Prayers, Prophets, and Scary Monsters

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Revelation 8 - 11

Please recall the sermon from the Sunday before last when we took a behind the scenes look at reality.  John recounted his vision of God seated on the throne at the centre of everything and of the worship that undergirds everything.  In God’s hand was a scroll sealed with seven seals whose content is history – what was, what is, and what will be.  It is particularly the history of conquest and what God intends to do about that.  

If you remember, the first four seals were horsemen who brought conquest and its deadly results.  The fifth seal involved the prayer of the martyrs who were at rest under the altar.  These are those who have stayed loyal to God even unto death in the midst of the ways of a conquesting world that hates them.  

The martyrs ask a question which I think is the central motif of the Revelation.  The rest of the Book deals with the answer to it.  The martyrs cry out, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long until you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?”  They were given a white robe and told to wait a little while longer until the number of martyrs is complete.  

The sixth seal is God’s cataclysmic judgement on conquest and the conquestors but John also sees a countless multitude surrounding the throne.  They are also dressed in white robes and they worship powerfully.  He is asked who are this multitude and where did they come from.   The seventh seal was silence, silence for a very long and pregnant half hour.  

We pick up today with a scene of seven angels blowing seven trumpets that appear to bring God’s judgement of conquest.  Please don’t hear this scene as a roadmap of end-times events that God is going to do.  It is rather a commentary on human nature and the route God must take to get us to repent - to turn to him and the peaceableness of his kingdom.  The lesson to learn here will be that to end our conquesting ways and bring us back to himself, God could destroy a third of the earth, a third of living things, a third of the lights in the sky, and even of humanity in ways reminiscent of the way God plagued Pharoah’s Egypt to deliver his people from slavery, but humanity still wouldn’t repent so there must be another way.  What is it?  Let’s give an ear to chapters 8 to 11.

 

Does it matter when in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil”?  Well, it does. God’s deliverance, God’s intervention on behalf of his people to save his creation is rooted in prayer.  In the Book of Exodus it is said that God heard the crying out of his people there in slavery and that’s when God decided to call Moses and act.  So also, here in the Revelation.  The seventh seal brought silence.  The first thing heard after that silence is the prayers of God’s people.  It's like everything in heaven stops so that the prayers of God’s people can be heard.  God hears us when we cry out about our own sufferings, about the suffering and injustice in the world.  And, it is in response to these prayers that God acts to save.

I am reminded of the parable in Luke’s Gospel of a widow who continually pesters an unjust judge for vengeance.  As a widow she had no rights in that society and somebody had wronged her.  The judge decides to act on her behalf not because it was the right thing to do, but rather because she was wearing him out.  How much more will our God, who is just, respond to our prayers for help with justice.  Pray.  Pray without ceasing.

Then the angels start blowing the trumpets.  It’s very reminiscent of God’s plagues on Pharaoh and Egypt.  There’s hail and fire and falling stars and water turning to blood. A third of just about everything living, a third of land and water, and even a third of the lights of the sky are destroyed.  That’s just the first four trumpets. The fifth brings a star (angel) down from heaven who opens the bottomless pit to unleash a hoard of Satan-led demonic monster locusts who torture people with something like scorpion stings for five months, the lifespan of locusts.  It’s so bad that people wish they could die but can’t.  Thanks be to God it’s time limited.  Then, the sixth trumpet brings the unleashing of an evil monster calvary 200 million strong who bring plagues that kill a third of humankind. 

After all this destruction, a third of everything, we are to be astonished that it says the rest of humanity did not turn away from the evil stuff we do; our worshipping demons and idols, our murdering and our sorceries and our fornicating and our stealing.  This is some fodder for some good, old-school Bible-thumping, but I won't.  But think about it.  Why does humanity continue to war when we see the devastation it brings?  When climate change is indisputably related to human conduct, why don’t we make the necessary changes to lifestyle that will prevent Mother Earth from indiscriminately burning and starving us out?  Covid - its inception and spread were 100% related to human lifestyle.  Why were people so belligerent towards masking and vaccinations? And now, measles is coming back.  Seriously, God could unleash an army of Godzilla’s that destroy just about everything and humanity still wouldn’t change.  Like hard-hearted Pharoah, humanity wouldn’t/won’t change.  There must be another way other than utter destruction.

