A Hope Beyond Our Suffering

 August 14 2022

Revelation 2:18-29

         The past week I had a chance to spend some time with a good friend of mine. We talked about all that was going on in our lives and how we both are dealing with some difficulties in our personal situations. As we talked a bit more, my friend turned to me and said, “You know when you go through these hard things you begin to realize that everybody is dealing with something.” I thought to myself, how true that statement really is. There are a lot of things that make us different but what we can all say, with full honesty, is that we are all dealing with situations that are sometimes hard to figure out; we are scraping by instead of sitting on top of the world; we have more questions than answers to all of the stuff we find ourselves in the middle of.  So, while we don’t like having to find ourselves knee deep in the alligators, at least these times remind us that we are most definitely not alone in our struggles. We need to come to the conclusion that these times, then, are to temper us when we deal with the people that we come in contact with and before we want to fly off the handle we are to remember that they most likely are already in the middle of a whole host of issues that are weighing heavy on their hearts and minds.

         I have this idea that it is our hurting, our difficulties, this is what unites us, on my mind because of something Jesus said, that we are blessed when we weep in this age, yes, blessings are ours in our sorrow not in the good times when laughter comes easy. I wonder if the blessing that Jesus is speaking of is the blessing of knowing that weeping seems to be more universal in this age, that where our common ground is is that place that has been stomped down in our anger and made wet with our tears. What good news it is that Jesus is a man who knows our sorrows, a man acquainted with our grief for this tells us that not only does our hurt and pain unite us together but there in that place we find we are united with the God who saves us.

         As we come to what the living Christ has to tell us about the church at Thyatira, this theme of living together in a hurting world is there in the background of what is being said. As the living Christ has done in several of the previous churches, he here in addressing the church at Thyatira first complements them as being a church whose works, whose love, faith, service and patient endurance were all on his radar. Yet in spite of what seems to be going quite well in their fellowship, the living Christ informs them that all is not well. They have allowed a serious cancer to come and grow and fester right in their midst. As the living Christ puts it, “they tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess…” Here, the living Christ expects us to understand that this woman who has been allowed to spew forth her false teachings to the unwary souls of this church at Thyatira is comparable to the most evil queen in Israel’s history. We first learn of Jezebel in the sixteenth chapter of First Kings where we are told that Ahab, a king who did more evil in the sight of the Lord than any other ruler, continued in his rebellion by marrying the daughter of the king of the Sidonians. This was most likely a political move that insured that there would be peaceful relations between Israel and Sidon. The cost of that peace, though, was that Jezebel worshipped Baal and all of Israel followed her lead. We also know that she understood that the whole point of being royalty was that she had enough power to have whatever she wanted to be happy. When Jezebel heard that her husband Ahab wanted the neighbors vineyard for his garden, she was appalled when the neighbor refused to sell it to him. “Do you now govern Israel?” Jezebel asked him. She then told Ahab to go eat bread and be cheerful because she was Jezebel and she would make it happen. She set up the neighbor who had refused to sell to Ahab, telling the village elders that this neighbor had cursed God and he deserved to be stoned to death. And so the neighbor fell victim to trumped up charges and was put to death all so Ahab at last might have his garden. 

         So, when you hear the living Christ state that this prophetess in their midst might as well be Jezebel, this tells us we need to slow down and consider just what are we being told. We know that what must be implied is that what this prophetess was teaching had to concern the status of those within the church, that they must consider themselves to be empowered in some way, to have power that was theirs to get whatever they desired which would make them happy. What might help us understand what was going on in the church at Thyatira is something Paul writes about in First Corinthians where in the fifth chapter he sarcastically lays into his audience, saying to them, “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you would reign, so that we might share the rule with you!”. What Paul was alluding to is that the people of this church at Corinth thought of themselves as having achieved a great status on account of believing in Jesus Christ. They knew the promises of their inheritance and decided that because they were going to be rich and powerful in the age to come then, hey, why not live as though they were rich and powerful now. We cannot be sure exactly what this so called Jezebel was teaching but we know that she started out as just another fine church going folk who loved the Lord. I mean, she would hardly be tolerated if she had set up an idol shrine in the middle of the sanctuary. No, she took right teaching and slightly twisted it so that it better suited just how she felt those who followed Jesus ought to live in the world. It is not hard to understand that like the church at Corinth, that she might come to the conclusion that if we have an inheritance waiting for us in the age to come why not get started today living the high life. Why not consider ourselves kings and queens today because hey, that’s what we are going to be in the age to come? If this is who we are going to be in that age then why shouldn’t we be justified in believing that we could begin with a little bit of heaven right here, right now? You see, it doesn’t take much to  convince people that heaven should be ours right now to people who are patiently enduring suffering on account of Christ. The only problem is that the promises of the next life are just that, something to be received as a gift not something to be demanded as if they were our right. When we somehow believe that we can demand God to give us today which he has said would be ours tomorrow we are on dangerous ground because when we demand anything of God we have lost our fear of God. Its sometimes hard for us to understand just what is meant when we are told that we are to have the fear of God but perhaps the best way to understand it is that our lives are dependent solely upon the mercy of God. Only as we know that we live only by and through the mercy of God can we expect to have a right relationship with God, one where we approach God with the reverence that is due him.

         This need to understand that we only live through the mercy of God, I believe, is the meaning behind being told that this address to the church at Thyatira is the “words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.” This unusual description of the living Christ points us back to the tenth chapter of Daniel who had a vision as he stood along the banks of the river Tigris. There he saw a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished brass…” To say that this was a terrifying vision is an understatement! Daniel fell on his face and fainted only to be awakened by the sound of this otherworldly man speaking to him telling him to not be afraid. Good luck with that! This one like the Son of Man told Daniel that from the first day that Daniel had set his heart to understand and he humbled himself before God, his words had been heard by God and he, the Son of Man, had come because of the words of Daniel.” When we hear this, we then are left wondering just what words did Daniel speak that were words that could cause this one like the Son of Man, to come and seek him out? The answer is found in the ninth chapter where we get to listen in on Daniel who is fervently praying for the people of Israel.  As Daniel ends his prayer he pleads with God to incline his ear and hear. Daniel prays, “Open your eyes upon our desolations, and the city called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.” You see, Daniel did not demand that God fix the mess that the people of Israel had gotten themselves into; no, he presented his pleas only out of his knowing that God is merciful. This is why Daniels words were heard because when he relied upon the mercy of God then he proved that the fear of God was in his heart. 

         As we are told in this address to the church at Thyatira, our God is the God who searches us at the very center of our emotions and at the very seat of our will. This is a piece of scripture which points us back to the seventeenth chapter of Jeremiah. There we read, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” You see, by teaching that as followers of Christ we are entitled to enjoy the pleasures of heaven now because we are promised that they will be ours later, this Jezebel was instilling in those captured by her nonsense that they no longer had to concern themselves with the hurting and suffering people in their lives. No, they had arrived and all they had to do is to wait around until the day came when they could go from pleasure and power in this world to even more pleasure and power in the next. Yet, what they had forgotten is that our God is the searcher of hearts, the one who tests our minds; there is no fooling God. The heart that seeks pleasure while the suffering world cry’s at their feet is a heart that is driven more by lusts and desires than love and mercy. The promise of God is that he will give to each person according to their ways, according to the fruits of their deeds. In other words, the question God expects us to ask is just what kind of ripple effect do our actions have? We are told that Jezebel’s actions brought her into the crosshairs of the living Christ. She refused to let her mind be transformed even after being confronted by the living Christ. When you twist the truth then it becomes hard to recognize the truth even when the truth is speaking directly to you. The answer to her blatant disregard to being confronted by Christ is that she would be thrown unto a sickbed and those who had united themselves with her were going to have to face great tribulation. Now, this sounds harsh, as if the living Christ is using some form of tough love but what Christ is actually doing is to bring Jezebel and her followers back to reality. Ours is a hurting world full of hurting people and its easy to forget this fact until you’re hurting yourself. Everyone gets sick and everyone faces trials of one sort or another and as followers of Christ we are not to think we are to be people of pleasure while the rest of the world is being swallowed up in suffering. No, we are to take our suffering and in it find ourselves as just part of the people of this hurting world we live in. This is exactly what Jesus has done for us. He left the pleasures and splendors of heaven to come and enter into our world of hurt and pain. Jesus came as one of us and lived among the sick, the hurting and dying and grieving people. He did not promise to take them out of their misery but instead told them that there in the very darkness of it all, there would be light, there would be hope. Jesus came so that those who suffered here might be in awe of the mercy of God which met them right in the midst of their pain and their struggles and gave them a promise to be with them in this life and offered them hope in the life to come. This life is the life of crosses, a life where the Judge of all took upon himself our judgment out of his great mercy for us so that we might never stand in judgment of others because as God has offered us mercy, we too are to offer others mercy. If we, like the children of Jezebel, refuse to repent of our doing works which do not offer mercy then we, like them, will face judgment instead of mercy.

