Following the Lamb Wherever He Goes (5)

John’s First Story of Jesus (1:9-3:21)

John’s Vision of the Regal Divine-Human Christ (1:9-20)

John tells Jesus’ story three times in three different modes to make certain his people understood his identity and significance as fully as possible. We only trust the Jesus we know and in too much contemporary Christianity the Jesus it knows is too small. And perhaps he was for John’s churches too. At any rate, John wants to make sure that it not true for them.

But first he gives a few words about himself and his own situation. We’ve already noted his external situation on Patmos. John establishes his solidarity with these churches by noting they share “persecution, kingdom, and “consistent resistance” in Jesus.

-persecution: the evidence for an empire-wide empire-sponsored persecution of the church does not exist. Local and sporadic dust-ups with the Jews are what the seven messages attest and then in only two of the seven churches. Let’s call this physical persecution (imprisonment, injury, death) capital P-Persecution. It is not a widespread problem at the time John’s wrote (80-100 a.d.).

However, all seven of the churches struggled with small letter p-persecution. This is the pressure to assimilate or accommodate to the pervasive and intensive ideology of the Roman Empire. To trim the rough edges off one’s faith to make life easier within your culture. Going along to get along. Imperial propaganda surrounded churches on all sides. They among cities in a region that appreciated the empire and tried to outdo each other to0 curry its favor, especially the honor of being named a “temple warden” of the temple venerating the empire and emperor (whom many at the time believed to be divine), the imperial cult. Coins, inscriptions, buildings, temples, festivals, holidays, and the like promoted the gods-given destiny of Rome to be the world’s ruling benefactor, the at least quasi-deity of the emperor, the famous Pax Romana, the Roman Peace the empire provided by the good offices of its ruthless military might, and much more. And since there was no separation between politics and religion in their world, such political creeds always entailed faith convictions. Rome called the shots and shaped the public story about how the world worked, how life was to be lived, right and wrong, the good life, and what to hope for.

This persecution is going on even within the church. John points to the offending groups in a couple of the churches – Nicolaitans (2:6,15), “Jezebel” (2:20). As best we can tell, these folks were “domesticating the demands of a unique, Creator God to the practical needs of functioning in, and profiting from, the domination systems of the real world” (deSilva, Unholy Allegiances: 827-828). And that’s the persecution (note the small p) John’s most concerned about. The comfortable and prideful Laodiceans, the churches at Pergamum and Thyatira are already compromised by this persecution and the other churches assaulted by it on a daily basis. And John knows their struggle too and stands with them in it.

-kingdom – John shares with his churches the same hope for the realization of God’s ultimate purpose of being and living with his people throughout eternity. His power in establishing his kingdom is crucial to his presence here. The hope for his kingdom, then, is part and parcel of the hope that animates, and should animate, God’s people.

-patient endurance – “Patient endurance” jumps out from this list as Christ’s most commended and recommended virtue for resisting Empire. In 1933, after the Nazi’s had recently taken power in Germany, Karl Barth wrote a famous (or infamous) essay in the journal Theological Existence Today! In this essay Barth wrote,

“I endeavor to carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened. Perhaps there is a slightly increased tone, but without direct allusions: something like the chanting of the hours by the Benedictines nearby in the Maria Laach, which goes on undoubtedly without break or interruption, pursuing the even tenor of its way even in the Third Reich” (Jones, https://religionpublics.wixsite.com/forthetimebeing/single-post/2017/03/15/Patience-Impatience-and-Political-Life-Today).

That’s the kind of “patient endurance” John has in mind. Barth describes it even further later in the essay. He wanted Hitler gone as much as anyone. He realized, however, that for a theologian, for a church, entrusted with God’s gospel, the logic of resistance ran in a different channel than most political resistance. Paul Dafydd Jones explains:

“Barth favored a different approach: a style of theological writing that, in refusing to esteem that which is ethically and politically inexcusable, in declining to “normalize” the new status quo, focuses attention on the future that God promises, and provides a thick description of what it means for human beings to turn their backs on sin and commit themselves to realizing the “two commandments” on which “hang all the law and the prophets”: love of God and love of neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40)” (https://religionpublics.wixsite.com/forthetimebeing/single-post/2017/03/15/Patience-Impatience-and-Political-Life-Today).

-Refusing to esteem or normalizing the evil,

-focusing on the promised future God gives up, and

-giving detailed attention to the lives has called us to live in following Jesus –

this is a “patient endurance” suited to resisting the tyrannies and oppressions the church faces on its journey through history. There’s much wisdom in Barth’s approach, I think.

