The Lion Is the Lamb.

Revelation 5:6-10

March 31, 2019

I.

Last week, we heard about the scroll with seven seals, which contains the story of God’s redemptive and saving purpose for creation.  In the end, John is informed that the only One who is able to open the scroll and activate the revelation is “the Lion of Judah, the Root of David," who has “conquered.”  This is a perfect cue for the grand entrance of a mighty, roaring, triumphant lion.  That would be completely in tune with what many expected of the Messiah: a strong, conquering military hero.

But then what John actually sees appearing on the scene is… a Lamb.  And not just a Lamb, but one still bearing the visible marks of the knife that slit its throat when it was slaughtered.  We are led to anticipate a great and powerful lion.  What we get is a small, weak, apparently defeated, Lamb.

It would be quite confusing and disappointing, did we not also notice that the Lamb is still “standing.”  And it is described as having “seven horns,” symbolizing both complete power and the fullness of light, and “seven eyes,” symbolizing an omniscient, all-seeing Wisdom.  This is not an ordinary lamb.

In the Hebrew Scriptures a lamb could represent several things: there are the two lambs required to be sacrificed every day in the Temple ritual, there is the lamb whose shed blood protects the people from the power of death, when the people are about to be liberated from slavery in Egypt, and we have the Servant of God in Isaiah 53, who acts like a lamb in enduring indignities and death on behalf of the people.  We who know the gospel of John remember as well that it is when John the Baptizer names Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” that Jesus’ ministry begins.  

Earlier in Revelation, Jesus is several times called “the faithful witness” “who was dead and came to life.”  Here the Lord appears as a Lamb who sums up these images and more.  The Lamb is the witness who stands faithful in the face of violence and sin, who consequently suffers and even dies, whose life-blood is therefore poured out to redeem, liberate, and protect the creation, whom death could not annihilate, but who conquers death and lives forever.

In this the Lamb gives us the model and template for discipleship, as he reveals and fulfills the love of God in emptying himself in obedience to God, even to death, and therefore receiving the name that is above every name.  This is the One who is worthy to open the scroll and finally disclose the true nature of God and the creation.

So it is not that the Lamb replaces the lion… rather, the Lamb is revealed as the true form of the lion, whose power is revealed in weakness, whose final victory resolves out of defeat, whose eternal and transcendent life emerges out of his ignominious death.  Because the Lamb appears in the heavenly throne room, still standing and alive even with the nasty gashes of slaughter still visible in his body, he opens the way of life to all who follow him.  That is, whoever also stands fast in resistance to the power of evil in the world, whoever steadfastly says yes to God and therefore also necessarily says no to the rulers of the world, whoever also empties themselves in obedience so that God’s love and compassion may flow through them, will also stand in God’s life forever.

II.

The Lamb does not compromise.  The Lamb does not assimilate.  The Lamb does not make or accept any kind of deal with the forces of selfishness, ambition, and violence.  The Lamb dies, and so now stands as the Truth and the Way and the Life of God, having endured and absorbed the rage, fear, and hatred of the world, even to the point of letting go of his own mortal existence, he emerges victorious on the other side of death.

The Lamb’s horns and eyes are “the seven spirits of God,” which is to say they represent the fullness of God’s Holy Spirit, “sent out into all the Earth.”  It is important to note that the Spirit comes in and through the Lamb, meaning that the message and meaning of the Spirit is identical to that of the slaughtered Lamb.  If you want to know what the Spirit is saying to the churches, then look at what the Lamb does, whose witness brings him through suffering and death.  

In Isaiah these seven spirits of God are wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, reverence, and the fear of God: interior attitudes that ground, focus, and orient our actions.  They are themselves based on the foundation of our trust in God’s Truth, which the slaughtered Lamb represents.  The Lamb is the only One who is worthy to open the scroll containing the source code of the universe, revealing the ultimate nature, meaning, and destiny of everything.  