         There was still hope for the rest of the church at Thyatira because not all of them learned what the living Christ calls, “the deep things of Satan.” The deep things of Satan might refer to many different things but perhaps this refers to the lie that we do not have to live by the fear of God. If we live with a healthy fear of God then no other instructions are really necessary. But if  we don’t have a healthy fear of God, we will refuse to listen to God, listening instead to the voices of our desires that call to us, longings that warp true beliefs into wrong mindsets. There were those at Thyatira who lived by that fear perhaps because in a time of sickness of distress they found that God, in his mercy, had given them a second chance or a way out of their dilemma. No one wants hardships but it is only then that we find ourselves longing for the mercy of God like no other time. As we experience mercy at just the time that it was so desperately needed, when that time has been seared into our memory, then God calls us to go and offer to someone else an act of mercy to someone who stands in need of it. This is the work that we are called to be about as citizens of the kingdom which is made up of priests.  As his priests God invites those who love him to work together with him in doing good, the good works which are the very light of the world. The living Christ tells those at Thyatira that to hold fast to what they have until he comes again. He further goes on to give them a promise which begins by saying that this promise is for “the one who conquers and the one who keeps his works to the end…” This is different from all of the addresses to the rest of the seven churches because here the promise is not only to those who conquers but further for those who keep on doing the works of the living Christ to the end. This seems to be addressing the faction of Jezebel who were sitting back enjoying every pleasure and sensual desire because surely that is what heavens like, right? The living Christ says, no, the pleasures of heaven are for those who keep on working with God, doing good, offering mercy to those who weep now because this is the way evil is overcome, this is the way we overcome the world.

         We are told that what the living Christ promises those who keep on, keeping on, doing his works, is that we will share his final authority. We are told that what will be given to the one who works right up to their end here on earth is that they will have authority over the nations even as the living Christ received authority from his Father. This is a quote from the second Psalm that was long used to describe the rule of the Messiah when he would at last come to rule.Yet, what we are told here is that the living Christ is now going to share that authority with us. So, yes, we are promised that we will rule and reign with Christ in the age to come but only if we continue in offering mercy to all just as Christ offered mercy to all upon the cross. This is a promise offered by our Heavenly Father to us by his mercy, not a position that we can demand be given to us as if we somehow deserved it. And there is more because the living Christ assures us that we will also be given the bright morning star. As we learn in the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, the morning stars sang at the beginning of creation. What this tells us is that we are going to be given a new creation, a new world where weeping will be no more and the mercy of God will have defeated evil forever. This is the hope which lies beyond these days of suffering. All praise to Jesus! Amen!

The World Changing Word

 August 7 2022

Revelation 2:12-17

The Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the world mostly because we have not seen such open aggression of one country against another in quite a long time especially in and around Europe. We have been blessed with life in a world where wars and disputes had quieted down for a while and we were lulled into a false sense of security. What is forgotten by living in a country where a change of leadership happens rather peacefully is that throughout history a change in a countries rule has often happened through violence often involving military action. Either such eruptions of upheaval occur from within a countries political parties or, as in the case of the Ukraine, from outside powers seeking to dominate another country, forcing them to comply with a new form of government. Living in our world we know that such actions can be expected from time to time, the struggle for power can and does happen through violent and military means. Today’s weapons are tanks and drones but in the past such campaigns happened through hordes of riders yielding swords. Through the sharp blade of swords, governments were toppled and new regimes put in their place. This is the imagery that we must not let slip our minds when we are told in todays scripture from the book of Revelation that the message to Pergamum comes to them from the one who has the sharp two-edged sword. Thus the message is to be understood that it is coming to them from a warrior who is bringing about a change, a thorough upheaval of our world, a new king is coming to rule. Yet, this change is coming about in a totally new way because what we are told later in this message to the church at Pergamum is that the sword that is being yielded is the sword of his mouth. This is the weapon by which the war will be waged which we must admit, is almost beyond our imaginations.

This message to the church at Pergamum found here in the book of Revelation insists that we consider just what does it mean that words are the weapon through which a new king will come to power. Sure we like to quote the saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword”, but do we really believe that this is true? Can we truly hold on to this idea that the rule and reign of God becomes a reality through the words that are spoken by the one who is the very ruler of the kings of earth? This is what we are asked to consider as we listen in to what the risen Christ has to say to the church at Pergamum. 

As Christ speaks to each church he always begins by stating first what the church is doing well. To the church at Pergamum, he tells them that he knows where they dwell, and that place where they call home is located is the same place where, we are told, the very throne of Satan. Well, as they say, there goes the neighborhood. When we hear this said about Pergamum we are left wondering just what is the living Christ attempting to tell us by stating that here is where Satan rules? What isn’t hard to figure out is that there seems to be a connection between Christ being a sharp two edged sword and knowing that where you dwell is at the very heart of enemy territory. When we also understand that the sharp two edged sword yielded by the living Christ is the very word proceeding from his mouth and, as Jesus teaches us in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John, Satan lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies, we again find another connection, this time in words, words either speaking the truth or words which speak falsehoods. In both cases, what is known is that rule and reign happens through words, either through proclaiming the truth or through the speaking of lies.

Now, to better understand just what is the truth proclaimed by the living Christ we must go back to the origins of this saying that the words of his mouth are a two-edged sword. The place where this unusual saying is first heard is the forty-ninth chapter of the book of Isaiah. There the prophet Isaiah writes the words spoken by one called the Servant, who tells us that “Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. He said to me,”My servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Now, this does not tell us much except that this servant is one whose words will be like a sharp sword and through him the victory will be won and God will be glorified. To better understand what Isaiah has written, we need to go back to something that Isaiah had written previously in the eleventh chapter where Isaiah writes about the coming king out of the lineage of David, the one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord will dwell, the one whose delight is the fear of the Lord. This one, Isaiah states, this is the one who will not “judge by what his eyes see, nor will he decide disputes by what his ears hear but with righteousness he will judge the poor, and he will decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” This coming king who is anointed by the Holy Spirit, he is the one, we are told by Isaiah, who will speak with righteousness on behalf of those who are poor. This coming ruler will bring those who are lowly, those who get trampled on by those in power, and bring them up to stand on equal footing with the rest of humanity. This new reality is one that he will bring about through what he speaks, the words that this anointed one of God will say are words which will shake the very foundations of the world. Through his words he will announce the end of the rule of those who refuse to let go of their evil ways. This then is the truth, and as the truth it then must be received with faith, trusting that this is the very reality that is being brought into existence by God’s anointed king.

Now, if we know this to be the truth then it just figures that the lies that Satan spews forth are going to be opposed to what Christ proclaims. This is exactly what we discover in the gospel accounts. Jesus in the first days of his earthly ministry was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. As we read in the fourth chapter of Matthew, we read of how Satan took Jesus up to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. All this could be handed over to Jesus if he would just fall down and worship Satan. Jesus, of course refuted this lie by stating that it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” We have to keep this exchange between Jesus and Satan in mind in order to understand what Jesus teaches us in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew where he tells his disciples, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeit their soul?Or what shall a person give in return for their soul?” This is the lie of Satan that we are able to pursue a life of gaining as much of the world for ourselves and believe that in doing so we will not have to pay with our very life. You see, the only way, to save our life is to give our life in the worship and service of God, for this is the way of the cross.

So, the truth that Jesus proclaims is that we are to worship and serve God with all that we have knowing that this means that we follow the way of poverty and meekness. Yet this is the way of life for we will not be forgotten by Jesus the righteous Judge. As we are told in the fifth chapter of the gospel of John, “the Father has given Jesus the authority to execute judgment because Jesus is the Son of Man. The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Those who have done good are those who have used all that God has given to them, their abundance, their will and their life to serve God as he overcomes the evil of this world, these are the ones who receive the resurrection of life. In this way Jesus overcomes the evil which controls our world through his word, his promise that he will be the faithful and righteous Judge who will give resurrection life to those who do good. This promise is true because Jesus himself is the first fruits of those who have been raised from the dead.

