Releasing the Blessing

 August 28 2022

Revelation 3:7-13

         How do we define success? I would say that this question of just how we can be successful in our world today is one that a lot of people are trying to figure out. As we observe successful people in the news and on social media we can definitely conclude that success is about power. This power might be financial or, in these times, power might also be determined by how much influence one has upon the masses who are eagerly wondering just what the next big thing really is. Success then can also be understood as having enough clout that when you speak others will lean in and listen to what you have to say. The crowds will find that the words you put out their on your Twitter feed speak to them with authority. The pinnacle of success, then, is when a person becomes so well known that they no longer are said to have a name but rather, they have a brand, an identity that people instantly recognize and associate with the person who created that certain look. So, its not a stretch to understand that in todays economy success is about power, the power of influence, which happens when the crowds accept the authority of what one has to say, and out of such influence what they have to say is associated with who the person is, so that it can be said that they have a brand identity. 

         Now, the whole point of defining just how success is defined these days is that in doing so it is surprising how very different, you might say polar opposite, today’s definition of success is to how Jesus defines the successful church. The living Christ in speaking to the church at Philadelphia, one of two churches out of the seven that he addresses that is not given any warning to repent, tells them that he knows that they are a church that has little power, a church who has kept the word of Christ, and they have not denied his name. You see, to the living Christ, success for his churches is found not in lusting after worldly power but in finding strength in living life in communion. Success for the churches is not getting others to lean in and listen to the words that they the churches were speaking but were instead found in taking the words that Christ had spoke to them and treasuring them in their hearts. No, success for the churches of the living Christ is not about having a name, or a brand identity but rather, success is boldly proclaiming that we as the followers of Christ are not ashamed of the name of Christ and we gladly bear his identity out in to the world. 

         You see, when we understand that John has used the teachings of Jesus that are found in the sixth chapter of Luke as a framework to build his letter around then it becomes clear why he has laid out the order of his churches as he has. The church at Smyrna, the other church which the living Christ commended for their faith under severe tribulation, in their poverty this church corresponds to Luke 6:20,  where Jesus states, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” They had no need of the Roman king to decree that they should not be persecuted as their Jewish neighbors had done but instead it was in their trials and their imprisonment that they would find the true king of all present and powerful with them.

         The next church after the church at Smyrna that the living Christ addresses is the church at Pergamum. This church had not kept the word of the living Christ. His word, as found in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, is that the king who is coming in the line of David, the long awaited Messiah, he is the one who will judge with righteousness the poor and he will decide with equity for the meek. This means that when the Messiah comes the poverty stricken and the lowly are at last going to have someone in their corner who will see that they no longer end up with the short end of the stick. Everyone will at last be equal when this king arrives on the scene. No more will the rich take too much so that those who cant fend for themselves end up with too little. This is why in the sixth chapter of Luke, we hear Jesus say, “Blessed are the hungry for they shall be satisfied.” Here in the community who lives under the authority of the living Christ, it is expected that those who are hungry will find food and those who are thirsty will find something to drink. The church at Pergamum though decided that rather than share what they had with the poor among them decided instead to send them over to the idol shrines to find something to eat. In this way, members of this church were lured into idol worship and sexual immorality. Through the churches failure to care for the poor in their midst they had caused these poor to be lured into sin this is why the church at Pergamum needed to repent,

         So, the church at Pergamum did not keep the word of the living Christ, they did not guard this promise that the living Christ had made to protect the poor and thus they were hurting the very reputation of their king. The church at Thyatira was no better. They had within their church one that the living Christ labeled as being Jezebel, one who was much like the most evil queen that Israel had ever known. She was teaching the false doctrine that if power and pleasure are ours in the age to come then why shouldn’t we enjoy those promises now, here in this age. In doing so, they ended up just feeding their lusts and desires, worshiping their new found power instead of understanding that in this age the church is to share in the sufferings of others not search for a way to isolate themselves from the hurting and powerless people of this world. This is the truth of what Jesus further teaches us in the sixth chapter of Luke, that “Blessed are those who weep for they shall laugh.” Those who weep are blessed because their in their hardship they find that all of us are suffering and there is much power when we go through trials together, bearing up one another’s burdens.

         And then there was the church at Sardis, the sad little church which was all too concerned with what will the neighbors think. They were concerned about their reputation, their name, what the rest of the world thought of them because they longed to be respectable to those that watched them. Yet in doing so, they brought shame upon the name of Jesus. When they focused so much on their reputation, the receiving of the honor and glory of people they forgot that they were to be about serving their Heavenly Father, day by day carrying their cross just as Jesus had commanded that they do. A life of service and sacrifice is a life which our Heavenly Father respects and honors. It is the honor of God, this is what should which concern us as we go about our daily business. This is why in Luke 6:22 that Jesus tells his disciples, “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy for behold, your reward is great in heaven…!’ There in heaven our Heavenly Father is pleased because we trust him with our very life. With our life secure in our Father’s hands then, we are to be busy serving God because the old age is passing away, the new age is dawning upon us as we speak. Therefore, we need to glorify the name of Jesus now with all that we say and do because the name of Jesus is the name which will be glorified and honored forever in the age to come.