-The first item he lists taken by itself becomes just political action. Not unimportant but not a specifically Christian form of resistance.

-focusing on the promised future God gives us outside a context of the other two ways Barth recommends distorts this emphasis such that it often ends up sanctioning the status quo, and

    

-focusing on Christian living apart from the other two of Barth’s recommendations tends to become an end in itself and legalism.

In sum, John shares with his people a reality check (persecution or lack thereof), an imaginative hope, and a necessary virtue. Further, these three descriptors of the churches’ situation may correlate with the three identities John attributes to Christ. As slaughtered Lamb he is one under persecution. As regal figure he’s fit for a kingdom. And as divine warrior he engages in consistent resistance. Thus Christ too, or better, preeminently, undergoes  before us what we have to face in our time and place.

“In the Spirit” (a phrase used at four benchmarks moments in the book) John hears a loud trumpet-like voice commissioning him to write what he sees to the seven churches in Asia Minor. But when he turns to see what he has heard it is seven golden lampstands he sees (v.12). This hearing-seeing dynamic is of key importance in Revelation, especially in ch.5 – the central imaginal moment in the book that unlocks the meaning of the book.

Amid the lampstands walks “one like a Son of Man” (v.13), a regal divine-human figure drawn from Dan.7:13. Two of John’s description clue us in that he has seen a divine figure. The white hair (v.14; see Dan.7:9) and his voice like the “sound of many waters” (Ez.1:24; 43:2). The stars in the right hand suggests divine sovereignty compared to Rome’s claim to such sovereignty. “An analogy appears on a coin from Domitian’s reign that depicts the emperor’s deceased son as young Jupiter, sitting on the globe in a posture of world dominion. The coin’s inscription calls him ‘divine Caesar, son of the emperor Domitian,’ and the imagery shows him extending his hands to seven stars in a display of divinity and power” (Koester, 2014,253).

Long robes and golden sashes befit high status. A two-edged sword is appropriate for a regal, messianic figure such as this one (Isa.49:2; Isa.11:4). His eyes and feet suggest insight and power (Dan.10:2-6). “Such a convergence of elements and details indicates that the revelation of Jesus Christ continues in astounding fashion as he is seen and experienced as never before. His being identified with enigmatic figures, as well as with God himself, indicates that, in Jesus, there is a culmination of God’s purposes and activities” (Thomas, 2016, 82-83).

No wonder John falls as though dead at the feet of this One. Awe and perhaps also guilt bow him down. His august presence humbles John in every way. That very right hand of power, though, lays hold of him, raising (yes, I use that word advisedly) him to his feet, assuring him that he is in the hands of One that even death cannot defeat, and commissioning John for the service to which he has been called (1:17-19).

Jesus begins by telling John that the lampstands and stars he has seen are churches and their “angels” respectively. In the world of John’s visions each church has an angel, a spiritual entity, responsible for it. It is these beings John is told to address. Perhaps we might say that Jesus instructs John to address the spiritual reality of these churches not simply their historical or sociological reality.

To the messages Christ has for these churches (and ours!) we now turn (chs.2-3).

The Seven Messages (chs.2-3)

Christ’s messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor in Rev.2-3 flow organically out of the vision of Christ we just considered even though there is a chapter break between them in our translations. They are two sides to the same coin. The majestic vision of Christ based in his resurrection from the dead becomes the basis for the fundamental message of the book enshrined in these communications of Christ to seven particular congregations in the 1st century a.d. which are also his word to his churches anywhere and everywhere (that number seven again!).

And that fundamental message is resistance to Rome’s Empire (and by extension all other pagan Empires) in the name of the world’s true Emperor and Empire which John names Kingdom of God. “John the Revelator recognizes that the primary challenge his brothers and sisters in the early church face is not just sporadic persecution but the constant lure of to compromise to their new Babylon” (Grimsrud, https://peacetheology.net/2011/12/10/revelation-notes-chapter-2/). One way to get a more concrete feel for what this means is to look at some examples of the early churches resistance to Rome. Tim Keller offers a list of eight points where this resistance occurred. The church (https://www.redeemer.com/redeemer-report/article/the_early_christian_social_project):

1.    opposed bloodthirsty sports and violent entertainment, such as gladiator games.

2.    opposed serving in the military.

3.    opposed abortion and infanticide.

4.    empowered women.

5.    opposed sex outside of marriage and homosexual activity (pederasty was common in the empire.

6.    encouraged radical support for the poor.

7.    encouraged the mixing of races and classes.