So here it is.  God sends two witnesses, two prophets who speak the Truth and have the power to work miracles.  They come out of the Temple which is symbolic of the people of God bearing witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus, a testimony re-enforced and validated by being able to command what insurance companies call “acts of God”.  Unfortunately, humanity can’t handle the truth about itself or of the love of God.  Satan can’t handle it.  He comes up out of the Pit and kills the prophets.  But, martyrdom and the persecution of Christians will not go unvindicated.  God raises the prophets.  We are raised up to be with God.  All I can say to this is that this other way is God being indisputably present with his people in love empowering us to speak the Truth…and it is noticed.  When God resurrects the prophets and calls them up, that rattles things enough so that the people were struck with awe and gave glory to God.  It is by the testimony and living witness of the martyrs that humankind finally begins to repent.  Not fear of the scary monsters and destroying a third of everything.  So it is when we share our testimony of how Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit has touched us.

The seventh angel blows his trumpet and it’s time for Handel’s Messiah – “And He shall reign forever and ever.”  Do I get a “hallelujah”?  And then the Temple is opened.  We are the Temple.  Community in the image of the love of Christ is the Temple today.  In this world of broken and hurting humans who break and hurt each other, salvation comes through the prophetic witness of the Truth of God’s love in Christ Jesus and how we embody it as the community of those who are loyal to him.  It’s the witness to the Truth of God’s love that brings people to repent – to turn and be embraced by God.  

I’ll end as I began.  It does matter that we pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will be done and for God to save us from the time of trial and deliver from evil.  Prayer is a crucial part we play in bringing in the kingdom.  Amen.

 

Raised with Christ

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Romans 6:1-14; Colossians 3:1-4

We disciples of Jesus Christ have some statements to make about reality.  I call them statements rather than beliefs because if you call them beliefs they are immediately thrown into the world of comparative religions and Christian faith is not religion.  Christianity can certainly be called religion, all the pomp and circumstance we have created and dogmatized around Christian faith, but Christian faith is not religion.  What God is doing for his Creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah or Christ is not a matter of personal religious belief.  It is reality, real historical and indeed physical reality. 

At the top of that list of these statements is that God is Trinity – the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ God has revealed God-self to be Trinity - three Persons who give themselves so utterly completely and unselfishly indeed sacrificially to one another in unconditional love that they are One.  If we miss this, that God is loving communion of Persons then we miss what it is to be humans created in the image of God and certainly miss what it is to be the Church.  

Another statement about real historical and scientific reality that we followers of Jesus Christ have to make is that Jesus Christ is God the Son become human flesh.  This was a hard one to believe from the very start.  For a Jew, it was blasphemous to say that God became human.  Gentiles didn’t buy it either asking, “Why would divinity, which is pure and perfect, become human?  We are weak, dull, and sickly. We routinely break out with fungi.  We stink and we die.”  

It wasn’t until the 300’s that the Christian church stated definitively that Jesus is God the Son become human with neither his divinity nor his humanity being diminished. The reason we state this as fact is as Gregory of Nazianzus said back in the 300’s, “What was not assumed is not healed.”  To heal his fallen Creation and us humans of the futility of sin and death, God had to take upon himself our fallenness and die with it so that it would be once and for all dead.  Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection has opened up a new way to be human that will come to its fruition when Jesus returns.  

The Apostle John in his Gospel liked to call that new way Eternal Life, a new human form of being in which we are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit through whom we are in union with Jesus the Son to share his relationship of steadfast love and faithfulness with the Father to the Father’s glory.  In, through, and as Jesus God has brought human being, history, and even physical matter into his very self, into the loving communion of his very self, and therefore he has and will heal it.

A third Christian statement that is readily dismissed these days is that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead.  Many, not just scientists and philosophers but even Bible scholars today, are resolute that this did not happen.  Many will say that Jesus' body was simply stolen by his disciples and buried elsewhere and then they made the whole thing up.  If that was the case, then why did the disciples of whom we have historical record live lives of poverty and die horrible deaths just to continue a lie.   If you are a fan of the DaVinci Code, then you say Jesus' disciples staged his death and he went on to live a long and happy life marrying Mary Magdalene and having children.  We must then again ask why his disciples would die horrible deaths just so he could live normally.  

If you are bent towards psychology and looking for a seemingly-scientific explanation, you will say that the post-resurrection experiences that his disciples had were just communal experiences of grief that involved a common hallucination of Jesus caused by mass hysteria among twenty-some people.  To my knowledge, such a hallucination has never been documented as ever happening among any group of people.  