This truth of Jesus is what the church at Pergamum believed in for as we are told, they did not deny their faith in the risen Christ even as they watched one of their own be killed as he gave witness to his risen Lord. Yet, even though they understood themselves to be priests to God, bearing his name faithfully out into the world there was something amiss in their life as a church. What should shock us is that even though Pergamum is where Satan dwells, the risen Christ tells us that when he comes he will not be coming to war against Satan, no he will be coming to wage war against the church at Pergamum if they do not repent. This should make us wonder just what is it that has angered Christ to this degree? Well, as Christ told them, there were those in their fellowship who,  “held to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.” The risen Christ is here referring to a story that is recorded in the twenty-second through the twenty-fifth chapters of the book of Numbers. As the people of Israel traveled through the wilderness the people in the surrounding areas began to be afraid of them because of their victories over their enemies that they had won through the power of God. The king of Moab whose name was Balak, was filled with dread as he watched as the people of Israel were fast approaching his country so he sent for a man named Balaam, who was known for his ability to place curses on people. As Balaam set forth to go back with the people from Moab, God spoke to him and told him that he should not go with these people from Moab . Balaam was not to curse the people of Israel because they had been blessed by God. So, Balak sent more people and more riches to persuade Balaam to curse the Israelites but alas Balaam was constrained by God so that no matter what all Balaam could do is to bless God’s people. Three times Balak called Balaam to curse the people of Israel and three times all Balaam could do is to pronounce a blessing over them. So, what was Balak to do? Well, since he couldn’t curse them he would make the people of God forget the blessing of God that had been given to them. Balak used the daughters of Moab to intice the men of Israel to listen to the lust of their desires instead of listening to the voice of God. Then as they became ensnared by their desires they were invited to eat with the people of Moab as they ate the sacrifices to their gods. In this way, Israel yoked themselves to the god called Baal. In this way, Balak finally succeeded to bring a curse upon the people of Israel.

This story, the risen Christ tells us, is what was in effect happening within the church at Pergamum. To get a better understanding about how the story of Balaam connects here we also need to know that when Jesus walked with his disciples here on earth, he taught them that they would be blessed with the kingdom of God if they would seek a life of poverty, not wealth. Jesus went on to teach that the ones who were hungry now would be blessed because they would be satisfied and blessed would be those who weep now because they would laugh. This is the life that Jesus assures us is blessed by God just as the people of Israel led a life that was blessed by God. Yet within this congregation at Pergamum were those who leading people astray so that as Balaam did with the people of Israel, those from this church at Pergamum would no longer be under the blessing of God. The issue at hand was that as the living Christ tells us is the eating of the food sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality. When we hear this we are left wondering why would good followers of Jesus go searching for a place at an idol’s table? Well, we know from reading about this same issue in the writings of Paul, there was a temptation for the followers of Jesus to eat the excess of the meat sacrificed to idols because as they rationalized this decision these gods that had been sacrificed to weren’t really gods at all so why not eat the leftovers from what was to those who knew the one, true living God, nothing really at all to worry about? The problem is that those who were weak in the faith would find that when they visited these shrines of the idols they were drawn into the life and practices of those who worshipped those idols. In other words, they went for the food and stayed for the idol worship and immoral acts. 

Now, I think, once we know this, we have to ask just why are these good followers of Jesus even suggesting that people in their congregation do their shopping at the haunts of idols in the first place? I think that this question is the root of the problem that the living Christ is getting at. You see, I believe that what was happening at this church at Pergamum is that the poor who were a part of this congregation were the ones who were told that if they needed something to eat to go over to the idols shrines, there’s a lot of great food there at a great price. They were told to do this because the rest of the congregation knew that if the poor went and got their groceries at the shrines of idols then they wouldn’t have to share what they had with them. I believe this to be the case because the living Christ tells them that if they didn’t repent then he was going to come and war against them with the sword of his mouth. If this warring against them with the sword of his mouth means that he was going to come in righteousness and judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek and lowly then this can only mean that the poor and the meek are not being cared for by the followers of Christ. When they themselves did not care for the poor and the lowly, as they should have, then they allowed some of their members to be tempted by idolatry and immoral behavior. 

What the church at Pergamum did not understand is just what was at stake when they refused to share what they had with those in need within their congregation. You see, Christ defeated Satan upon the cross. The fear that drove people to try and gain the whole world to save their life was destroyed by the perfect love of Christ who offered himself up on the cross, the Judge who allowed himself to take on our judgment out of his great mercy for us. Christ did this for us so that we might never judge another unworthy to receive our mercy. The church at Pergamum which stood in the shadow of Satan’s domain was to demonstrate to all that the living Christ had defeated him because here were those who had been set free by the mercy of God so that they might show mercy to all. So, when they failed to care for the poor they called into question the very victory of the living Christ! No wonder he warned them that if they did not repent that he would come and war against them for if they refused the mercy of the Judge then all that would be left for them is for them to stand under his judgment. 

To this situation where the church was complicit in leading those in their midst to be tempted to worship idols, the risen Christ, proclaims, “Repent!”. They were to remember that to remain under the blessing of God then there’s must be a place where the hungry are satisfied. They were no longer to withhold what another had need of, offering mercy as their Judge had first offered them mercy when they were the poor and in need of God’s grace. In this way, they would declare that the word of the living Christ, his promise to judge with mercy for the poor has indeed defeated the rule and reign of Satan which still ensnares the souls of people. If the church at Pergamum and ourselves can show such mercy to the poor and hungry in our midst then we are told that we are truly conquerors, we have overcome the world. Ours will be the hidden manna, the Bread of life come down from heaven, given to us, the poor and meek, by the mercy of God, so that we might have everlasting life. On that day the living Christ will give us a new name because we have the certainty that we have born anew in him! Amen!

Contented With God’s Future

 July 31 2022

Revelation 2:8-11

One of the things I like about summer is that this is the season of fairs and festivals. Just the other week, Jennifer and I went to a festival put on by our local Catholic Church. While we really went for the food, an added bonus is that I got to see classmates that I had graduated from high school with. It was great to reminisce with them about stories we remembered. We had a good laugh about our graduation because our valedictorian entitled her speech, “I Stand Alone”, which just caused all of us immature boys to come up with all kinds of reasons of why she was standing alone. Needless to say, her address was the most memorable one out of all the valedictorian speeches I have heard. Nowadays if I do have a chance watch a graduation ceremony, instead of honing in on the valedictorian speech I tend to now focus on the prayer that is usually given by some wholesome young man or woman. I pay attention to prayers like these because I feel that there will come a time when such crossing of the lines between church and state will no longer be tolerated which is a sad state of affairs. Yet, even so, it is still great to listen to the prayers of those who have achieved a great milestone in their life and with grateful hearts give thanks to God.

I had all of these thoughts running through my head this week as I pondered on our scripture verse from Revelation for this week. I wondered what would happen if at some graduation ceremony if some young person approached the podium to give the opening prayer and as they spoke they, at some point, asked God that as they went forward in life they might have the privilege of suffering trials and tribulations on account of their being known as being in a relationship with him. They would continue, by asking God that as they went out in the world that they might embrace a life of poverty and that the insults against God might be theirs as well. In Jesus name, Amen. Can you imagine the awkward silence after the audience would have heard such a prayer to God? I am pretty positive that such a prayer will never be offered up at a graduation ceremony but you never know. I  thought up such a scenario simply because I believe it is easy for us to miss just how radical the life of those who lived in Smyrna really was. Theirs was a life that was truly counter-cultural by todays standards, something that we can’t get the full impact unless we allow such a life to be the godly pursuit of say, one graduating from high school. Only then does it become apparent that this life that was lived by the faithful of Smyrna is not a life that is easily embraced by those of us who have been separated from them by thousands of years. Yet even so, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and he is the one who promises the crown of life to those who embrace the difficulties that come when one follows him.

As I have stated before, the book of Revelation is a book John was ordered to write down by the living Christ who had interrupted his worship one Sunday morning.  John was to take all that was revealed to him and write it down and send it off to the churches at Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These seven churches represent different mindsets which either needed to be repented of or they had a mindset which should serve a model for the rest of the churches. The number of the churches, seven, a number signifying wholeness or completeness, tells us that what is being revealed to these churches is being written for every church, every expression of the body of Christ.

The criteria that is used to determine the right mindset is that those who belong to the churches of Christ are to understand that Jesus loves us and by his blood he has set us free to be a kingdom of priests. As priests to God we bear God’s name out into the world and we take our part of the world, all that God has given to us and we offer it all back to God.