         With all of these previous churches in mind, we now come to the church at Philadelphia.  Here is a church the living Christ knows, has little strength, unlike some at the church at Thyatira, who sought power just like Jezebel. Here is a church which keeps the word of the Lord unlike the church at Pergamum who did not live witnessing to the fact that the poor and meek are under the watch of our faithful king just as scripture tells us that they are. Here is a church who did not deny the name of Jesus unlike the church at Sardis which was concerned about its own name and reputation. Now, in every other address to the previous churches, the living Christ is described in various ways, ways which point back to the vision that John had that one Sunday morning. But then we come to the church at Philadelphia where we are told that the words that we hear are from the holy one, the true one, the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one will open. None of this description of the living Christ is to be found in the first chapter of the book of Revelation. I don’t know about you, but I find this rather odd. I mean, John has what seems to be a carefully crafted work here, one with an apparent sense of order and then all of a sudden it seems like he has gone off the rails. Yet, maybe what John is doing is through this description pointing us to something in the first chapter which may not be apparently associated with the living Christ. The image of the Son of Man found in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel is foundational for John’s vision of the living Christ and when we look at this passage we find at the end of this chapter a promise that the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness under the whole heaven shall be given to the people, the holy ones of the Most High. I think that this points us back to the first chapter of Revelation where we are told that Christ loves us and and he has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to God. So, the kingdom of God is perhaps, another identity of the living Christ. Christ is holy and those who are part of this kingdom are holy as well. The next description that Christ is the true one, has to be understood not in the manner of a true or false statement but rather that here in the living Christ is a new reality, a reality that we know to be true because we experience this reality in the living Christ. This new reality is once again the kingdom of God and this kingdom is made up of those Christ has redeemed by his blood and made priests to serve him. They too are true because they too are the new reality which is proven to be not a figment of our imagination but a true way of life because this life is lived out by us who are priests to God. This emphasis on the kingdom being made up of priests with Christ being our high priest is found in the strange statement that Christ is the key of David, the one who opens and no one can shut, the one who shuts and no one can open. This description comes from the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah, where Isaiah records the story of a man named Eliakim who was given authority to be the one who held the key to the throne room of the house of David. He was the one given the enormous privilege to grant or deny access to the audience of the king. This image is the one the living Christ states is now his, that he is the one who grants or denies access to the Almighty King. As Jesus teaches in the sixth chapter of Luke, it is he alone who can bless the poor with the gift of the kingdom of God. It is Jesus who states that the only ones who may enter are those who share their food with the hungry and the hungry who find satisfaction at their table. Those who enter are those who weep with those who weep, rejoicing together in the love which binds them together. Those who enter into the kingdom are those willing to be shamed by the world because they are unashamed of being united with the Son of Man. These are the ones for whom the doors to the court of the king swing wide to receive them. Yet, the opposite is also true. For those who seek to store up their treasures here on earth in order that they might build for themselves some other future than the future God is bringing about then the doors slam shut. For those who fill their faces without any concern for those who cannot do so, the doors are locked tight. To those who separate themselves from the hurting and suffering people by isolating themselves in their indulgences, the doors stand unmoved. For those who desire only that the world exalts them they will find that they we will be on the outside looking in. This is the authority of the Messiah, the king in the line of David, who will judge with righteousness for the poor and seek equity for the meek. The door that has been opened is the very door to heaven. This is the meaning of this strange word, “blessing” which has its roots in the Hebrew word for “kneel”. When God blesses us, he is understood to be kneeling before us, coming to us and giving us a gift, the gift of himself. It is as if God has opened up heaven and reached into the depths of our existence to give us his very self.

         I believe that we must rightly understand this idea of blessing in order to make sense of this rather odd report where the living Christ tells us that he is going to make the synagogue of Satan come and bow down at the feet of those in the church at Philadelphia and they will then at last, understand that the living Christ, loves them. This is not the first time that we have encountered this so called synagogue of Satan because they were first heard of in the address to the church at Smyrna. As we learned, these were those who thought they were children of Abraham but as Jesus teaches us in the eighth chapter of John, they were in fact children of the devil. The reason that Jesus had said this about the Pharisees that he was addressing is that they believed the lie that they could create any future they desired and God would bless their efforts. How very different this was from their father Abraham who placed his faith in the future that God held out would be his if he would just believe. So, when this synagogue of Satan found out that the future they desire is in no way going to be blessed by God they were angry and they took their anger out on those united to God, the church at Smyrna.

         So, once again we are hearing about the synagogue of Satan but this time we are told the living Christ is going to make them come and bow down before the church at Philadelphia and they will know that the living Christ loves them. This last phrase, that the living Christ loved them is identical to what we read in the first chapter of the book of Revelation where it speaks of the one who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom and priests to God. Perhaps what this synagogue realized is that here were those who were truly living out life under the rule of God. These Jews would have known that when the new age arrived that the Messiah would bring about an era of justice and righteousness, one where evil and wickedness were at last done away with. Here in this church at Philadelphia, this hoped for future was there before them as a present and true reality. This present kingdom is what this king Jesus had brought about through his great love for them and all people. Through the shedding of his blood, Jesus made a way for those who placed their faith in God to live in that future right here in the present through the power of his presence. You see, what happened is that when this church at Philadelphia accepted and embraced the fact that they were a church of little strength, when they guarded and treasured the word of the living Christ and when they did not deny the name of Jesus, then they found themselves blessed by the presence and power of God who is the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts people of their sins and brings those who slander the church to come and bow at their feet. We are blessed by the Spirit  because Jesus, justified as righteous through his resurrection, has ascended to the Father in heaven and from the right hand of the Father Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to us. The Holy Spirit then is the witness to us that what Jesus has done upon the cross is truly the will of the Father, the offering to us of mercy to save us from judgment. So, now because we no longer have to fear judgment we have faith and we believe, we believe and therefore we can now live in the glorious future God holds out to us. As we live out this future of justice and righteousness those who come into our presence will experience the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives declared by Jesus to be holy and true. This is what it means for us to be priests to God, those who bear the name, the very reputation of God, written large upon our lives. For this wondrous privilege we stand with arms upraised, the very columns of the Temple of God, singing the praises of our king forever! Amen!