

Part of becoming a healthy and mature person is coming to accept the fact that large parts of our lives are not under our control.  And yet, merely accepting that is not enough.  WE can do that, and still be miserable.  It is what comes after that acceptance that makes the difference.  We must go beyond resignation or acceptance, to find freedom within that necessity.

Two of the lessons today we encounter this fundamental paradox: that in the midst of such situations of necessity, we can actually discover freedom.

In defending the character of his ministry to the Christians at Corinth, Paul writes quite dramatically: “Necessity is laid upon me.  Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” 

Paul is not complaining here.  He is not saying that he really doesn’t want to preach the gospel, but would rather be doing something else.  After his dramatic call to preach Jesus as his  risen Savior, Paul could have gone about his business as usual.  But he didn’t.  He chose to do what he perceived the risen Christ was calling him to do.  Once he answered that call, having made that choice, Paul realized that he was no longer in control of his own destiny.  He could no longer pick and choose among various options.  There was a certain necessity that came into play as a result of his answering the call of Christ. Certain things had to be done, a course of action to be taken.

Yet, Paul emphasizes that he is completely free.  “I am free from all people,” he says.  He is under no obligation to behave according to anyone’s expectations.  His freedom, he goes on to say, makes it possible for him to act in certain ways that might even seem strange to those who have never chosen to follow Christ’s call. “I have made myself a slave to all people that I might win more of them to Christ.”

Martin Luther, in one of the principle essays of the Reformation, wrote:

A Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

Both statements are true, even though on the surface they seem contradictory.  How can one be both free and a slave?

We discover true freedom when we let go of our need to be in control.  Acknowledging that we are not in control is a mark of maturity, but that’s not enough.  Letting go is an active response.  Letting go is not the same as giving up.  Letting go is a positive choice.  Letting go is an act of faith.  Letting go is trusting that our lives are ultimately in Gold’s hands, and not merely in our own. 

This positive act of letting go – an act of faith – is not easy.  Some of our situations of necessity are so painful, so difficult, we just can’t seem to find the will or the power to let go.  How can we do it?   

In St. Mark’s account of Jesus ministry, we see how Jesus did this.  Mark has already told us that the burden of Jesus’ vocation was to “proclaim the good news of God” and to call people to repentance.  But Jesus seems to have been unprepared for the instant surge in popularity as people were healed by his word or touch.  Jesus could have simply submitted to the hero-worship of the crowd.  He could have become what they wanted him to be – a wonder-worker, a charismatic faith-healer.  That is certainly what his disciples wanted him to do.  “Everyone is searching for you,” they told him.  Give the people what they want.  Ride the wave or popularity.  But Jesus knew that when he accepted his vocation at his baptism, that vocation carried with it a certain necessity.  So, in the midst of this surging popularity, Jesus withdrew from the crowds, got up “a great while before dawn,” went out into the desert alone, and prayed.      

Marks wants us to understand that this temptation is one Jesus had to face again and again.  It was in the wilderness, alone in prayer, that Jesus learned what even his disciples did not grasp – that the secret of his authority, his power to heal, lay not in his own talents and skills, not in the adulation and hero-worship of the crowds, but iin his single-minded consecration of himself to the will of God.  Again and again Jesus had to choose that path of surrendering to the necessity inherent in his vocation, even when it led him, ultimately, not to public popularity, but to rejection and the cross.

It was in the lonely place of prayer in the desert, in solitude, that Jesus confronted the whole business of control, and he came back to his work with his agenda clarified and his will aligned with God’s will.  He told the disciples, “Let’s get out of here.  Let’s go to the next villages, so that I may preach there, for that is why I came.”  And the disciples may have said, “Preach?  Keep to the healings!  That’s what the people want, but preach?”  But Jesus was undeterred; he let go of his own ego, and followed where necessity led him.

Our apprehension of the mystery of God’s will and our freedom will also arise out of our prayer.  Prayer must become – for us as it was for Jesus – a deeply ingrained habit of life.  Prayer is where we enter into the struggle with necessity, with God’s will, with our own fears and compulsions.  Prayer as reflection, prayer as discernment, prayer as combat, is vital to discovering the freedom of choice, the freedom of action inherent in the midst of necessity.  It is in prayer, in the lonely place, away from the crowds, that we discover how to let go of our need to control, how to let go of our fear of the future, how to let go of the driven-ness that makes us become manipulative and controlling.  It is in prayer that we discover that by letting go of our need to control, we actually become freer than we ever knew was possible.  We discover that our true freedom is not in insisting on our own way, not in controlling all events in our lives to be secure, not in manipulating other people to get them to do what we want, but in making ourselves the servants of others for Christ’s sake.  In prayer we discover how we may at once be “the most humble servant of all and the most free lord of all.”  In prayer, we discover that those are not two opposites states of being, but in fact, are one and the same thing.

Mark says “Jesus goes where it is written of him.”  He does not go where he wishes, he goes where, if he is God’s son, he must go.  He does not control events; his is controlled by them.

Yet in surrendering to necessity, Jesus also surrenders to the triumphant power of God.  Dying a God-forsaken death, he loses himself into the hands of the one who has the power to raise him from death.  So that the final word in Mark’s Gospel is not “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” but rather the message given to the women at the tomb:” He is risen; he is not here.”