Without Asterisks--September 16, 2020

“Without Asterisks”—September 16, 2020

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. [Philippians 1:6]

The one thing you can say about the God Christians know, without qualifications, hoopholes, or hedging things, is that God doesn’t flake out. God is supremely faithful. 

You can say other things about God, too, but quite often Christians need to qualify what they mean by them. You can say, for example, that God is all-powerful and omnipotent, and yet Christians believe that the clearest self-portrait we get of God is of a man bleeding and dying on a cross. You can say that God is Lord and master of all the universe, but you have to qualify that by saying, “Oh, but by the way, this God's way of reigning over the world includes washing feet.” You can say that God is holy and pure and righteous, but you have to stick an asterisk by each of those words that reads something like, "...*and yet, this God chose to associate with outcasts, tax collectors, and prostitutes, and is known to love sinners as they are." 

The list goes on and on: God's kind of "greatness," according to Jesus, is the kind that puts oneself among the least, rather than needing to brag about oneself.  God's kind of "strength" involves being rejectable and vulnerable, not merely brute force.  And God's kind of wisdom looks like the utterly preposterous nonsense of the Gospel that welcomes nobodies, regards sinners as blessed saints, and wins by losing.  See what I mean? A lot of the watching world would hear those rather revised definitions of “omnipotence” and “holiness” and the rest and say we Christians don’t know the meanings of words! 

But faithfulness—not “predictability” or “clockwork-like rigidity”, but faithfulness—that is a trait of God’s that gets no asterisks or fine print. God, as we have come to know God in Jesus, is one to keep a promise at any cost and live up to his side of an agreement no matter what. The God of the Bible will not be the one to walk away from the table first, nor does God forever leave loose ends untied. God does not flake out. 

This, to be honest, is one of the more obvious signs that I am not God. My life is full of half-finished, half-started, half-baked projects, wish-lists, ideas, and plans. The carpentry project I always had the best intentions of finishing, but never did. The books with little post-it notes and faded receipts in the middle of them, showing how far I got before I quit or found something else to grab my attention. The running list of things that I started and “just have to find the time to get back to.” The mental catalog of people I used to be close to, but have allowed time or past hurts to make me distant from. And I suspect that you have a similar collection of projects and people left unattended. 

We flake out. 

And amazingly, in the midst of that pattern, this God of ours makes promises about not letting us go unfinished and incomplete. This is why Paul can say something as grand and sweeping as “the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” Paul is not saying that we, by the power of our own stick-to-it-ive-ness and personal gumption, can guarantee that we will not flake out. Paul is not saying that your own raw talent and ambition will necessarily get you what you want out of life. 

Paul doesn’t bet much on our human capacity for finishing a job.  He has met the likes of us, and knows we are experts on flaking out. Instead, he bets the farm on God being faithful. 

Paul is careful with his words, after all. And you’ll notice he doesn’t say, “I am confident that you, once you have put your mind to it, will achieve whatever goal you set for yourself, always and forever.” He puts his hope and confidence in God. “The one who began a good work in you” is God. And God gets to decide what it is he has in mind to accomplish in us and through us—God does not have to rubber stamp approval on my life-long dream of making it in Hollywood or making a fortune on my company’s stock at its IPO.  The difference is huge: the myth we tell ourselves as "the American dream" is that anybody can achieve whatever they want if only they put their mind to it.  But the Gospel says something different, and something I believe far better: it says, God promises to bring us to completion and to fullness, even beyond where our own ability, talent, and hard work will carry us.  God is the one on whom the promise rests, not me, not fate, and not getting a lucky break.  God is the one who guarantees, even if we flake out, burn out, or give out.

To be sure, God is not our genie, compelled to grant our every personal wish. And yet, God has gotten something started in each of us—it was true for Paul’s first readers in Philippi, and it is true of the followers of Jesus today. And God doesn’t leave projects half-finished or bookmarks tucked in the preface of the book. God is faithful, so God will not flake out on us. 

God finishes what God starts. And God has started something in you. Even if you and I cannot see how God will transform us into the kind of people we are most deeply seeking to become, God is faithful. No disclaimers, asterisks, or fine print.   Even if some part of you feels stuck in neutral, even if if feels hard to get any forward traction.  Even if it feels like all you can muster is giving up, stepping back, or sitting it out.  God holds you, and God will bring you to completion.

Lord God, you have begun a transformation in us to make us into the likeness of Christ. When it is hard to believe that you will indeed “finish, then, thy new creation,” remind us of your faithfulness, so that we can trust you again and see the wonder of what you are up to.