It is never more important to understand these basic foundations of this letter than when we come to what the risen and exalted Christ has to say about the church at Smyrna. What makes this report so unusual is that within it there is no call for a change to be made, no correction of an error or a need to repent. No, Smyrna is one of two churches out of the seven who simply need to keep on doing what they’re doing. This probably sounds like music to our ears because it can be kind of unsettling to hear Christ reprimand the churches as he does but as we hear what Christ has to tell the church at Smyrna we find that his words still unsettle us. He tells the church at Smyrna that he knows of their affliction, the tribulation that was the result of their poverty and their being blasphemed by those who said they were Jews but in all actuality, were not Jews. All Jesus tells them is to not fear. No, he is not going to do anything to make their situation better, in fact, their situation is about to get worse.  To this news, Christ simply adds, “Be faithful and they would win the crown of life”. In other words, what Christ is telling them is that they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, so do not let their fear derail them now, but instead they are to continue to be faithful to what they believe.

This message that the living Christ gave to the church at Smyrna then, is that our faith is a faith which understands that if we are experiencing the affliction of poverty and the slander of our good name on account of God, we are right where we need to be. That seems rather odd, doesn’t it? Yet, if we know the teachings of Jesus, what is happening at Smyrna is not strange at all, but rather what they are going through is exactly the life that Jesus taught to his disciples that they should live. Listen carefully to what is found in the sixth chapter of the gospel of Luke where we are told that Jesus looked at his disciples and said, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 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; for so did their fathers do so to the prophets.” Do you see how this teaching parallels what we are told is happening at the church at Smyrna? They are those who have taken this core teaching of Jesus to heart, they have faith that what he teaches them is true and they are living it out in real time.

Now, in order for us to embrace this life that the living Christ is commending to us, I believe that we have to understand this teaching at a deeper level. You see, it is not enough just to be poor because as Paul writes in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, “If I give away all that I have and I have not love, I have gained nothing.”So, yes, love has to be part of the equation. Perhaps to better grasp what is meant by this promise of Jesus that those who are poor are those who will be blessed with the kingdom of God, we ought to read further in this teaching of Luke. There we find Jesus teaching his disciples, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you, when people speak well of you, for so did the fathers to the false prophets.” So, what becomes apparent is that Jesus has separated people into two categories, the poor and the rich. The poor are those willing to take what God has given to them and use that in the service of God because this is what it means to be priests, and when they are priests to God the kingdom of God is where they will be at. These are those who know that if they work with God they are assured that their reward is great in heaven. In other words, they are to be people who place their hopes in the future God is bringing forth, the future that is found in the promise of the kingdom of God. 

The rich on the other hand, are those who take what God has given to them and they use it to create their own version of heaven in the here and now. Theirs is a life which believes that we can determine our own future using what God has given to us which is quite a bit different from working with God, using what he has given to us to overcome evil by doing good. The prophets that Jesus speaks of in this teaching always spoke of the future that God is bringing about and the reason that they were persecuted is that this future was vastly different from the future that the people of God desired to create out of what God had given to them. You see, the anger, the hatred , the reviling that happens when people encounter those who believe in the great future God is bringing about, occurs because such a life means that God is not going to have anything to do with any plans or schemes of anyone no matter how great those plans or schemes might be. God simply will not be manipulated into being some sort of guarantee for anybody’s dreams or visions; it just does not work that way.

We see the certainty of this in the life of God’s own people, the Jews, which are mentioned in Christ’s report of the church at Smyrna. We are told that the people of the church at Smyrna were blasphemed by those who say they are Jews but are not because they are in reality a synagogue of Satan. Now, many commentators take exception to such a description of this Jewish congregation in Smyrna but Jesus himself says something very similar as is recorded in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John. There we find Jesus addressing a group of Pharisees who claimed that Abraham was their father. This was thought to be the mark of a person who was truly of the people of Israel, that they could call Abraham their ancestor. They were as was said to the church at Smyrna, those who considered themselves Jews but alas they were not because as Jesus told them that if they were Abraham’s children they would be doing the works that Abraham did. Instead, these who thought they were Jews, sought to kill Jesus who told them the truth that he had heard from God, his Father.” It is important to understand that what Abraham did, is as we are told in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, lived by faith in the land of promise, living in tents, because he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Abraham believed in the future that God was bringing to fruition. This is what the true children of Abraham are to believe but as Jesus discovered in this group of Pharisees, this belief was missing. Again from the eighth chapter of John, we hear Jesus tell them that their real father, far from being Abraham , or even God, was instead the devil himself. They were those who could not bear to hear the word that Jesus spoke therefore their true father, Jesus tells them, is the devil, and their will was to do their father’s desires. Jesus goes on to say that the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and he has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.” So, Jesus is here saying much the same as what he has said to the church at Smyrna, that these who called themselves Jews, children of Abraham, were in fact a synagogue of Satan. They were people caught up in the lie of Satan, that he first spoke in the garden to our fore parents which is that they should eat of the forbidden fruit and when they did their eyes would be opened, they would be like God and they would know good and evil.  The opening of their eyes was that they now were aware of not just the present but also the future. They became like God in that they became those who thought they could create a future, something once reserved for God, alone. The future they would create would end up being a future that separated them from being part of the future that God has for them so that in the end, they became a people without a future at all, a people who were without God, and a people who were, ultimately, without life.

The future that this synagogue in Smyrna desired is a future where one day the people of Israel would once again become the nation of Israel. They looked for the day when they would go to Jerusalem and fight against the Romans so that they might at last be free from the rule of the Gentiles. Surely their God would be with them in this fight, wouldn’t he? Imagine their surprise, maybe even their disgust, when along come those who claimed that the long awaited Messiah desired by the Jews had indeed come and that instead of winning a mighty battle to win back Jerusalem, he instead is killed upon a cross in that same city. All seemed to be in doubt about his claims to be the true Messiah until three days later this one walked out of the grave. These followers of this Messiah named Jesus believed that the true way of God is the way of the cross, the way where good triumphs over evil, this is the way of the future God has for us. It isn’t hard to see why we are told that these followers of Jesus were blasphemed because the God they believed in was a radically different God from those who believed that we can carve out for ourselves any future we want, by any means possible and God will surely bless our efforts. On discovery of this truth, people quite naturally get angry and since they can’t lash out at God they lash out at those who are united with him.

So, it is no surprise that the living Christ tells the church that they must suffer, that for some of them, there would be time in prison. The living Christ tells those at Smyrna that when some of them were thrown into prison it was so that they might be tested for ten days. Now, what might not be apparent is that this number of days points us back to the first chapter of the book of Daniel. There we find that Daniel had decided that he would not defile himself by eating the king’s food, or with the wine that the king drank. So, the king’s servants were worried that by refusing the king’s provisions, Daniel and his friends would end up looking different from all of the rest of the kings servants which would end up upsetting the king. Daniel then suggested that they do a trial where he and his friends would eat nothing but vegetables and water for ten days and at the end of that time the king’s servants could check and see how they looked. Well, God blessed Daniel and his friends and they did not suffer at all but were in better appearance than everyone else. Once we hear this story, then we have to ask ourselves just what is it that we are to take away from it? What helps us figure out the significance of this story of Daniel to the life of the church at Smyrna is knowing that the Jews at this time were protected from persecution through a decree of Caesar, the Roman king. The followers of Christ, though, because they were so radically different in the way they acted from the Jews did not receive this protection. So, what the living Christ is, in a way, saying is that these devoted followers of his, is that they were to be like Daniel and his friends and they should seek to not defile themselves by seeking a way out of their suffering through the provision of the king. They should in their suffering discover the power of the future that God was bringing about and know that the certainty of that future was already theirs in that prison. They should, in their time of testing, find that when they trust God to bring about the future then they can be assured that God is with them mightily in the present. Like Daniel, those in prison would find themselves stronger in their faith in the true king of all. This is why they could be assured that they should have no fear of the second death, the death for those have been judged and found to have no future in the future that will one day be the ever present eternal life with God. On that day, the one who is the first and the last, our risen Lord he will have the last word! To him be the glory! Amen!

All But Love is Not Enough

 July 24 2022

Revelation 2:1-7

One of the good things about social media is that there is perhaps more accountability for goods and services. I mean, we just take it for granted that anything you might want to buy has ratings and reviews on Amazon. If a manufacturer tries to sell an inferior product, it’s a pretty safe bet that they will be found out by customers all too willing to tell others of their bad experience. Jennifer and I host an AirBnB site in our basement and we too are reviewed by the people who stay with us. So far, our ratings have been good enough that we have achieved the status of Superhost. Of course, we also get to rate the people who stay with us so that other AirBnb sites can know something about the people wanting to stay at their place. We also have the option of deciding one time with some guests was more than enough and we have a couple of times made it clear that certain guests don’t need to come back. So, this accountability that we now have is a really great thing because now if we want to buy something we can have some idea of what we are getting and if we have something to sell the good word of people who have used what we sell is out there as well.

