Christians Are Illegal.

Revelation 2:8-11

February 3 2019

I.

The next mini-letter from the Lord Jesus through John is addressed to the church in another port city: Smyrna.  Smyrna was also famous for its loyalty to Rome.  This made life that much harder for the Christians there, and it was  compounded by a rift with the Jewish population.

One of the most important things to know about the New Testament that is not actually in the text of the New Testament concerns the details of the break between the Christians and the Jews.  Jesus and all the apostles are Jewish, of course, as are the earliest communities of Jesus-followers.  They are one of many sects of Judaism that existed at the time of Jesus.  But the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70, meant that Judaism had to reorganize itself.  The group that emerged dominant from this catastrophe was the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were the beginning of what we know today as Rabbinic Judaism.  In consolidating their power, the Pharisees decided that the upstart communities that follow Jesus as Messiah, populated as they are by many uncircumcised Gentiles who do not keep the Torah with the same literal vigor, were not to be considered Jewish anymore.

Judaism was a religion legally recognized by the Roman Empire.  They had a special exemption from having to worship the Emperor.  As long as the followers of Jesus are considered Jews, they benefit from this exemption.  But as soon as the Jewish authorities decided that the followers of Jesus were not Jews, the Christians were expected to worship the Emperor like every other non-Jew in the Empire.  This is something Christians, of course, could not do, which made them illegal according to Roman law.  

That is the reason Christians were persecuted by the Empire.  It is also a big reason for the animosity that developed between Christians and Jews.  Remember that at this time Judaism was a major and connected religion in the Roman Empire, and Christianity was still a new, fragile, minority, marginal movement.  So the Empire would demand that Christians worship the Emperor’s statue or be arrested and often executed for treason.  Many Christians died in the successive waves of persecution that lasted for three hundred years.  

Worshiping the Emperor was an explicit denial of the primal confession of Christian faith, which is “Jesus is Lord!”  There can only be one Lord, and the Emperor isn’t it.  

So the Jewish leaders were literally adversaries, ratting out Christians, handing them over to the police.  This is why they are called a “synogogue of Satan.”  “Satan” means “adversary.”  At the very least they withdrew any legal protection from the Christians, and allowed them to be arrested, sometimes tortured, and even killed for their faith in Jesus.  That sort of thing was going on in every city, but it appears to be significantly worse in Smyrna.

(Tragically, when the tables turned and the Christians had power and Jews didn’t, Christians treated Jews even worse, and that lasted for 1500 years.)

II.

The Christians in Smyrna get high marks from the Lord Jesus for their faithfulness in intense adversity.  He reminds them at the outset that he is “the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.”  The confession of Jesus as One who was crucified by the Romans yet who nevertheless lives is basic to the identity of Jesus’ followers.  These people who are facing death for their faith, are reminded that their Lord “came to life” and so will they, if they remain steadfast.

The fact that Christians are considered “illegal” is something that should give us pause, especially if we are finding ourselves ready to persecute and deport people considered “illegal” today.  Laws are made and enforced according to the perceived self-interest of a ruling class.  All kinds of historical accidents may push anyone suddenly over the line into “illegality.”  Christians are illegal for 400 years after Jesus resurrection, and still in many places in the world today.  But in God’s eyes, of course, no one is illegal.

In Smyrna, the illegal status of Christians is a factor in their being afflicted and economically poor.  If they weren’t excluded from the market-places, it is certainly dangerous for them to show up there.  They are a marginalized, oppressed community; they have to worship in secret.  Their families and their previous religious communities have not only rejected them, but stand ready to inform on them to the authorities.  It is an insecure, anxious, at-risk, and fragile congregation of Jesus-followers, in Smyrna.

Why stay Christian under these circumstances?  Surely they were hearing from groups claiming to be Christian who argued that “Caesar isn’t a god and his statue is just a piece of rock, so it’s not like you’re actually worshiping anything if you do burn a pinch of incense on his altar.  You’re just doing what you have to do to survive!  Go along to get along!  You can still believe in Jesus in your heart.  You can still do good works.  Maybe you’ll even convert some pagans you meet at the Temple of Caesar!

“Hey, you use the Empire’s roads.  You shop at the Empire’s market.  You drink the water from the Empire’s aqueduct.  The Roman Legion protects you from criminals and barbarians.  There’s the abundant grain and the meat we get at festivals.  You benefit from Roman civilization.  Do you want all that to go away?  Would you prefer chaos?  All they ask is a little worship.  What’s the big deal?

“You don’t even have to mean it!  You’ll be putting one over on them.  They will think they’ve won, when all they get is your trivial outward obedience for a few minutes.  Then you can live to fight for your Jesus another day.

“And God will forgive you anyway!

“Or you can be lunch for a lion in the coliseum.  Your choice.”

III.

The thing is, expressing faith in Jesus as opposed to the Empire is not just verbal.  The authorities certainly didn’t want people going around dissing the Emperor.  But I suspect they were far more concerned about the subversive behavior of these Jesus-people, the way their belief in Jesus as their Lord was embodied in their actions.  We know the Christians practiced non-violence and often pacifism; we know they avoided sexual immorality; we know they did not participate in a lot of the pagan-centered marketplace.  We know they ministered to lepers and plague victims at risk to themselves.  We know they welcomed strangers and outcasts, and rejected all kinds of social stratification.  We know they practiced sharing, forgiveness, and generosity.

All of this is offensive and threatening to an Empire that wants us to be out there, buying, selling, spending, producing, consuming, and generally following the dictates of our egocentricity, craving wealth, power, and popularity, and reacting in hatred, fear, and anger, and falling into greed, gluttony, envy, lust, vanity, and the other sins.  Indeed, the Empire of today is not unique in telling us that these are really virtues.

Resisting that mentality is costly.  It can make us unpopular, poor, and weak.  It is at least considered weird or eccentric; at most it is seditious to live a life reflecting and expressing the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.             

And yet the church in Smyrna stays faithful, enduring affliction and poverty, imprisonment and even death that are the consequences of following Jesus.  For that the Lord says that in reality they are “rich,” which is to say that they draw on a deep and abundant well of faith, hope, and love.  If they remain in him, faithful even “unto death,” he says they will receive “the crown of life.”  They “will not be harmed by the second death.”

Everybody dies in the sense that our existence as an individual temporal-biological organism eventually ends.  Sooner or later our physical, material bodies give out.  But the “second death” has to do with whether we participate in God’s life and God’s truth; whether we live eternally with and in God, beginning in our repentance and discipleship now, in this mortal/historical existence, or if in the end we fall into annihilation and extinction, are utterly forgotten, and never really exist at all.  In the second death, we get separated from God and therefore from what is ever real.  

In order to be unharmed by the second death, we have to prove ourselves real by our sharing in the self-emptying love which is God’s life and mission.  The irony is that what we grab in this existence only reduces us to nothingness; but by becoming nothing so that God’s life may flow freely in us, we are given everything.  

The Smyrnaens understand this.  They endure suffering.  They resist the temptations of the Empire.  They even die for the truth.  And Jesus commends them.

IV.

Paul talks about how “this slight momentary affliction” leading even to death is like nothing compared to the vast “weight of glory” God has in store for us when we trust in him and live by Jesus’ commandments.  It is a comparatively small price to pay in exchange for an eternity in the Light of God’s everlasting love.  

We can start to live in that love now, by sharing and expressing it together, by getting ourselves out of the way and letting it shine and flow through us.  Do not fear the necessary consequences of this move.  Do not fear being declared illegal.  Do not fear being judged naive or unrealistic.  For the One who “was dead and came to life” has the power to bring us out of death to new life as well. 

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