Most people just fall back on reason and say that Resurrection is impossible.  Therefore, it never happened.  Yet, they believe there was something God-special about Jesus and so they follow his teachings and enjoy prayer.  

And finally, there are Christians who wholeheartedly believe in reincarnation because for some reason that seems more plausible than resurrection.  I could handle re-incarnation as long as I came back as a roach in the kitchen of a kind old grandma in rural Mexico; all-you-can-eat real Mexican food.  Sign me up.

The Gospel proclamation is that God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit bodily raised Jesus, God the Son become human, from the dead.  Jesus in his resurrection has a real human body that could eat and be touched.  Yet, his body was a resurrected body and that leaves us hanging a bit.  What is a resurrected body?  According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, it is a spiritual body that is immortal and imperishable.  That's a bit misleading for us, for whenever the word spiritual comes up, we start thinking ethereal or ghostlike wisps of energy.  But, by a spiritual body Paul meant not only a person who is personally related to God, but also a body that has been made alive by God that will indeed never die; a body in which every atom is infused with the life of God.

As Christians, the resurrection is at the heart of our very real hope.   Resurrection means that death is not the final answer; that though we die, we will not die.  We will live again in bodies; not as angels with harps sitting on clouds in heaven or as stars, none of those fictions people tell their children.  Even though this physical fallen body will and must die, we will not experience death, complete cut-off-ness from God.  As Jesus told the thief on the cross, when we die, we will be with him in Paradise, a (I presume) bodiless state, until the resurrection when we will be given resurrection bodies, bodies of real human flesh in which every molecule about us knows the living and loving God and will never die again.

So, since it is the case that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is where this Creation is heading, we should therefore begin to live the resurrected life now.  Let’s talk about Baptism for a minute.  Paul says that if we have been baptized into Christ, we have then been baptized into his death.  Basically, we are already dead.  This old self of ours has been crucified with Jesus, in his crucifixion in order that this body of sin might be brought to nothing, that we may no longer be enslaved to sin for a person who has died has been set free from sin.  Hear this, in our union with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit at our Baptism (and it doesn’t matter whether we were an unknowing infant or even how it was done) we died with him and we are now raised with him to share in his resurrected life now by means of the Holy Spirit.  If his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the living, loving Communion of the Trinity lives in us, then the state of our being, our very existence is that we are free from death and our enslavement to sin and are now free to live in and for God.  

Therefore, Paul instructs us in Colossians to seek the things that are above where Christ is for our lives are hidden in God with Christ.  Live according to that hunger to be with your brothers and sisters in Christ in worship, in study, in fellowship.  Live according to that hunger to pray and read the Bible and hear the Trinity speak to you.  Live according to the hunger for seeing justice happen in this world, of seeing the poor fed and the sick healed.  Live according to the hunger to know oneself as always being in the presence of God.  Live in constant prayer reminded that no matter what, you are a beloved child of God in whom he takes great joy.  Live this way and you will be living Eternal Life.  Amen.

If you are a parishioner of St Andrew’s Southampton or Geneva, you may have the feeling that you heard that sermon before.  That was the very first sermon I preached in the Coop Easter Sunday April 5, 2015.  We wanted our first Sunday as a Coop to be Easter Sunday and that would be largely why April 1 is our founding date.  Over the last ten years we’ve grown, not so much in numbers.  Death has taken its toll on us.  Yet, we’ve had a few new faces who stuck around.  We’ve grown to be more and more like the image of the God who created us.  Each congregation has grown and deepened in love.  Disunities have healed.  We’ve welcomed and loved our surrounding communities.  People we’ve prayed for have been healed.  In a day when in our culture it is difficult to be the Church of Jesus Christ, we remain churches witnessing to resurrection hope.  Well done, good and faithful servants.  Well done.  Amen.

 

Behind the Scenes

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Revelation 4-8:1

I like to imagine what it would be like to part reality in front of me as if I were poking my head through closed curtains to see what was happening behind the scenes.  Would I see some wizard pulling levers that makes things happen on this side of things?  Well, that’s kind of what John is recounting here.  He’s parted open the curtains of reality and stepped on into what’s going on behind the scenes of everything and one could say that what he sees going on there is the foundation, the driving force of what happens on this side of things.