I was thinking about this idea of accountability because, in a way, this is what is happening as John writes down what Jesus has to say about the seven different churches that he is addressing. What you find then is that this book of Revelation is really a letter that has within it seven separate letters which makes it rather odd. What this means then, is that just like the same way the whole world can see a review on Amazon, all of the churches could see how Jesus reviewed these seven different churches. Yet, this isn’t quite as bad as it seems because what must be kept in mind is that the number seven is a number in the Bible that conveys the idea of wholeness or completeness. So, Jesus isn’t just speaking about these specific churches but rather he is addressing the whole church. We also know that Jesus is not just addressing what is going on in these churches as if to point out that this is what a bad church looks like and this church over here is doing what a good church is supposed to do, but rather what Jesus is addressing is particular mindsets which need to be changed and other mindsets which need to take their place. We know this to be true because with the five different churches that are missing the mark with the way they are acting, Jesus again and again calls these churches to repent. The Greek word translated here as being “repent”, actually means to have one’s thinking transformed after being confronted about one’s behavior. While Jesus does point out many different wrong actions that these various churches are doing, his call for repentance lets us know that what first needs to be changed is the mindset behind those actions. If a church just decided to start doing different actions without first addressing just why they thought the wrong actions seemed like a good idea at the time then sooner or later these churches were going to end right back where they started.  Jesus then, through these seven churches, is really getting at wrong ways of thinking about the situations that all churches find themselves in.

One more thing that we have to understand before we dive into these seven reviews of the seven churches is that the basis for having a right or wrong mindset is tied directly to our being now thought of as a kingdom of priests. I think too often, we, as the church, just rush by this statement of who we are as if it’s a trivial matter however only as we rightly think about who we are can we rightly think about just what it is that we are to do as the church. So, what does it mean for us to think about ourselves as being a kingdom of priests? I think if you read about who we as humanity were created to be in places like the eighth Psalm, what you find is that we were created to be mediators between God and his creation. God called the people of Israel, who he also had called to be his priests, to bear his name out into his creation so that through his people the world might know that the God who created this world is a God whose unchanging character is steadfast love and faithfulness. They as priests were also called to love God with all that God has given to them, the abundance they enjoyed, even their very life, all of this was to be a means to serve and worship God.  It begins to be clear then, how being a priest affects how we think about just what it is that we are supposed to do and say.

Keeping our being priests to God front and center then, we begin to look at just what Jesus has to say to us about the mindset that had gripped ahold of the church at Ephesus. In all of these addresses to the various churches, there is a consistent form as to how they are set up. Every address begins with John being commissioned to write not to the church itself but to the angel of each specific church. After the commission of John to write down what Jesus is saying to him, we then have a title of the glorified Christ which is one aspect of the vision of John recorded in the first chapter. After this description of the glorified Christ, we hear Christ speak positive words to the church he is addressing. This is why these letters to the various churches remind me of reviews because most all of them are doing something right. Yet, for most of the churches, Christ cannot give them a five star rating and he gives his reasons why but unlike the reviews we find on Amazon, Christ gives a solution to the problem which each church is facing beginning with a call to have a change of mind. If the churches think that they can simply ignore what Christ is telling them, then he in no uncertain terms states that he will be making a visit. Wrong behavior is not something to be taken lightly. Lastly, Christ finishes up with a call for each church to remember that they are more than conquerors through him, this is who they are and will be if they but listen to his voice speaking to them through the Holy Spirit.

So, to the church at Ephesus what we find is that John is told to write to the angel in Ephesus. The word ‘angel” means a heavenly messenger and it perhaps points us to the new reality that Christ has brought about, one where heaven and earth are at last one. John is told that the words he records are those of the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and the one who walks among the seven lamp stands. What does this tell us about Christ? Well, it tells us that Christ holds the entire cosmos, symbolized by the seven stars, in his right hand, the hand of power. Without a doubt we are to know that Christ is the all powerful one. Christ also walks among the seven lamp stands, lamp stands which represent the seven churches. Christ then is not only all powerful but he is present in the everyday life of the churches. This is the one who is speaking to the church at Ephesus and he did have some good words to pass along to them. Christ knew of their hard work, how they were weary yet they were hanging tough through it all. This was a church that would not bear with those who are evil and they were smart enough to know how to tell false apostles from the real thing. This patient endurance that the church at Ephesus had, their willingness to bear under the weight of constant evil, this was all because they were a church that was willing to bear the name of Christ. When we hear this phrase, “bearing the name”, this should make our ears perk up, because this meant that they were at least attempting to be the priests that Christ expected them to be. They were living out the unchanging character of Jesus in their everyday life and they paid the price for doing so. It is hard for us to imagine that Christ would find fault with such a church but, something was wrong. Their problem is that they had got up and left behind something that they used to have in the beginning of their relationship with Christ. This something is love. Now, once we figure out that what has been left behind is love what we cannot do is to think that what was lost was some emotional fire in their heart. No, what Christ tells them is that, yes, they had abandoned their first love but what they needed to do is to get back to doing the works that they had done at first. Let’s not forget that to love is to work. This word, “work”, actually helps us figure out the root of the problem with this church at Ephesus. Christ tells them that if they don’t get back to work then he was going to remove them from the lamp stand. So, this tells us that there is a connection between the work that they used to do and their being able to be a light. It isn’t hard to hear the words of Jesus who taught his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount. As we find it in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus teaches that “we are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. People do not light an oil lamp and then put a basket over it. No, when they light a lamp they set it on a stand so that it gives light to all of the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they might see your good works and give God glory who is in heaven.” This teaching then does tell us that it is those who make up Christ’s church are the very light of the world. In this light the world will see our good works and the those in the world who live in darkness will end up testifying to the victory of God.  Of course, we are left wondering just what is it that the world will see demonstrated by us when we are living as the light of the world? A good place to start to figure this out is at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans where Paul writes that “God works all things for good with those who love God, those who are called to his purpose.” What Paul is telling us here is that God is the one who is working all things for good and those whom he calls, those who love him, God invites them to join him in working out his goodness in the world. Now, there is one more thing that we have to understand and this is something Paul writes in the twelfth chapter of Romans where he instructs us that “if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals upon their heads. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil by good.” Here at last, I think, it is becoming clearer just what the problem is with the church at Ephesus.  Yes, they were bearing the name of Christ out to the world and they paid the price for doing so. When they proclaimed that Christ and not Caesar was the ruler over all the universe, over all rulers, over all kingdoms, those who worshipped Caesar as a god made sure that the Christians at Ephesus paid dearly for their outrageous beliefs. So, they withdrew from the world and hunkered down but in doing so they left behind God who is at work in the world. They considered themselves to be those who loved God and if so this meant that they were to be working with him as he worked at bringing his goodness about in the world. To love God with all that he had given to them meant that they were to take the abundance God has given to them and do the good which overcame the evil in the world. Where evil caused one to be hungry, they were to feed them. If the evil in the world left someone without a place to live they were to share their home with them. If evil had left one alone and vulnerable they were to come along side of them and encourage them. This doing of good, as Paul said, is to be done even to the one who might oppose us in bringing good about in the world, doing good to those who do evil just so it is not forgotten that good always overcomes evil. You see, it is these good works, good works done even to those who oppose the good, this is what brings those who witness such good works to glorify God. What this means is this: the people who bear the brunt of evil day in and day out, those who see no end to the misery and injustice that is all around them, they are wondering is there an answer to the rampant evil in the world? When we who love God join him in doing good, those who live in a dark world will see a light, a difference, they will see the truth that evil will not have the last word but is in fact something that can be overcome by good. This is when they will praise a good God for his victory over evil.