It all comes down to Jesus Christ, the One who loves us.  He is the slaughtered Lamb, the faithful witness, the Servant of God, who demonstrates that holding on tight to the love of God no matter what, is what truly keeps us alive; and that it means at the same time letting go of everything that would separate us from God’s love.  It means emptying ourselves as Christ empties himself, revealing God’s eternal self-emptying, in creating, redeeming, and sustaining the creation.  

John is accessing this knowledge by means of a vision, which is an interior, contemplative experience.  This suggests to me that we do not receive these gifts of the Spirit until and unless we receive them personally, in our hearts.  For the vision, because it is about everything, also includes each one of us, and has to start within us, as Jesus says about the Kingdom of God.  If we don’t see the Kingdom of God first within ourselves, we will not see it anywhere.

Only the slaughtered Lamb is worthy, is able, to reveal our true nature, our true meaning, and our true destiny.  The Lamb opens the scroll of my life, therefore I may understand how he opens the scroll of all of life.  Because he discloses my true nature, I begin to perceive with awe and wonder the true nature of everything.

III.

What does it mean to welcome the slaughtered Lamb, the faithful witness who was dead and who is now alive, into the throne room of your own life?  What does it mean to have him, the One whose strength is in weakness and whose life is revealed in his death, be declared worthy to tell you who you really are?  What does it mean to have him take and open the scroll upon which is written your purpose, nature, meaning, and destiny?

I think it means I give up my own self-importance, and my own delusions of grandeur, always imagining that I need to be a ferocious, punishing, vindictive lion.  It means no longer imagining that I am here to save others or even the world.  It means giving up my self-serving plans, desires, and schemes.  It means I stop assuming that life demands a strong defense and a potent offense.  It means letting go of the fear and anger and even hatred demanded by my ego.  It means releasing all the comfortable, cozy, self-centered lies that separate me from others and from God.  It means I stop trying to avoid and provide against death at all costs….  Because only through his eyes and his action, only by his example and teaching, can I know and express who I truly am.  Only he, the One who empties himself out of love for the whole world, can show me my true Self.  Because if I am at all, I am in him. 

When the Lamb takes the scroll, all the creatures in the whole throne-room bow down before him.  They burn billows of fragrant incense representing the ascending prayers of all God’s people, and they erupt, as so often in this book, in joyful song.  By the way, the book of Revelation is actually a musical!  Characters periodically just start singing.

They sing that the Lamb is worthy to take and open the scroll because his shed blood serves to “ransom” God’s people.  His blood buys back the lives of those who had been enslaved to sin and death, setting them free.  In the Bible, blood means life.  By his blood Jesus purchases us from our slavery to our own ego.  By shifting our obedience to him, keeping his commandments and loving each other as he loves us, we share together in his life.  His life-blood creates and feeds repentance and discipleship — new ways of thinking and acting — in those who are fed by it.  This is what’s going on in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: his body and blood nourish his life in us, which we then express in our obedient actions, doing justice, kindness, and humility in the world. 

At least as important as this transaction is the truth that the ones whose lives are bought by the Lamb come “from every tribe and language and people and nation.”  Faith in Jesus Christ embraces, welcomes, and includes everyone.  It realizes the promise of God to Abraham that all peoples will be blessed in him.  The Kingdom of God is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-lingual.  Unfortunately, these days it must be said that there is therefore zero basis for anyone to say, as some motivated by evil, hatred, and fear do, that Christianity is about maintaining white supremacy or restoring European civilization. 

IV.

The end of the hymn says that those who are ransomed by the Lamb have been made “to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”  We are the kingdom and priesthood of the Lamb, when we place our whole-hearted trust in the One who was dead but is now alive.  We are the witnesses to the life beyond the power of death we see in the Faithful Witness to God’s saving love.  We are now able to walk freely on the Earth without fear or anger, shame or violence, because the Servant of God has given his life for us and to us.  

Indeed, the hymn says we will reign on the Earth.  But the sovereignty of the ransomed saints of God will not be according to the corrupt, hateful, arrogant, and selfish manner of ego and Empire.  It will not be by weaponry or coercion, threats and extortion.  

