We all have our heroes. Shackleton is one of mine. On 5 January 2022 we shall be marking the centenary of his death. In a 1914-17 expedition he found himself marooned with his crew in Antarctica. His ship was crushed. There was no way back. Shackleton set about doing what he saw as the only solution. With five of his men he set about a 800-mile journey from Elephant Island, where he left the remainder of his crew, to South Georgia in an open boat. Like Captain Bligh in the Pacific, he put his navigational skills to the test. He reached the bleak island familiar to seabirds, seafarers and whalers and had a tortuous journey over rough and mountainous ground to gain help. He found seafarers who could set out on with him on the return journey and bring salvation to the survivors. He had said he would return and he did.
Whether he had in mind a saying of Jesus we can never know. Livingstone had referred in his diary to Jesus and his promise to be with his followers ‘and he was a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honour.’ With or without that encouragement Shackleton kept his word. He considered his men before his personal safety. It is deeds like this that count – in the world as it was in 1914 and the world as it is today.
And those words of Jesus? In Luke 9.25 we read: “What does anyone gain by winning the whole world at the cost of destroying himself?’ To undertake a journey across the Southern Ocean in an open boat looks remarkably like a suicidal venture. To do the return journey for his men is sublime. As sublime, we may say, as the readiness of men in WW2 to repeat a dangerous voyage to Murmansk at the other icy extreme of planet earth.
Those who make their mark in terms of world history win reputations. And rightly so. Such achievement does not come without effort and determination. But gaining a place in the world’s scrapbook is not the only thing that matters. If it is done by betrayal, by compromise, by unnecessary ruthlessness, the price is too high. It involves self-destruction, something worse than physical obliteration.
Few of us face such options. Just as well. But once in a while we should turn to these difficult sayings of Jesus and to men and women of high purpose. See 2 Timothy 4.7. We shall gain the benefit of a sense of proportion.
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