You see, Christ knew that the church at Ephesus had faced persecution. They could not bear those who were evil but what Christ also knew is that the church is called to do more than be against evil, it is, in fact, to be those who overcome evil with good. If the church does not witness to the fact that good does indeed overcome evil, then what answer is there for all those living in an evil world? We must be people who live to tell the story that, yes, there is evil in the world but no matter the depths of the evil that we see, God’s goodness is greater. This is the message of the cross where the evil that was wielded by the most perfect form of government, the Romans, joined with the evil wielded by the perfect religion, the people of Israel and came against the one who was God’s goodness in the flesh, whose name was Jesus. They did their very worst, causing him to suffer and die at their hands allowing them to falsely believe that their evil was the greatest power. Three days later, the power of the goodness of God was revealed when Jesus walked out of the tomb, the evil of death defeated forever. This is what we believe to be true, and this is what our hope rests upon. When we remember how God overcame the evil of this world through the goodness of his grace, and not just the evil of the world but the evil in us, how God overcame our evil through his goodness, then perhaps this gives us a clue as to what is meant in this warning to the church at Ephesus when they are told to “remember the love they had at first”. There is a lot of speculation about this phrase, whether it means that the church should begin again to love God or others as they had done in times past but what if, instead, the real meaning is that the church at Ephesus is to remember that they love only because God first loved them. Before they were even aware that there was a salvation to believe in, God loved them. God did not just love them in some emotional way but he loved them and the whole world and he demonstrated that love by giving the most precious gift of his Son. God gave his Son Jesus to not overcome just the evil of the world but Jesus has overcome our evil, the evil that we could not overcome on our own. God set us free from the slavery of sin which held us and he did so through the goodness of his love and grace. Perhaps this is the love which we had at the first that Christ calls us to remember. You see, what compels us to go out and join God in doing the good works which overcome the evil of this world is this extravagant, overwhelming love which we had never known before we had met Jesus. Perhaps it is this love, this love of God, the love with which we were first loved like never before, perhaps, it is this love that we are called to remember, to remember how God did not merely bear with the evil of this world but instead God sent his Son into the world because only in that way could the goodness of heaven come and conquer the evil of earth. Christ tells the church at Ephesus that those who once again respond to the love God has for them by loving him in return, loving God not with sheer emotion but with action, joining God in doing good, these are the ones Christ calls, “Conquerors!”. Yet that is not all, Christ also says to those who conquer that they will be granted to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. This mysterious blessing points us back to the garden of Eden, back to the disobedience of our first parents who were chased out of paradise, an angel of heaven guarding the entrance to paradise with a flaming sword lest Adam and Eve attempt to reach the tree of life and live forever. Yet now, Christ is saying that the angel and his fiery sword are gone, the way has been opened but only for those willing to join God in his work of overcoming evil with good. You see, by joining God we now claim that we at last know that God alone is good, and because of his first love for us, we, in response to God’s good love for us, we, unlike our fore parents, listen and obey God, using all that he has given us in overcoming the evil of our world. This is what Christ tells the church at Ephesus; only you can say just what Christ  is telling you! May you be among those he calls, conquerors! Amen!

Looking Back, Going Forward

 June 17 2022

Revelation 1

For Father’s Day this year my daughter Elizabeth invited me to go with her to see the latest Jurassic movie, Jurassic World: Dominion. Now, she had throughly prepared herself for this event having watched all of the previous six movies in the Jurassic realm. The whole Jurassic franchise began in 1993, so its about as old as Elizabeth, and its all about mad scientists who find a way to bring dinosaurs back to life; I mean, what possibly could go wrong? Well, in the first three movies the dinosaurs are kept in a park and in the last three movies we see how the dinosaurs are at last set free to roam the earth; again, what could possibly go wrong? Now, the movies Elizabeth and I went to see, Jurassic World: Dominion, brought back the cast from the original Jurassic movie which was pretty cool and knowing this, then everybody assumed that this latest installment would be loaded with what are called, “Easter eggs”. These are little subtle nods in one movie which pay homage to a movie which had came before. This is partially why Elizabeth watched all of the other six movies in the Jurassic franchise because she wanted to be able to point out all the Easter eggs, those subtle, or not so subtle, parts of the movie which were a tip of the hat to the movies which had gone before. Since I have trouble even remembering what I had for breakfast, I ,needless to say, missed most of the Easter eggs in the movie!

This idea of Easter eggs, those hidden little gems that are snuck into a movie which, if you are aware of them, point back to an older movie, this idea is perhaps a way for us to understand this strange vision of Jesus that we read about in this first chapter of Revelation. You see, all of the various ways that John, the writer of the book of Revelation, describes Jesus in his vision are Easter eggs pointing us back to the Old Testament, what we might call the prequel to what we call the New Testament. You see, only as we understand that what John is describing here is really the promises that are fulfilled in Jesus will we begin to wrap our minds around what can only be considered a mind-blowing experience that John has had one Sunday morning while worshipping God.

John has found himself far from his home, and his church family. He has been ripped out of the comfort and peace of his old familiar way of life, hauled off to live on a small island where he no longer could personally call on the members of his church to remain loyal to only Jesus Christ, the one, John refers to as being the ruler of kings on earth. John, in his letter, refuses to give any credit to Caesar  for his being banished to this small island but instead would witness that he was where he found himself only on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. It may have been Roman soldiers who had forcibly removed him from his home but his circumstances had not caught God unaware but they were rather just another moment when the will of God would be worked out even if it wasn’t possible to see how it could be so at the time.

So, John finds himself in a strange place, unsettled, trying desperately to adjust to this new reality that he has found himself in. The anchor that remains his constant is the structure of time, because every seven days, the Lord’s Day comes around even if one is far removed from all that used to be part of their world. What we know about the worship of these early followers of Jesus is that their worship was centered around the reading of the Word of God and the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup in celebration of the Lord’s supper. 

What is to happen when the Lord’s supper is participated in, is that the one who has revealed himself to us through his opening of the scriptures to us is now known to be present with us as the bread is broken and the cup is taken. This is all made possible for those in worship because of the presence of the Holy Spirit who speaks the words of Jesus to us and who gives us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in the earthly elements of communion. So, it is no surprise that we are told that John is in the Spirit on the Lord’s day because when we worship Jesus we do so only in and through the Holy Spirit. Yet John’s ordinary day of worship was soon interrupted when on this Sunday, John hears a voice which sounds like a trumpet. What does it mean that this voice sounds like a trumpet? Certainly this must mean that the voice is loud but why, we must ask, is this mention of a trumpet even included here? Well, here is one of the many Easter eggs that John has placed here which points us back to the first covenant, the covenant God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. God brought these former slaves up out of Egypt and he brought them to his holy mountain to enter into a covenant relationship with them. As we read in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus, he first gathers his people together and tells them that now they are God’s treasured possession and they would be for him a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. When we hear this then we know why John has already in the first chapter of this book of Revelation stated that Christ loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood and he has made us a kingdom of priests. Just as the people of Israel were set free from their slavery so also have we have been set free from our slavery to sin. In both cases the reason for our freedom is that we are to be a kingdom where each member is a priest to God.

Well, as we read further in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus, we find that God instructs the people to consecrate themselves and when they heard the sound of the trumpet they were to come to the foot of Mount Sinai because it was there that God would speak to his people about the covenant that they were about to enter. So, this moment that announced the speaking forth of the terms of the old covenant is found here in this moment where Jesus is speaking to John as if to say here God is going to speak to his people, the people who were the new Israel, his church, about the new covenant. It makes sense that it would happen here, as John has drunk from the cup, the cup which represented the blood of the new covenant. In this moment Jesus blows the trumpet as if to say that he is calling his people to him to speak about what is expected from those who have entered into this new covenant with God.

The book that John is to write is to be sent to seven churches, the church at Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.  When we read that John is writing to seven churches we must remember that the number seven was thought of being a number, throughout the Bible, that conveys the meaning of wholeness and completeness. Thus, I believe that, although what John writes is to these seven churches he does so with the intention that the message he is given is actually for the whole church, every expression of the one body of Christ throughout the world. A right understanding of the number seven also helps us figure out just what John means by telling us that we have grace and peace through the seven spirits. Again, the number seven points to the wholeness or completeness of the Holy Spirit who as Isaiah teaches us in the eleventh chapter of his book is the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. There is one Spirit but he is experienced by us in different ways so that the Spirit is for us all that is necessary for us to be in a relationship with God through Christ.

So, as he is in the Spirit, John hears a voice while in worship, a voice which is like a trumpet summoning God’s people to him to hear the requirements of the new covenant, and as he turns to see the voice we are told that John sees seven lamp stands. In the midst of those lamp stands, John saw an image of Jesus. Once again, we have to ask just what is with the lamp stand? The answer is, as any good Jew of John’s day would have known is that the lamp stand was part of the inner workings of the Temple in Jerusalem. The lamp stand, or menorah, had one center lamp and off of this center lamp branched off three branches on either side, to resemble a tree. This lamp was a continual light within the inner holy chamber of the temple, the same place where there was an altar for burning incense and a table to hold twelve loaves of bread called the bread of the presence, one for each tribe of Israel. Now, it may be that John here is giving us another Easter egg, because by recalling this inner holy room with his mention of the lamp stand this means that perhaps John also meant that Jesus, representing the people of Israel, is the new bread of the presence, the bread of heaven as John writes in the sixth chapter of his gospel account.