In the Lamb we reign in service and compassion, we rule in humility and forgiveness, and we govern by gentleness and gratitude.  Because indeed it is our participation in the Lamb’s self-giving love, letting go of our own agendas and desires, letting the shalom of God flow through us into a needy, broken, and blind world.

+++++++              

Meta-narratives.

Revelation 5:1-5

March 24, 2019

I.

Every Empire, every human culture, has what philosophers call a meta-narrative.  A meta-narrative is a Big Story by which a society justifies and describes itself.  It is a comprehensive account which explains everything and keeps people together on the same page.  A meta-narrative is what almost everyone in a culture accepts, assumes, and believes to be true.  It is what we are all taught very early in our lives, and it is what we learned in school, and it covers everything.  Anything it doesn’t cover is dismissed as a figment of our imagination, or we just don’t see it at all, or if we do we immediately forget it.

The meta-narrative guiding our culture congealed about 500 years ago, and it included things like our belief in science, rationalism, individualism, democracy, and a market economy, as well as colonialism, white supremacy, and nationalism.  The main thing about our meta-narrative was that humans, appropriately usually referred to as “man,” were at the center as the measure and decider of all things, and everything else was an object to be disposed of as we pleased for our sole benefit.  And our meta-narrative was aggressively secular, even though it kept a domesticated, subservient, neutered version of Christianity as a sidekick and cheerleader.

Many of us can remember when our culture’s meta-narrative really was a consensus and everyone believed in it.  When I was in about the first grade we all had to go to a gym at a local school to get vaccinated.  No one questioned this.  No one declined to participate.  No one thought it was going to give us autism, which no one had heard of in those days anyway.  The government and scientists and doctors all said we should do this, and we did.  Because doing so perfectly fit the meta-narrative we lived by.

And that’s just one example.  When we all share the same meta-narrative, everyone gets the same news, everyone follows the same fashion trends, everyone likes the same music, and everyone has political opinions within the same range.  Those of you who can remember what life was like in 1960 or so, know what I mean.  In some ways that was the peak of the consensus about our meta-narrative.

But the thing about meta-narratives is that they are always mostly lies.  They are not true.  Oh, sometimes there are some basic truths deep inside them, and often meta-narratives produce some good things.  But at their heart meta-narratives are false.  They are self-serving ideological constructs designed to say why our society is better than others, and why the people running our society should keep running it.

And because meta-narratives are untrue, they eventually and inevitably collapse.  They collide with reality and people stop trusting them.  People discover over time that many of the things that we thought were tried and true, really aren’t.  I remember when Columbus was a hero.  Now we know he was a mercenary, genocidal, liar. 

And when trust in the authorities who maintain the meta-narrative starts to waver, then people stop believing even the accurate things they are saying.  Thus today some people are afraid to vaccinate their children, and the number of people convinced that the earth is flat is growing.  And the thing that really kills our meta-narrative is global warming, which is why some people just deny it.  It contradicts the meta-narrative to believe that our supposedly great civilization is really crippling the planet.

II.  

The early church lives in a time when the meta-narrative of the Roman Empire was also shaky.  It had some benefits.  But the pantheon of gods was being revealed as ridiculous and ineffective.  People were working long and hard and not making much headway, while watching other people get wildly wealthy.  Social order was enforced by a grotesque level of military and police brutality.  The government was a parade of pompous ego-maniacs with large armies, pummeling each other, at great cost.  And there was this continual drive to conquer more territory, and a perpetual fear of both the Persians in the east and the Germanic barbarian tribes to the north.  The Roman meta-narrative was not working anymore.  The stories and rituals that were supposed to give life meaning and bring everyone together, weren’t.

A new meta-narrative was needed.

