24 - Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV THE TOWER AND THE THREATENED KING
WE have seen, then, that the citizen of the Kingdom must turn his back on the kind of life that most men live by preference; either abandon, or at least give a secondary place to, life’s ordinary aims and ambitions; and live a new life in a new spirit. Is he to begin this new life by a conscious resolution and after deliberate calculation? Jesus loved people who lived their lives in a spirit of daring adventure, with a reckless disregard of the cost, men who counted the world well lost if only they could win the hidden treasure or the most precious of all pearls. But there is a time to be reckless and there is a time to be deliberate; and the time to be deliberate is before one sets out at all on this career of Christian recklessness.
Matthew concludes the Sermon on the Mount with the similes of the two houses; the house built on rock and the house built on the sand.
Only the house on the rock foundation can stand the strain and stress of life, and the rock is obedience to the teaching of Jesus. In the Tower the point is that the solidest foundation is not enough. A man who proposes to build, especially if the building is to be a place of refuge in time of need, will first sit down and make certain calculations. If he finds he has money for the foundation but not for the building, he will not begin. If he lays down the foundation and then has to stop, he will become the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood. Similarly if a king finds that his enemy’s forces outnumber his by two to one, he will probably find it wiser to make a treaty than to fight.
We know from other parables that Jesus knew and feared the danger of a short-lived enthusiasm, To these two parables Luke appends the moral, ascribed to Jesus, that the citizen of the Kingdom must be ready for the most heart-rending sacrifices; and that, no doubt, is part of the meaning. On the allegorical method of interpretation, the two parables would mean that, if we do not feel strong enough to go through with the stern life of hardship to which Jesus calls us, it is better not to begin. But surely Jesus did not teach that. Rather in both parables he is warning his followers that discipleship is a costly business.
If we enter on it light-heartedly, the disillusionment, when it comes, will take us at a serious disadvantage. If we have faith in God, ’ the strain will bring the strength,” but let us face open-eyed the certainty that the strain will come. In the Temptation our Lord exemplified these parables. He frankly faced the forces arrayed against him in his mission and met them in the strength that God supplied.