He sees God the Father (not the Wizard of Oz) seated on a throne at the center of everything.  Except, he can’t see God because God is hidden behind an almost indescribably magnificent light display as the hymn says, “Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.”  Circling the throne are four living creatures who represent all of life on earth.  Day and night they forever sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty who wert and art and evermore shalt be.”

Surrounding them are twenty-four elders, twelve from the tribes of Israel and twelve for the churches planted by the Twelve Disciples.  When they hear the four living creatures sing, they fall down and “casting down their golden crowns upon the glassy sea” they begin to sing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.”  If you’re a first century hearer of this, you will be thinking that this God is bigger than Zeus and you will notice that none of that Greco/Roman Pantheon are there.

The next wave of concentric circles rippling out from the throne of God are myriads upon myriads upon thousands upon thousands of angels also singing praise; Cherubim and seraphim falling down before him; God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  Then there is the fullness of the Twelve tribes of Israel.  And then there is every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth singing praise as well.  And then there is an uncountable multitude of people singing “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.”  A first century person hearing that would say, “I thought salvation was what the Emperor claimed to bring through the Empire by means of his military.”

Our reality, God’s very good creation, is centered on God and worship of God is the lifeline that holds everything together – worship of God not political power, not militaristic, not economic power.  When we gather for worship or when we’re out in the field struck with awe and gratitude, we are joining in on the worship that holds everything together that’s going behind the scenes.  When we gather in the presence of God and worship the curtain is open.   

That said, when something else seeks that central place and the songs of worship are disrupted, our reality gets disrupted at the very core.  That is what empire and emperor have done.  Something I’m curious about here is something is something that can’’ be determined for certain for there is no evidence, but I am suspicious and I think it’s highly likely that the hymns that John hears here as he is peering into heaven probably sounded quite like things the citizens of the Roman Empire were required to say about Caesar when they worshipped him and the power of the Empire at the Imperial temples and/or Zeus at his temples.  Just conjecturing, but I think John is co-opting the songs of civil religion – the worship of nation and national leaders – and directing them to the One who rightly deserves to be worshipped with those songs.  Civil religion is quite alive today.  It’s very easy to get people quite worshipful in an idolatrous kind of way over flags and national values and popular national leaders who brand themselves as Saviours.

In God’s right hand is a scroll with seven seals.  The scroll is history – what was, is, and will be until God ends it.  If we want history to make sense we need to know what’s on that scroll.  But the scroll is sealed and no one on earth or in heaven is worthy to open it.  The fact of that is incredibly, incredibly sad.  But wait, suddenly in front of the throne there appears a Lamb who was slain, the Lion of Judah who has conquered by being slain and he’s full of the Spirit of God.  He is worthy, so worthy that the heavenly songs of worship change and become new songs.  Sing a new song unto the LORD.  “You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed a people for God, saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they reign on earth.”  “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and glory and honour and blessing.”  “To the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever.”

This Lamb is Jesus, the crucified and risen one, the faithful one, the only faithful one.  If we want to know and understand the course of history, we must look at him and get involved in what God is up to in history in, through, and as him in the power of the Holy Spirit.  History, indeed life, is centered on him.  It is otherwise purposeless without him.  He, and only He, is worthy to sit on the throne of God as he is the true Son of God.  Caesar claimed to be that but is not.  Those who are loyal to Jesus even unto death are the true kingdom and the true priests who serve the true God.  The Emperor, the Empire and the priests of the Imperial Cult are not.

And now…the moment we have been waiting for…the Lamb takes the scroll and begins to peel away the seven seals.  If you are looking for a roadmap to history, this is it.  This is the past, the present, and the future of human history.   But, one should rather call it the history of Empire.  It is what has happened, is happening, and will happen because of Empire-ism until God ends it all.  

The first four seals are horse and riders, affectionately known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  What each of them brings is a side effect of Empire-ism.  The first horse and rider, deceptively white, brings conquering.  A red horse and rider take peace from the earth and replace it with slaughtering.  A black horse and rider deceptively carrying the scales of equity take economic security away. The fourth, a pale green horse and rider…is Death…brings war, plaque, famine, and animal attacks.  These are the incurable symptoms that are present when Empire is around.  I am troubled at how well this describes the world we live in. 