Into this turbulence, come these Jewish missionaries with a bizarre story about a man, who claims to be the long-awaited Messiah, who because of that was crucified by Rome… but then who nevertheless still lives in and with those who trust in him and follow his teachings.  Those missionaries are saying that he, this Jesus fellow, is really the Lord God, and that following him gives people a new reason to live.  And they demonstrate this by actually gathering communities who live according to his good news, and find unity, meaning, hope, and joy together.  Their meta-narrative is based on the Jewish Bible, which is the story of a bunch of slaves who escape from Egypt and live a new kind of life according to the Laws of the One Creator God, which Jesus fulfills and interprets.

This meta-narrative is true and irrevocable because it is the Word of the One who creates, redeems, and sustains all things.  It is not the product of a bunch of writers hired by kings and generals to sing their praises.  It is not held together by brute force and terror.  And it is not designed to placate or distract workers while they make rich people richer.

This meta-narrative is true because it works.  It makes people better.  It makes them forgiving, humble, generous, kind, thankful, gentle, steadfast, and joyful.  In tune with this meta-narrative, you are transformed into your best self in God.

 

III.

I suggest that this meta-narrative is what is written on the scroll with the seven seals which John in his vision sees in the right hand of the One seated on the throne in heaven.  That scroll is what got me thinking about meta-narratives in the first place.  The scroll is the book of all that is true and good and beautiful.  It is like the source code of the universe, the way things are supposed to be, the basic blue-print or schematic of the origin, nature, and destiny of all creation including humanity.  It is the One True Story that gives meaning, purpose, and direction to everything and everyone.

In John’s vision, the scroll is sealed with seven seals.  Such seals were dabs of molten wax which, when solidified, would to keep scrolls from unraveling.  They also might be stamped with an imprint of the owner or author for authentication purposes.  This scroll has seven seals, and they are apparently unbreakable except by One who is declared worthy to do so.

The closed nature of the scroll indicates that what is in it is not readily accessible.  God’s ultimate plan, and even God’s very existence, is not obvious to everyone.  It is hidden from us in our normal, egocentric condition.  If we try to approach these questions like we approach everything else, as an object, a thing to be examined, taken apart, analyzed, dissected, tested, and grasped… we will fail.  That method does not open the scroll.  Which is why many people conclude that there really is no divine plan, and probably no God either.  We don’t see or know about it, and we can’t understand it, by ourselves.  This makes it unintelligible to anyone whose perception is hampered by our meta-narrative, which says that if we can’t figure it out, it doesn’t exist.

John breaks down in bitter and anguished tears because the scroll appears to be unopenable.  If the scroll can’t be opened, it means that no one will ever know God’s will to save, redeem, bless, and love the creation.  If the truth is hidden from us forever, we will continue to live in self-serving lies that lead to violence and death.  If we can never know the truth then all we have are the false meta-narratives imposed by whoever happens to be strongest.  If the scroll cannot be opened, then there is no hope for the world.  If we can’t know the meaning of life there might as well be no meaning at all.

John’s tears are the tears of everyone who knows in their heart that it doesn’t have to be this way and that there is a better world out there according to God’s good will… but who see that it is not happening.  Indeed, things just keep getting worse.  Isn’t it better just to give up and join the cynical rat-race and get what you can or die trying?  Since life is apparently meaningless anyway?

In the vision, one of the 24 elders comes up to John and says, “Do not weep.  See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”  There is One who can open the scroll and communicate God’s will and plan, and he is that Jewish Messiah we talked about earlier.  And the reason he is able and worthy to open the scroll is that he is the ultimate witness to the truth which is God’s love, and he, by taking on and transforming the worst violence the world could throw at him, has conquered and overcome the power of evil.

IV.

Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, opens the scroll, which is to say that he is himself the ultimate self-revelation of God because he empties himself in transcendent love for others.  We only know what is written in that scroll, we only know the origin, nature, and destiny of the universe and everyone in it, in and through him, the One who embodies in himself what is true and real.  Because of the love to which he witnesses, we know that what everything is really about is love.  

Now that the scroll is open in him, we realize the choice we have.  We may now choose which meta-narrative to follow and live by.  We may continue to adhere to the one generated by our egos and imposed by the strong.  Or we may turn and follow the truth as revealed in Jesus.  We may love one another as he loves us, and spread that love across the world in lives of humility and gratitude, blessing and peace, healing and hope, forgiveness and joy.