As John gazes upon Jesus this is what he records that he sees, “there was one like a son of man, clothed in a long robe and a gold sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool. His eyes were like flames of fire, his feet were like burnished brass refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. Now, in this very brief description, John has given us a string of Easter eggs, little subtle nods back to various passages from the Old Testament. In the seventh chapter of Daniel we listen in on the vision God gave to his prophet which states, “behold, there with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man and he came to the Ancient of Days.” Here was one of us, one out of our humanity who is able to stand unafraid in the very awe inspiring and terrifying presence of Almighty God. Now, what may not be also apparent is that this term,”Son of Man”, is itself an Easter egg, a subtle nod pointing us back to the eighth Psalm where the Psalmist asks God, “What is man, that you are mindful of him?What is the son of man, that you care for him? Yet you made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and majesty! You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You put all things under their feet…” When we remember this Psalm then we aren’t surprised when Daniel goes on to tell us in the seventh chapter that the Ancient of Days has granted this one like a son of man, dominion and glory and a kingdom because this is what God has desired for us, the people whom he has created, a life where we are able to be crowned with glory. So, what John is saying is that Jesus is the person who lives as God has always intended humanity to live. 

John goes on to say that the one who appeared before him had hair that was white like white wool, and eyes that were like flames of fire which again is yet another Easter egg that is found in the seventh chapter of Daniel. There before Daniel sees the one like a Son of Man, he looked and saw that the Ancient of Days took his seat: his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like white wool; his throne was fiery flames. So, John is telling us that, yes, Jesus is the perfect human as God intended but he is also the one who is the Ancient of Days, the everlasting and Almighty God. In the man, Jesus, the ancient of Days is fully revealed to us in one who is completely like us.

When we understand these two aspects of this vision that John has of Jesus, then when we hear John tell us that Jesus wore a long robe with a sash around his waist we know that this is another Easter Egg, pointing us this time to the eighth chapter of Leviticus where we read of how God instructed Moses to wash his brother Aaron because Aaron was the high priest and then Moses was to put “the coat on Aaron and tie the sash around his waist and clothe him with the robe…” So, John obviously wants us to understand that Jesus now is the High Priest of the new covenant. The theme of Jesus being our High Priest is prominent in the book of Hebrews where in the seventh chapter of this book we read that it is “indeed fitting that we should have such a High Priest as Jesus who is holy, innocent, untainted and separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens, He has no need to daily offer sacrifices for this he did once for all when he offered up himself.” This is what John sees when he sees Jesus in the sash and the robe, the one who is our High Priest, the one who goes before us to demonstrate the work of the priesthood to us. This work of the priest that Jesus lived out is that he took and offered God to the world and he also took the part of the world that God had given to him, his very life, and he offered this life back to God. The God that Jesus revealed to the world is the God which is pointed to by the very feet of the Jesus seen by John. John states that the feet of Jesus were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace and once again, here is another Easter Egg, this time pointing us to the tenth chapter of Daniel where Daniel was deeply distressed because of his being in exile in Babylon. As Daniel fasted and prayed, he had a vision of a “man clothed in linen and wearing a sash around his waist, whose eyes were like flaming torches and whose feet were like burnished brass who stood before him and he told Daniel that “he was greatly loved, a man whose words had been heard by God, and because of this Daniel was to fear not, but instead Daniel was to have the peace of God and be strong and of good courage.” This is who our God is, the God who comes to us in our suffering, the God who is ever present and faithful to us. This faithfulness of God is also heard in the reference John makes to the voice of Jesus which he says is like the sound of many waters. This points us back to the forty-third chapter of Ezekiel where the prophet Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord returning to his Temple, the sound of which was like that of many waters. You see, God’s glory is returning because now his Temple is made of people, living stones, who have been restored to their proper status of priests through the High Priestly work of Jesus.

John continues with his description of Jesus by telling us that in the right hand of Jesus there were seven stars. The stars represented the heavenly realm which is firmly within the powerful grasp of Jesus. Yet even though Jesus rules over the vastness of the cosmos, John says, that he speaks to us here on earth because we are told that from the mouth of Jesus comes a sharp two-edged sword. This strange image is very similar to the one described in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah where we hear Isaiah tell us that the one on whom the Holy Spirit rests, this is the one who will judge in righteousness for the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth and he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. In this context then it is easy to see what John is trying to convey to us, which is that Jesus is not only the one who commands all of the stars in the heavens yet, at the same time, he is the one who stands with the lowly of the earth, the poor and the meek. It is Jesus who is the one whose word will bring those who afflict the poor and meek to judgment. Finally, John records that the face of Jesus is like the sun, shining in full strength. In hearing this, how can we not hear the blessing of Aaron the high priest who when he blessed the people of Israel assured them that the Lord would make his face shine upon them and be gracious to them, that the Lord would rejoice at the sight of them and give them his peace. You see, the God we know, the God we offer to the world as his priests, our God is a God who can hold the whole cosmos in his hand yet he is also a God who seeks righteousness for the poor and meek of earth. The God we witness to is a God who desires that we live in his presence, before his face which shines upon us, to live in his presence where there is much joy and where grace and peace abound. This is the one in whose presence we hear the words, “Fear not”.  We can live victorious over our fear because Jesus is the one who is victorious over death. By his love he has broken the very power of sin and death. Now, because of the blood of Jesus, we have at last been set free from sin and its power so that we can offer God to a world which so desperately needs to know him and we can offer all of ourselves to a God who deserves the giving of all that we are. This is the hope written of in the Old Covenant that is fulfilled in Jesus who calls us to be faithful in our living out the truth of the New Covenant. To God be the glory! Amen.

Making a Great Love a Good Habit

 July 10 2022

1 Peter 5

As I get older, I understand the importance of having a morning ritual. I can remember, as a kid, staying with my Grandma and knowing that the one thing that I could count on was that when I entered the kitchen for breakfast that she would have a big, steaming pot of oatmeal ready and waiting for me. You see, this was my Grandma’s morning ritual; it was as if the day had not properly begun until the oatmeal was made. My morning ritual is to fill the two bird feeders that stand next to the woods. I find that if I get up and move and walk to the garage where the bird seed is and then fill both feeders that by that time the stiffness in my back is at last tolerable enough that I can eat breakfast without too much trouble. My wife Jennifer, as part of her morning ritual, starts her morning with a nice hot cup of mint tea. So, it goes without saying, most people probably have some kind of morning ritual, something that they can do without much thought, because let’s face it, thinking first thing in the morning can be a challenge. Its nice just to wait a little bit to switch on the brain before we tear into the day. 

What is interesting is that God knew of the importance of having a morning ritual because when the people of Israel were getting ready to enter into the land that God had promised them, God instructed Moses that every morning and every evening they were to say what is called in the Hebrew language, Shema, which merely means, “hear”. This hearing was the beginning of what they were to recite, a small prayer with which to begin and end their day which as recorded in the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy states, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, or life and with all you have been given.” So, imagine that as you rise and shine that you begin your day saying that you were going to begin this day that you have been given, listening to the words God is speaking. You are going to pay attention to God because you love him. You love him with your heart, the very center of your will, and you love him with your soul, the essence of your life and you love him with all that he has given to you. Can you see how this very small prayer would have a very big impact on how you order your day?

I think that God insisted that his people pray this simple prayer at the beginning and end of their day for the very purpose of bringing order into his creation through those who love him. If we live our lives without a proper love of God then we might say that the world is out of order. If we look around our world we can see how true this statement is. Now, some people might say, well, this was in the Old Testament so this prayer is obsolete yet this is far from the truth,. Jesus  states in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew that the greatest commandment in all of the Law is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all of our soul and with all of our strength. So, yes, what we find in Deuteronomy still applies to those of us who follow Jesus. Yet, what is important is that it is Jesus who is the one who makes the possibility of a life fully loving God a reality. 

You see, in the first letter of Peter, we read of how the forefathers of Peter and those who were reading his letter, they ended up with a life which did not bear fruit. This empty life is the life which came up empty even though they were people who every morning prayed that they would hear God’s word and then take and love God with their heart and soul and strength. What Peter writes about then in his letter is how Jesus saves us from a life which bears no fruit, the fruit of loving God with all of our heart, with all of our life and all of our strength because even though we are no longer in slavery to sin we still stand in need of knowing just how we can now love God with all of our hearts, and with our life and with all of our resources.