The fifth seal is the struggle and fate of those who try to remain faithful to Christ Jesus and his kingdom.  This seal is the fact that there are martyrs.  These faithful ones abide in the most sacred place of heaven, the Altar.  And they cry out the question of those who suffer: How long, God, until you judge and take vengeance on our behalf.  The answer seems coldly disappointing.  First of all, there’s an honour in being on the right side, a white robe.  There is also a rest of a kind that the world doesn’t have.  But, the cruel reality of Empire-ism is that there will be more and more martyrs for Truth until their number is complete, however many that is.  The time frame is also trying – a little while longer.  The timeframe of suffering always seems to be a little while longer!

The sixth seal is the end.  Empire-ism will end.  Until that day the Empires that be will in time all implode or be themselves conquered.  Yet, the Day will come that Empire-ism will end.  John describes it with all sorts of celestial and earthly disturbances.  This wild imagery is the typical way the prophets tried to describe the indescribable nature of God ending the way things are to bring about something new.  It’s inconceivable.  One thing is for sure though; those rich and powerful slugs are going to hide in fear and in shame.  It’s called being held accountable. 

The seventh seal is silence; a long half-hour long, palette-cleansing, pregnant silence as God prepares something new.  Have you ever sat in the restful, peaceful presence of God in silence for a half-hour?  Amen.

 

To the Church In...

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Revelation 2-3

In chapters two and three Jesus asks John to write to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia which today would be western Turkey.  Given the significance of the number seven in biblical numerology as the number of completeness or perfection, it is easy to say that the letter was to go to the entire church and that it contained not just a word for each of those individual churches named but also a universal message.  At least that’s the way the book was received in the early church.  I bet you didn’t know it but in the first couple of centuries of the church the Revelation was the most widely circulated book of the New Testament.  During the Cold War and since, with the world threatened with nuclear annihilation, the book has been quite popular as well.  For the rest of church history, the book was largely ignored and there were even some major leaders in the church who wanted it out of the Bible altogether because it was weird and provided ample food for fringe groups.

The seven churches were in seven cities that were connected together by a major postal route.  John, in exile on a small island off the shore of Turkey, likely would have sent seven copies of the Revelation by means of a courier.  The first went to Ephesus, the second to Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and finally Laodicea. The letters would have been read aloud when Christians gathered together to worship not in church buildings but in homes and most likely in the home of the wealthiest patrons as they had the big houses.  Once one church read it, the letter would have gone to the next church in the area until all the small house churches in the city and its surroundings had heard it.

The Revelation was given to John to encourage Christians to remain faithful to Jesus during a wave of persecution that was beginning or soon to come.  Persecution?  Well, what typically happened in the early church was that either Jewish synagogue authorities or pagan religious authorities turned Christians over to the Roman authorities because they would not burn incense to Caesar as part of their civic responsibility.  This was in fact an act of treason.  Christians who would not worship Caesar as Lord and Saviour (two imperial titles) were arrested and usually made to fight wild animals or gladiators in the civic games at the coliseum.  Persecution became a serious problem in the mid-90’s AD during the reign of Emperor Domitian who was insane enough to require that he be worshipped as a living god, the incarnation of a son of Jupiter.  Emperors were believed to become gods after they died, but Domitian got a bit ahead of things. 

It was not easy to be a church back then.  They had problems that were unique to their day.  In Chapters two and three of the Revelation John is instructed to write something specific to each of the Seven Churches addressing particular problems they each had.  I’ll run through those briefly. 

Ephesus had lost its first love.  It’s agape love – unconditional, sacrificial love.  Reading through the brevity of the language it seems that they had struggled against false teachers who wanted to be their leaders.  They stood faithfully against them, but with a cost: their Christian fellowship had fallen second place to doctrinal witch hunts.  It can happen that Christians can get united around correcting the theology of others more so than attending to loving and supporting one another.

The Christians in Smyrna were already facing persecution and impoverishment because the Synagogue authorities were very persistent in hunting out Christians.  Christians could face being outcast in their communities and lose work for being different.  That seems to be what they were going through but with the added burden of some of them being imprisoned for their loyalty to Jesus for which they could die.

Pergamum was the capital city and the Imperial Cult was strong there, and they had stood faithful against that.  But there was another problem in the church there.  They were tolerating among themselves, the Nicolatians, a group of Christians who taught that it was okay to feast with pagan worshippers and participate in the orgies those feasts became and not only that but it was okay if they themselves feasted like that when they celebrated communion.  Jesus tells them to repent of that or he himself would come after them with the brutality of the two-edged sword…the Truth.