The old one is going down.  That’s not going to be pretty, but don’t let it depress you.  Because the true story, the story of God’s love in Jesus, is always rising up, within us and among us, bringing new and eternal life to everyone who follows.

+++++++    

The Enthroned Creator.

Revelation 4:1-11

March 17, 2019

I.

The name of our church is Hope.  Hope is not mere optimism.  It is not wishful thinking.  Still less is it a fantasy about the way things could, should, or would be.  Hope is a deep trust in the vision that John has when the door to heaven is opened to him, and he sees inside.  That is what starts happening in chapter 4.  This book has to be grounded in a deep hope in order to sustain us through the successive disasters of the coming chapters. 

Hope is based on a conviction concerning what is ultimately true and real.  And this conviction is that God is “on the throne.”  That is, all power and authority rests with the living God, who, as the heavenly congregation sings, is “worthy… to receive glory and honor and power.”  Because our Lord and God “created all things,” and holds all things in being.  The God on the throne is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all that is.

It is important to remember that the imagery of Revelation works on many levels.  This is a vision John is having while he is “in the Spirit,” which is usually taken to mean in some kind of intense contemplative state of consciousness.  What he sees is the whole universe, heaven and earth and everything else.  There is a sense in which his vision has both inward and outward dimensions.  It is about the universe, the fate of creation, and the destiny of humanity.  It is also about what is going on in our individual souls.  

So the question of who is on the throne means everywhere, including who is on the throne in your own heart.  It’s all one.  God’s reign has to start in our hearts for it to be extended into our world.  Hearing the book of Revelation — or any of Scripture, really — is not like watching a movie, where the action is up there on a screen, separate from us as we more or less objectively observe, seated in chairs as spectators.  No.  With Revelation we are necessarily involved in the action.  The action is within us.  

In other words, the question is who is on your throne, who rules in your heart, who is the Lord of your soul?  I am not going to perceive or know God on the heavenly throne unless and until I understand God to be ruling over me.  

The One whom John sees on the throne is the Creator, the One who speaks the whole universe into being at the beginning, the One who fashions matter and energy, life and consciousness, out of a supreme offering of self-emptying love, culminating in actually becoming flesh and dwelling among us as one of us in time and space in Jesus Christ.

God is only visible to John as a dazzling knot of multi-colored light that John describes in terms of the gemstones jasper and carnelian — a kind of blueish green and a deep reddish orange — surrounded by a rainbow halo.  God is encircled by 7 fiery torches which are the Spirit of God, representing the gifts — wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord — listed by the prophet Isaiah.  

The throne itself is alive in the 4 forms of lion, ox, human, and eagle.

It is a magnificent, spectacular, awesome, and overwhelming vision of the Creator God, reigning over all. 

II.

Bob Dylan once sang about how we all have to “serve somebody.  It may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”  The alternative to John’s vision of the Creator God on the throne, is different throne with a different occupant: in us that is our own ego.  That is the influence and domination within our hearts and extending into our world of the Adversary, which tradition names the devil, which is our sour, petulant rebellion against God’s expansive goodness and love.

This is the tempting voice that demands that we take what we can while we can, collecting as many toys, experiences, lovers, knowledge, and consumer goods as possible, depleting and laying waste to the planet in the process, enslaving and abusing other people as we deem necessary, because in the end all that matters is what we get.  We need to feed and gratify our egos as much as we can, since we are individuals whose lives are defined by nothing more than how much we enjoy them.  

This is the real religion of almost all the world.  It is the religion of fear and anger, enmity and consumption, extraction and exploitation, featuring self-serving schemes to inflate and pleasure the ego at all costs.  It is the religion in which every sin is redefined as a virtue.  It is the religion of the strong man.  It is the religion of death.  And it has afflicted humanity since practically forever.

