The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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A vast crowd followed Jesus, Luke 14:25 tells us, and he turned to them and three times said they couldn’t be his disciples unless…
Wouldn’t you think that if he said something three times in a brief verbal paragraph that we should take it seriously? Then there’s this, the conditions were not negotiable so Jesus urged them to count the cost, to see to it that what they started they’d finish (14:25-32).
Unfinished building projects must have dotted the land then and there as they do today. Someone had begun but hadn’t put enough thought into it and didn’t have what it took to complete. Others would have begun a work but didn’t have the will to finish it and left it as a visible proof of their lack of will. Heads would have shaken, those who knew the character of the builder would roll their eyes in that knowing way—it was no surprise to them. Today and everywhere we see unfinished buildings, unfinished business projects, unkept commitments and forgotten promises.
Is God like that?
Can you imagine Jesus soberly warning those who would be his followers against not counting the cost, against not finishing their purposes and then asking them to serve a God who didn’t count the cost or keep his word?
One of the reasons the doctrine of a resurrection grew in the minds of people and was fully developed and exhibited in Jesus Christ was the “unfinished business” nature of this phase of human existence. Lovely dreams and marvellous purposes crumble to dust because people are either powerless or faithless or both but Paul insists, “If we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot disown himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13, REB)
We have the positive witness of Jesus himself that the world as we now experience it is not its final shape for he will come one day and make the world altogether better—he will heal its wounds and bless its people who will live together in joyful righteousness under God. That testimony seals the matter for believers.
But the mess the world’s in underscores that positive testimony. There must be another phase of living. The world as we now know it can't be the final shape of things. The idea that God will not—either because he is too feeble or unwilling—the idea that God will not finish what he started is a denial of what the scriptures tell us, what Jesus exhibits to us, and it turns the world we now see and experience into a profound witness against God’s sincerity and sovereignty.
In our world—a world we all help to shape—there’s racist hatred, people-trafficking, war-mongering, the rape of nations, the pillage of villages, genocide, the plunder of cities, the corruption of government, the perversion of justice, parental abuse, the crass hedonism of Western millions and all the other realities that repulse and astonish us to silence and trouble us at our helplessness.
This is how the world is to continue until the sun dies and the human family vanishes? God will do nothing about it all? He has made promises he can’t or won’t fulfil? I know people, and so do you, whose word is their bond; if they even hint that they’ll be back in touch with you about some matter you know they will. If you haven’t heard from them within a reasonable period you’re tempted to send flowers because either they are dead or in hospital. Are they better than God? Is it not a point of honour with him that he makes no promises he knows he can’t keep? Is it not a point of honour with him that he makes no promises that he won’t keep?
Paul told the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1): “God started this in you—he’ll finish it!” Paul told the Philippians (1:6): “God started this good work in you—he’ll finish it!” Paul told the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24): “God started this in you—he’ll finish it!” The Hebrew writer said (13:20-21): “God completed his work in Jesus and he’ll do it in you.” Peter told his readers (1 Peter 5:10-11): “The eternally all-powerful God will restore and strengthen you.”
The wildness and perversity of the world will end and the assurance that that’s so doesn’t lie in us! It lies in the character of God! God’s assurance that he will see to it is written across the pages of scripture, written across the life of Jesus Christ and told to us by the very existence of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ—his visible manifestation in the world! The Church—jeered at by its critics, ignored by the couldn’t-care-less millions and often shooting itself in the foot—that Church by its Scriptures, by its ordinances (Baptism and The Supper), by its liturgy and praise and prayer, by its faith, its confession of wrong, its pursuit of Christ-imaging righteousness and its stubborn refusal to turn from its Lord—that Church by all these things proclaims that it is a point of honour with God to complete what he begins and so all wrongs will be righted and the world made new.