Looking at Thyatira, in many to most cities back then if you were a tradesperson, you could not work unless you were a member of a trade guild.  Well, each trade guild had their own god to worship and that worship involved feasts and we all know that feasting led to dancing if you know what I mean.  Therefore, Christians couldn’t work unless they participated in their guild’s pagan feasts.  In response to that, there was a woman leader who claimed to have had a word from Jesus saying that it was okay for them to participate in the trade guild feasts and a good many of the Christians took her word for it.  Jesus said some pretty strong words against her and those who followed her.  But he also encouraged the others to remain loyal to him at all costs. 

The church at Sardis was a perfect model of a “going-through-the-motions” inoffensive Christianity.  Keep to yourself.  Don’t confront.  Just give the outer appearance of being good.  There was apparently nothing that distinguished them from any other religion or civic club or guild.  He told them to wake up and also encouraged the few there that were still faithful.

Philadelphia was the only church to receive no correction.  They had recently been through a wave of persecution and had remained faithful.  They were a fine example of what it is to patiently endure, to bear up under having their faith severely tested. 

Finally, Laodicea; they were rich Christians.  Their wealth had blinded them to their need for God.  They were lukewarm; comfortable.  Having everything they needed but really having nothing.  Therefore, they were going to have to spend some time in the school of hard knocks, i.e., Jesus knocking at their door and they’d better have enough sense to open it or they won’t have Jesus with them.  Ephesus had lost its agape love in an exchange for doctrinal fidelity.  Laodicea sold it for wealth.  They needed to learn compassion, to see and feel the needs that people have.  That we love one another and how we do it matters.  One cannot say, “I’m rich. I have everything I need.  Therefore, I don’t need your love…it would make me look weak.”

That’s a snapshot of the church back in that day and I would say even in our day we can find some commonalities.  As you could see their main struggle was with fidelity, with remaining faithful to Jesus and his kingdom whether it be in the face of outright persecution or avoiding cultural appropriation.  Through these churches the Kingdom of God was breaking in through the reign of agape love.  It was important that their loyalty to Jesus shine brightly through acts of compassion, through warm fellowship, and that they abstain from the unrestrained hedonism involved in the worship of other gods even if it cost them their job or led to systematic persecution. 

Jesus tells all these churches that in the face of this testing of their fidelity, they must conquer.  Conquer is an imperial word involving winning in war.  Just as Rome led by the emperor had conquered most of the known world, so they also are to conquer.  But, in the Revelation conquer does not mean take up weapons and dominate and oppress.   Quite the opposite.  It is to stay loyal to Jesus, keep the confession of faith and live as communities marked by agape and a lack of hedonism.  In our culture where the gods of power, wealth, sex, consumerism, and the Almighty “Me” are readily worshipped, we face the same challenges the early Christians did – do we follow Jesus taking seriously his one commandment that we love or do we seek political power by joining the Imperial Cult, judge one another’s doctrinal purity, party with the hedonists, or probably the worst thing of all…simply just fit in?  Will we conquer…?  Amen.

 

Standing in the Midst of the Churches

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Matthew 1:9-20

You’ve all probably seen enough AA meeting moments on TV to know that when one of the members stands before the group to give their story, their testimony, they begin with “Hi. I’m Randy. I’m an alcoholic.” and the rest of the group will enthusiastically respond “Hi, Randy.”  The introduction is done that way because being an alcoholic is a hard thing to accept, there’s a lot of shame that comes with it.  Introducing yourself as an alcoholic and then being welcomed instead of judged is a huge thing in recovery.  Admitting this about yourself in a room of other alcoholics makes you realize you are not alone in this disease.  In that room you have a family and you are all co-sharers, bond together in having the disease and recovering from it.  In a meeting the first thing you say about yourself is, “I’m an alcoholic.”  That sets the stage for everything else.

I hear something similar happening here in how John introduces himself in this letter as he begins to give account of the things he has seen.  He first says, “I, John, your brother” to highlight the family nature, the family-like bond in Christian fellowship that is due to the presence of the Holy Spirit in and among us binding us together as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, God’s family.  

He then identifies himself as a fellow-sharer with them in Christ in three things: the persecution, the kingdom, and the patient endurance.  Fellow-sharing means we are bound together to each other and to Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit dwelling in and among us, what happens to one of us, happens to us all.  As Jesus more or less said in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”  As Jesus suffered, so we suffer in like manner.  We all go through it together and we all feel it and so does Jesus for he is with and in us.  This “fellow-sharing” is the one quality I appreciate most about small congregations.