John and the early church know the costs and consequences of this false religion.  They know what it is like when the Adversary is on the throne.  In their time he was personified in the figure of the Emperor in Rome.  Unlike God who is always giving, the Empire was always taking.  It always had to be fed.  It was always extracting value from the people.

John’s audience was told that this is all for the sake of order, prosperity, civilization, security, and peace.  But they knew it meant fighting the Emperor’s wars, paying his taxes, fees, prices, and interest, and basically sacrificing their lives and that of their families for the comfort, power, and convenience of those who ruled the Empire.   

Our experience may be similar.  It seems like every few days I hear on the radio or from a friend that this or that system is broken.  Our legal system?  Well, that’s broken.  Health care?  Broken.  Politics?  Don’t even start.  Immigration?  Clearly.  Education?  Seriously?  We face a world with broken families, broken hearts, broken eco-systems, a broken climate, broken promises, broken dreams….  It all seems quite unsustainable, leading many to worry about how this is going to end.

This is basically the ideology of every empire through history until today.  And it only lasts until it doesn’t, and the whole edifice collapses. 

III.

The early church is made up of people who are looking for a better way than what they were getting.  They are tired of everything being broken.  They are tired of this dead-end existence which Walter Brueggemann describes as “making bricks for Pharaoh.”  They find the answer in the story of Jesus Christ, whom the Romans killed, but who somehow still lives in this community of people who know and share with each other his love.  It is easy for us to forget that devoting one’s life to Christ is a profound statement of disloyalty to the dominant system in favor of a different Way, a Way of forgiveness, inclusion, non-violence, healing, acceptance, and joy.  A Way of giving, not one of taking.  

It is Jesus Christ who, by offering his own life for the life of the world, opens the door in heaven to reveal the throne of God that John sees in his vision.  The good news is that God is on the throne of the universe… and God needs to be seated as well on the throne in each of our hearts.

It is like John is giving us a glimpse into the engine room of the cosmos, so we can see the truth and the deeper meaning behind events on the surface of things.  The brokenness is part of a larger plan and movement that has a ways to go from our perspective, but will eventually and inevitably resolve into something glorious, wonderful, and joyful.  Only what is false fails.

The real world is not the world of Rome.  The real world is the world centered on, energized and empowered by the light shining from the throne of God.  The living creatures in the vision represent all that God has given the breath of life to, and they are always singing “holy, holy, holy!”  The 24 elders represent perhaps the whole of humankind, bowing down in prostration before the Lord.  They sing of God’s worthiness for creating all things and holding them together in love.  Together they represent the whole creation glorifying the One who gives them birth.

John is saying, “Don’t just depend on my vision for proof that God is real and good.  Look to the things that God creates, how they reflect God’s glory, how indeed they inherently bear within them the signature of the One who breathes them into being.  The universe is not random; still less is it a pit of heartless violence.  Rather, we know in Christ that it is all oriented to and centered on the Lord of life.

Some contemporary biologists are discovering that the biosphere is not a realm of competition where only the fittest survive, which was a 17th century model that mistakenly read human egocentricity into nature.  Life is characterized more by cooperation and sharing, balance and exchange, where individuals contribute what they have and are given what they need, where even death is part of the system, and nothing is ever lost.

Revelation is full of hymns, and this hymn of the elders, the humans who cast down their own crowns, their own successes and achievements, before the Author of all things, focuses on God’s creation: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

IV.

This is the attitude we have to have, if we are to know God on the throne in our own souls.  Our God is the Creator of everything and everyone.  “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all the dwell therein.”  God’s creation is very good, it is all one, and all of surpassing value and goodness.  There is no justification for doing violence to any of it, none for exhausting, polluting, abusing, or wasting any of it, for our chief end, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. 

Creation is the proof of God’s goodness and of our destiny.  Creation is bigger than anything our egos can concoct.  God and creation always win in the end.  Always.  John would have us remember this as we move forward into his wild ride of a book.  But more importantly, he would have us remember this as we live through a time of brokenness and confusion.  

