Thursday, February 11, 2021
Wondrously Golden Moments Abound
In God’s Creation
Micah 7:18
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger for ever, because he delights in showing clemency.
Romans 8:32
He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
Words of Grace For Today
Watching the prequel to Treasure Island, it is a ‘wondrous moment’ when the pirates unite to pulverize the injustice of the Carolina Governor Ash and the people who delight in unjustly hanging pirates. One moment battleships lay at anchor off Charles Town augmenting the fort’s guns all aimed toward the pirate ship. Captain Flint negotiates for a reconciliation between New Providence, home of the pirates, and England. Then an aide to Governor Ash assassinates an innocent woman, Miranda Hamilton, who clearly stated the raw justice due Ash. She has just then uncovered Ash’s betrayal of herself, her husband, and his best friend, now Captain Flint, leading to her husband’s death and their exile … and Ash’s ascendancy to Governor of the Carolinas. Captain Flint’s trial follows, a show of injustice if there ever were one, all to cover up the murder committed by the Governor’s aide. Ash describes this as the ‘civilization’ that Flint and Miranda seek to bring to New Providence.
Flint’s competitor, Captain Vane, realizes with Flint’s trial, a symbol of the ferociousness of pirates will be beaten down and all pirates are doomed. After Flint’s hanging no one will fear any pirate, and they will no longer be able to seize ships and cargo without too great a cost of life and limb. So Vane goes on a rescue mission, which miraculously succeeds, for this is fiction. No matter how impossible the success in reality would be – firing canons into the square where Flint and now Vane are held and in the streets as they flee to the sea – we want it to be so and so we accept the impossible as possible.
Then to great relief all pirates back on the Spanish man of war. Flint had previous captured this warship. Then Vane and his men had taken it in Charles Town’s bay during Flint’s absence. Finally in Vane’s absence the ship was regained by Flint’s men. On this ship for the first time both crews work together. The ships guns have already destroyed Ash’s unsuspecting warships, and now they turn to decimate the corrupt ‘civilization’ of Charles Town. They bombard it into the dust.
Ahh, justice! Raw, cruel justice for people who pretend to be civilized but are more brutal than pirates to their prey.
This is not the end of it all though. As Charles Town is lay waste, the untold wealth of Spanish gold, once guarded by the very man of war Flint captured, is taken from the Spanish guarding it on a beach by Jack Rackham. The ship carrying it has been driven into the island’s rocks during a storm. The gold is too much for just one ship. Rackham’s crew fills the holds of two ships with their take. This untold wealth makes New Providence’s pirates a power for the rest of the world to contend with. Finally the pirates have a chance against the great navies of the world ruled by corrupt leaders and corrupt countries that claim to be civilized.
We love it. Moved by images, cinematography, lighting, and music we see the progression as a good development which is most deserved; Justice in an unjust world for those most unjustly treated.
It is hardly that. It is accurate that civilized society is too often so corrupt and unjust, with the most cruel wielders of power ruining people left right and centre without regard.
The fictitious destruction of Charles Town and accumulating the Spanish gold is hardly a justice in an unjust world. It is more of the base nature of humans playing out in violent revenge and theft humongous.
In God’s creation, which this is, such violence and theft goes against all that God calls us to be and do … and we clearly see how tempting sweet revenge can be. The movie makers know this and play this out well.
God knows this and plays out very well the other story, God’s story which includes the old, old story of Jesus and his love. This is the story that demonstrates that God delights in showing clemency, and gives God’s own son to save us and provides to us everything else we need for life abundant.
We need and get to engage ourselves in that story, each day, morning and night, so that sweet revenge is not the template for how we live. Rather God’s Grace, modelled in the life and ministry of Jesus, becomes and remains the template for our days and each decision we make in them: to share God’s Grace and forgiveness with all people.
Now those moments of Grace are wondrous moments, truly wondrous moments, for God blesses them and us in them. They are for what God created the universe and us in it.