Glories Known and Strange
October 2022
Lately I've been thinking about Magellan. And glory.
Last month was the 500th anniversary of his expedition's circumnavigating the globe. No one had done it before -- at least, not in the modern age. What glory. His name is up there with Columbus, and yet the two voyages don't compare. Columbus sailed for a little over two months; Magellan's expedition took three years. Columbus traveled 2,400 miles; Magellan's crew, 60,000!
But it's a strange glory.
The expedition left with five ships; only one completed the voyage. It began with 270 crewmembers; only 18 returned home, and Magellan was not among them. He was killed on a beach in the Philippines next to his son in an unnecessary skirmish with a native tribe.
Why did they fight? Glory. Honor. The tribe refused to pay homage to Spain. Instead of sailing on Magellan insisted they be punished, or at least humiliated by the glory and power of the Empire. With 60 men armed with muskets, he went up against 1,500 native warriors. The men who weren't killed with Magellan retreated.
It's a long list of disasters that struck Magellan's crew. Scurvy, dehydration, starvation, mutiny, shark attacks, storms, hypothermia, heat exhaustion. There wasn't even fanfare when they returned. Magellan had been maligned by sailors who turned back early. The spice route turned out to be unnecessary.
Maybe it's not that strange a glory. What is glory without suffering, without great cost, without everything hanging by a thread? What's the alternative? Stay home? Tend to your family? Where's the glory in that?
I wonder what Magellan's family would have said. His wife was pregnant when he left with their oldest son. She and the child died some time in the next three years, perhaps at the same time he was lying on a distant beach in the Pacific, dying from a poisoned arrow. What was he thinking of then?
I imagine he wasn't thinking of King Charles I of Spain, or the spice cargo of cloves and nutmeg worth its weight in gold, or even that generations of school children who would associate him with brilliant navigation. My guess is he thought of his wife and sons. But I don't know.
What I do know is that there are different kinds of glory. One means trading everything for glory. And the other means trading glory for everything. In the first one, Magellan is our captain. He gave away family, reputation, his own life, in order to be remembered. In the other, it's Jesus. He traded all the glory of heaven in order to rescue the lives of all. Magellan left with many and returned with few. Jesus embarked with only one, and returned with all.
And yet, he is glorified. It's not the glory of a European explorer, or a Holy Roman Emperor. It's not ticker tape and Lombardi trophies, or red carpets and awards. It's the glory of a criminal on a cross. But it's a glory that lasts. His is a strange glory indeed.
Pastor Eddy