God is what is real.  God will win.  The Empires will fall.  That conviction is what our hope is based on.  And so who is sitting on our throne?  Who are we serving?  To whom are our lives oriented?    

Let’s be people of hope, resting in the knowledge that the One who is on the throne is the One who creates all things in love.

+++++++

Lukewarm Vomit.

Revelation 3:14-22

March 10, 2019

I.

The last of the seven churches of the province of Asia to which John writes is Laodicea.  The church in Laodicea gets no commendation.  The best they get is an opportunity to change their ways before it is too late.

Like the city, the Christians there are well-to-do and successful.  Yet the Lord insists that they are really “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”  They imagine they are a thriving and successful congregation.  In truth they are a complete failure as disciples of Jesus Christ.  

The city was fed by an aqueduct that brought water from a hot spring in the mountains; but by the time the water got to them it was tepid and odorous, nearly undrinkable.  That’s what Jesus says the church is like.  Jesus is disgusted by them because they are “neither cold nor hot.”  They are lukewarm, boring, confused, and unpalatable.  

That is, because they are trying to maneuver a middle way, balancing their Christian faith with their pagan, Roman culture, making a blend of these two influences, mixing elements from each into what they probably think is a creative synthesis, they end up being truly faithful to neither.  If this compromise extended to the question of patriotism or Emperor worship, then they have denied and renounced their faith in Jesus Christ.  Jesus says he will “spew them out of [his] mouth” in disgust.  It would be more honest for them to simply admit that they were not Christians at all, and embrace being “cold,” than mess with this silly, inherently contradictory, adulterated religion.

In their attempt to be moderate, cautious, and conciliatory, they have practically extinguished the fire of their own faith.  In their reticence about extremism, thinking it too dangerous or costly to be overt and public about their faith, they in effect throw cold water into what should be a pot boiling over with spiritual enthusiasm.  They are therefore nauseating, compromised, and useless.  Their worship and communion is shot through with the vile, sulfuric flavor of a doomed and corrupt society.

This is a church in which groups like the Nicolaitans, who get criticized in other letters, were not an issue… because they had won.  The church had embraced the approach of fitting in, blending with, and accommodating to the surrounding culture.  This was basically a Nicolaitan congregation, virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding society. 

The relationship of the church to the culture has been one of the themes of all these letters to the seven churches.  The church is trying to carve out its own faithful place in relation to both Roman society and a changing Judaism.  John hears Jesus taking a most extreme perspective on this.  And that is understandable.  Jesus himself does not have a particularly positive relationship with the Roman or the Jewish authorities, who basically conspire to have him executed.  This is a central, indispensable element of the gospel.  The Jewish Messiah dies on a Roman cross.

The question is, “Now what?”  What do we do with this kind of good news, moving forward into the culture that rejected and executed Jesus?

II.

John’s point is to ask how followers of Jesus could possibly manage to find good things in the system that killed him.  Jesus does not compromise; he chooses to get himself crucified.  That’s why he reminds the Laodiceans that he is “the faithful and true witness,” who is at the same time the beginning and the end of the whole creation.  These things are all woven together in one tapestry.  We cannot just take the parts of it that are comfortable and convenient to us, and ignore or set aside the challenging, difficult, and risky parts.  The word for “witness” in Greek is the same as martyr.

The Laodiceans were not following Jesus.  They were taking his forgiveness without repentance, accepting his life without taking up his cross, claiming to believe while not doing anything about it, trying to find themselves without first losing themselves.  That cheapens God’s grace.  And it leads to perverse, ego-centric distortions of the faith in which we think we’re okay while we continue to do unspeakable crimes against our neighbors. 

Many, many scholars and commentators and preachers have recognized in Laodicea the compromised, comfortable, domesticated, establishment church, that is little more than a spiritual cheerleader for the culture in which it finds itself.

I have found that it is normal for some Christians, when they observe the church moving to be more inclusive, to complain about how it is just caving in to society.  Especially since the 1960’s, when churches got involved in various social, civil-rights, and anti-war movements.  The charge was that the churches were just exchanging the gospel for trends, fads, and popular opinion.  They basically said the church was Nicolaitan: all about compromising with and sucking up to an increasingly secular society.