Persecution is one of the things John states they were going through together.  That is what happens when the kingdom of God comes into contact with the kingdoms of the world.  Small communities of Jesus followers indwelt by the Holy Spirit in which the reign of God shines through them in acts of humble and enduring unconditional love is a powerful affront to the powers that be.  We North American Christians presently are not (yet) suffering persecution, but it could very easily happen with the authoritarian bent that’s working its way through our nations, an authoritarianism that is oddly undergirded by a large segment of the North American Church that is deceived and deluded by political power.  Thus, the persecution that could erupt would be Christian on Christian.  We’ll talk about this more in two weeks when we look at chapters 12 and 13.

John then mentions something called patient endurance which was an earmark descriptor of Christian life in the early church.  As we wait for Jesus to come and put things to rights, we patiently endure the consequences that come with being followers of Jesus Christ whose primary loyalty is to him.  The word in Greek for patient endurance is a profound word – “hypomeno”.  “Meno” means to abide in.  Hypo can mean “by means of” or “under” as in bearing up under.  Jesus said, “Abide in me, as I also abide in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.  Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4-5).  “Meno” is also associated with the word for “a room” – “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”  Patient endurance is the room in which we abide as we await Jesus’ coming with the room that he has prepared for us in our Father’s house, the New Jerusalem which shows up at the end of the book.  The sufferings, the trials of faith that we go through in this life, we are going through them because we have one foot, so to speak, in the door of our heavenly and the world is opposed to it.  We taste of our heavenly home, and the things of this world pale in comparison.

Now looking further in our reading; It is quite often the case that when I find myself in a conversation with people that involves the Book of Revelation someone will contribute that they believe John had to have been on something to have come up with all of this.  Well, though hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and Ketamine are enjoying favour in the worlds of psychiatry and psychology these days for treating severe depression and a few other things, John was not tripping.  He was having ecstatic or mystical religious experiences – visions.  He had his head in the door of the heavenly home, not just a foot.  

John recounts that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day – Sunday – for this first vision.  He heard a voice from behind telling him to write in a book the things that he was about to hear, messages for the seven churches he named.  Yet, these messages are for the whole church as there are seven of them and seven represents wholeness or completeness.  He turns to see who is talking to him and he sees seven golden lampstands which represent the church.  Being lampstands emphasizes the church’s role of being light to the world.

He sees “one like the Son of Man” standing in the midst of the lampstands.  The prophet Daniel in a vision also saw “one like unto the(a) Son of Man” taking his seat at the right hand of God.  This Son of Man is of course Jesus.  Jesus says “Do not be afraid” and gives reasons why.  He is the first and the last, the one risen from the dead who now has the keys of Death and Hades.  This is meant to be an encouragement to the churches that their Jesus is the one who has power over death and the place to the holding place of the dead.  The persecutors of early Christians often threatened them with death.  Death was nothing to be feared by a faithful follower of Jesus even if it came while fighting wild beasts in a coliseum for public entertainment. In Jesus’ right hand were seven stars that were the seven angels for each of the churches.  Each church is protected by an angel.  The words that come from his mouth are a two-edged sword of the Truth.  His face shines with the full power of the son meaning that those who persecute Christians will find themselves exposed and it will “burn”.  But his followers need not fear him.

“Do not be afraid” is the first thing Jesus has to say to his churches and to us.  To us, his brothers and sisters; to us fellow-sharers in his sufferings he says “Do not be afraid.”  He is standing in our midst and there is no greater power than he.  In this world, we are patiently enduring through many kinds of things that try our faith in Jesus, things that Satan is using to try to break our faith in Jesus, because we are part of Jesus' bringing in the Kingdom of God.  It is through these sufferings that the kingdom comes, they are the catalyst to our own growth and fruit bearing as we abide in Jesus.  

In Acts 14:22 Paul, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God.”  He said that after he and Barnabas had been stoned for proclaiming Jesus.  We aren’t getting stoned for our faith, but it is often the case that the reason for some of the things we suffer, the behind-the-scenes reason, is our faith in Jesus.  So we pray, “Save us from this time of trial and deliver us from evil (the evil one).”  Patiently endure for the kingdom is coming and do not forget that Jesus has promised to be with us to the end of the ages and he indeed is.  Amen.