Peter frames his letter by using what is known as the parable of the sower  because the parable of the sower is the way Jesus explains just why it is that people failed to love God as they should. The parable of the sower is the story of a farmer who went out to sow some seed as found in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. There we hear Jesus tell his disciples that “a farmer who went out to sow some seed and some seed fell upon the path and the birds came and devoured that seed. Other seed fell upon rocky ground, where there was not much soil, and immediately the seed sprang up since they had no depth of soil but when the sun rose the little seedlings were scorched. The little seedlings had no roots in them so they withered away. Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked the little seedlings. Other seeds though, fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty.” Jesus would go on to explain this story as being a story about those who were faithfully doing the prescribed morning ritual of listening and loving God but failing miserably to end up with a life that bore the fruit of God’s love. Jesus told his disciples that when anyone hears the word of the kingdom, the word of the king, who is God, this word is like a seed. If one hears this word and takes it to heart, loving God with all of their heart but does not understand the word, if they  do not understand the plan of God, which is that as our God is one God so there must be one humanity, if this is not understood then the devil, who seeks to steal, kill and destroy, comes along and devours the word. So, when we don’t understand the ways of God then our loving of God with all of our heart is simply not going to happen. Jesus goes on to speak of the seed on rocky ground which represents those who hear God’s word and receive this word with joy yet they have no root in themselves. When these people experience trouble or persecution on account of the word of God they fall away just as fast as they first received God’s word. These are those who fail to love God with their soul or life. They allow their circumstances to be the determining factor as to the faithfulness of God. They fail to anchor their life in the very faithfulness of God, to trust that God will sustain them through any drought and storm and thus fail to love God with their life or soul.

Then Jesus speaks of the seeds which fell among the thorns. These are those who hear the word of God but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and the word fails to produce fruit. The abundance that God supplies becomes a false god which is worshiped and served thus separating a person from the very God in whom there is life and life more abundantly.

So, in this story of the sower Jesus is saying that people do not end up loving God with all of their heart because they do not understand God and his ways. When they fail to understand then the devil is able to come along and take the word of God from their heart. You see, if we understood God then we would know that he desires that all of humanity be united in their love of one another and so reflect back to God the very love with which he first loved us. This is what Peter writes about when at the end of the first chapter of his first letter that now that Jesus has cleansed us from all sin we are to have a sincere brotherly love, loving one another earnestly from a pure heart. What Peter goes on to tell us in the second chapter of his letter is that God is building a house, a house where people serve God and give their lives to bring about the purposes of God. This is the right understanding that we were given by Jesus, a right understanding that we must not let the devil take from us.  Jesus went to the cross because he refused to follow the ways of the devil, he would not steal, kill or destroy because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Christ shed his precious blood for us upon the cross, because he knew that love  is the power which defeats death, the power of sin which destroys God’s good creation. Now that we have been set free from the enslavement of sin we must in love join God in building up, no longer letting what we say and do tear down what God is creating. So, to say that Jesus is our Savior is to say that we have been saved so that we might love one another with abandon. Peter is making it clear that not only is that it is Jesus the one who has redeemed us by his blood but Jesus is the one who has also done everything necessary for us to at last love God with all of our heart.

Peter, uses the parable of the sower, to address just why those who receive God’s word with joy end up withering before their lives can bear fruit. He begins his letter by writing about the foreknowledge of God, his plan, the plan revealed to the prophets who spoke of the coming of Jesus, and of his sufferings and his glory.What was revealed to the prophets is the very good news that is given to us through the Holy Spirit. This good news is that God had a plan to bring salvation to our world, a plan he revealed to the prophets through the Holy Spirit. It is Jesus who came and who suffered just as the prophets foresaw and who rose from the dead just as they also knew. It is because Jesus has risen from the dead that we now know that the power of sin has been defeated, sin no longer reigns. God’s plan to bring about a world where love is the rule has happened just as God said it was going to happen. Through Jesus we have the certainty that God is faithful to his word. Now, we can know that we can trust God with our very life no matter what the circumstances, in our joy or in our sorrow, all because of Jesus. Through Jesus we can know God as our faithful source of life which can sustain us in the worst of times. Can we love God with all of our soul, our life? We absolutely can love God with our life because we know through Jesus that God is the ever certain fountain of life that we can sink our roots deep into and find life eternal.

Well, it should come as no surprise that Peter goes on to speak about how the cares of the world, the anxieties of life and the deception of plenty can choke out the word of God. Peter begins the fourth chapter of his letter by reminding us that now that Christ has redeemed us from sin that no longer should we think that our life is to be one long moment of indulging our desires. What Peter goes on to teach us is that when Christ suffered in the flesh he demonstrated to us how we now are to live in a world where overindulgence is the norm. The security that we seek by always feeding our human passions is to be found instead by yielding our life to God, and in that security, using our time to do his will. This is what we learn from Jesus, who with arms outstretched upon the cross cried out to his Heavenly Father, “Into your hands I commit my spirit!” This is how we now are also to live, knowing that our life is being held secure in the hands of God. No longer do we have to let the cares of this world make us anxious, divided in our loyalty to God. No longer do we have to falsely believe that life is somehow more secure with a stock pile of worldly riches. No, our security is found in the same way that Jesus found his security which is by yielding his life into the arms of his Heavenly Father. So, because of Jesus, because we can know the security found by being held in the arms of our Heavenly Father, we no longer have to allow the abundance that God has supplied us with to become for us a source of idol worship. We can instead take all that God has given to us and use it to glorify him, the one who securely holds our life in his hands.

So, yes, Jesus our Savior, who through the shedding of his blood, has redeemed us from a life of being unable to bear the spiritual fruit that God has always created us to have in our lives. But Jesus is more than just our Redeemer because now, because of Jesus we can hear the word of God and love him with all of our heart, with all of our soul and with all of the abundance God has given to us. All of this has to be understood before we can dive into the final words of Peter’s first letter. Peter begins the fifth chapter by speaking about the role of those he calls the elders. Peter is speaking to the elders as an elder, one, as he says, was a witness to the sufferings of Christ and a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed. These words of Peter echo the same words he wrote in the first chapter when he wrote of the prophets who through the Holy Spirit predicted not only the sufferings of God’s anointed one but also his subsequent glories. It seems then that what Peter is speaking about is of the very faithfulness of God, how the plan of God has always been to bring the world back to him through a Savior. Through the one we know as Jesus, through his death upon the cross, God took care of the sins of the past. Through the raising of this servant, God has brought the power of new life into the present so that we might know the faithfulness of God in his giving to us eternal life. This hope of eternal life is what sustains us even if we are called to give our life sacrificially to God.

Peter also instructs those who are elders to exercise their oversight of those who are less mature in their faith not under compulsion, not for worldly gain but rather willingly and eagerly. Then Peter tells them that they are to not be domineering which is very similar that Jesus taught to Peter and his friends. In the tenth chapter of Mark, Jesus says, that those “who are considered rulers of the nations lord it over them and the great ones of the nations exercise authority over their subjects. But it shall not be so among you for whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” So, what Peter is saying in so many words is that those who are elders must consider themselves the servants of those who they are watching over. They were to remember that the way of Jesus, is the way of the servant, the way that Jesus showed his love to his followers as we read in the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel. The elders, then, were to demonstrate that they understood that God’s word demands that all walk in the way of love.

Peter goes on to say that they should all clothe themselves with humility, a word which speaks of knowing the need to rely upon God. You see, it just makes sense that God opposes the proud because it is the proud who are just fine without God. Only as we are willing to admit that we desperately need God, that we need a chief Shepherd to watch over us, to give us the grace of his presence and power, only then are we able to live in peace. What Peter is speaking to here is knowing life as coming not from the power of our hands but rather to humbly know life as only being secure in the hands of God, where we can receive his grace. This is how Peter knows that we can keep ourselves by being overwhelmed by the cares of this world, from being deceived that our souls can find rest only if we just have enough riches to fill up our life.

So, Peter here in his last words, has simply gone over what he has already taught us about Jesus throughout his letter, about how Jesus has made it possible for us to fulfill this call of God to love him with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our strength. And then he does so one last time, I mean are you at last hearing this same framework that he has used throughout his letter? Cast all of your anxieties upon God because he cares for you, do you hear how Peter is once again addressing the problems we have loving God with all that he has given to us? When the anxieties of this world make us into hoarders, Peter says throw those cares of yours onto God, don’t you know that he cares for you, I mean, after all, he has given his very Son for you. Peter continues, be sober-minded, have your wits about you; in other words hang on to your understanding about God’s love and his plan for the world. We have to have our thinking caps on because the devil is roaming around seeking to snatch the word of God from our hearts. And lastly, Peter says be firm in your faith, even if you have to suffer. And how are we able to do this Peter? It is, God, Peter tells us that will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us, through never letting us forget that he is the one who has dominion over this world forever. His plan will happen, you can build you life upon this promise, because Jesus is the yes to all of God’s promises. Amen!