But I noticed that often the folks who complained about this did the much same thing themselves.  But instead of trying to be relevant to society today, they were all about getting back to the society of 50 or 60 years ago.  They just wanted it to be like it was.  And they equated the situation back then with a Christian ideal, or at least better.  They were in constant mourning for the stability, order, authority, unity, and prosperity of the 1950’s.  

In fact, the whole argument in the church for the last 2 or 3 generations has not been about how to stay true to the gospel and uncorrupted by society, but which society, the society of which era, we prefer to be corrupted by.   

The problem is that, 2 centuries after John wrote his book, the church got coopted by the Empire.  And for the next 1500 years, in Western Europe and the places they conquered, the church was completely identified with society.  We were a Christian culture.  The State was nominally or de facto Christian.  I still remember beginning a day in public school with the Lord’s Prayer and a Christian hymn, the Pledge of Allegiance and a patriotic song.  It was all one thing.

III.

And the thing it was, was Laodicea.  In other words, the church embraced, with some modifications, the lukewarm vomit ecclesiastical model.  We mixed the intense, wild, disruptive, inclusive, radical, apocalyptic fire of the Holy Spirit, with the cool, heartless, chilly, rational, calculating, stifling, soul-crushing glacier of the Empire.  And we got a tepid establishment religious institution that had all the trappings and wealth of the State, but which was “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” in spirit.  A church that, to preserve its own status and position, endorsed, excused, and attached Christ’s Name to a nauseating list of atrocities: the crusades, slavery, colonialism, genocide, war, economic injustice, environmental depredation, bigotry, and even still with these astonishingly widespread cases of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.  Tell people, especially young people, today that you’re a Christian, and you will immediately see them put up their guard.  Our reputation is deservedly awful.

Jesus’ advice to the church in Laodicea is to repent.  He couches it in terms to which the people could relate: the gold, the clothing, and the eye medicine were all things for which the city was known.  He uses this to say they need to find real value, know true purity, and come to see clearly.  They need to change their minds and their actions, and open their doors to the living Presence of the Lord who is knocking, and who wants to sit at his Table with them.  There is still hope, even for them!  But they have to listen to his voice.

Instead of asking what is going to make us rich, popular, and safe; instead of asking what is going to appeal to the market, or what will sell, or what will placate and appease the powers, values, trends, and habits of society, Jesus suggests that society doesn’t matter.  What the culture calls success is irrelevant.  Only what he wants matters.  A church is a church if and when it reflects and expresses the good news of Jesus Christ, “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation.”

We are called to live in a new and alternative culture and society: the Kingdom of God.  We are called to affirm that only Jesus is Lord!  We listen only to Christ’s voice, not the voice of our own egos telling us what to fear and what to want for ourselves, prodding us to selfishness and violence.  His cross means we are free of those sour motivations.  When we take his cross in ourselves we stop making crosses upon which to sacrifice others.  We stop fearing and excluding and blaming and condemning and stealing from others.

And we start living together in joy and love.  We become people of hope, always living into the future of peace that Jesus Christ reveals to us.

IV.  

Yes, we have to do that in a particular time and place.  But we will always be asking what Jesus Christ wants of us.  And yes, sometimes what Christ wants does flow together with other things happening in society.  For he is Lord of everything, and he is always about freedom and equality, forgiveness and non-violence, inclusion and healing.  He is always about breaking down walls and breaking open cages.  He is always about expanding the table and widening the family.  Sometimes, like with the abolition of slavery, society gets moved by his Spirit in and through us!

Christ is never about resuscitating the church of my favorite decade of the past.  Neither is he about selling out to whatever is going on now.

Christ is the origin, he is the destiny, and he is the living and trustworthy witness to the truth of God’s love for the world, for which and to which he gives his life.  That is the bright, wide, open, joyful truth that we need to be about as well.

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