8.    insisted that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

These are the kinds of things church’s like Smyrna and Philadelphia, which receive only commendation from Christ, must have been involved in. Sardis and Laodicea, which receive only censure, must not have been. The other three, Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira get mixed reviews. The issues facing each congregation are but different aspects of living faithfully in the belly of the beast of the Empire. We ought to be able to see our struggles for faithfulness in the American/Trumpean Empire reflected in these messages.

Ephesus (2:1-7): The Peril of Culture Warriors

The Christ who is present to each church and addresses their reality diagnoses this church as having worked with “patient endurance” (2:3; 1:9), tirelessly holding to the integrity of the faith (contra the Nicolaitans [v.6]). Yet in one way they have failed, a way that compromises all the good work they have done. They have “abandoned the love (they) had at first” (v.4). Whether this means the Ephesian Church has made something other than Christ their “first love” or compromised the love for others they once had (and either is possible and no doubt interrelated), it is clear something has gone seriously wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the reality of this church’s existence has been put in doubt (v.5).

The issue, the big thing at stake in this and all these letters, is the threat of compromising and caving into the ethics and ethos of the Empire. This can happen in a variety of ways (as these letters show). Here it is by combatting the Empire in all the ways they perceive it is challenging them. Combatting it in a way that this fight itself becomes the “first” thing in their life and practice. No longer does love for Christ or the love he calls us to share with others have precedence over everything else. No, the Empire has captured this church’s attention in such a way as to turn it into a “culture warrior.” And it was good at it. But here the good had become the enemy of the best. And ceased to be good. Now it has become a bitter, culture-hating parody of the gospel to the point that Christ may no longer count them as his own.  

Unless they repent. And no longer allow the Empire first place in their attention. And love Christ and neighbor above all else. This love is the most effective antidote to the Empire’s never-ceasing efforts to co-opt and corrupt our life as God’s people. And this love is the life-giving “tree of life” Christ’s offers us those who “conquer.”

That the Spirit speaks to the “churches” (plural) suggests that this word to Ephesus has wider currency than just for them.

Smyrna (2:8-11): Resisting Fear by Resurrection

The spiritual reality of this church is the power of Christ’s resurrection at work in their midst (v.8). In this it parallels the history of Smyrna itself. A prime port location the city was destroyed and rebuilt several times and came to bear the title of “The City That Died Yet Lives.” They are rich even in the midst of their poverty because of the One who dwells in them and the vocation to which he has called them. This church, poor and persecuted by the Empire, particularly Jews who had adopted the ethos and ethics of the Empire in order to get along and preserve their existence (“synagogue of Satan,” v.9), the reality of the crucified and risen One is first and last in their hearts and mission.

Fear is the enemy Christ encourages the Smyrnans to continue to resist. And nothing kick starts fear like threats to security and survival (the “Babel Syndrome,” see Gen.11:1-9). Though even harder times are coming (“ten days,” v.10), enduring in faithfulness to the end (as they have been doing) is the ticket.

-Fear disables resurrection power. We cannot live fearful of our security and significance and yet live out Christ’s sacrificial servanthood at the same time.

-Fear is disabled by resurrection power. When the worst we can fear (death) is neutered by Christ’s resurrection as the power at work in and for us we can live free and risky lives for the sake of Christ.

Whoever “conquers” such fear by confidence in the presence and power of the resurrected Christ has nothing to fear from the “second death” (v.11), judgment and separation from God (20:15).

Pergamum (2:12-17): Allegiance Contested

Pergamum is a center of conflict between the church and the Empire. The city’s aspiration was to be Rome “east.” It aspired to reflect the life of Rome, albeit on a lesser scale. It became a key center for Emperor worship. Roman edicts controlled life. The One present with his people there bears the “two-edged sword out of his mouth” (v.12). Which “word” will govern the church’s life? What witness will they bear to their city about whose flag they salute with their lives?

Christ gives the church of Pergamum a mixed review on this score. Even with valorization of Rome everywhere around them – living at the foot of “Satan’s throne” (v.13) – the church was holding firm to their witness to Christ. Even under persecution which had brought death to one of theirs (Antipas, v.13), they stood fast.

Yet all is not well for them. The Nicolaitans, whom the Ephesian church resisted, have apparently made inroads among them (v.15). The “teaching of Balaam” is working its evil there too. In both cases the pull is towards participation in the life of the city, its feasts, its rituals, its worship, especially of the Emperor. The inroads of these pagan ideas and “spiritualities” are eroding the quality of the witness such that Christ calls them to account for it. Failure to repent will bring Christ’s word on this congregation as a word of judgment against those allowing such corruption to gain a foothold among his people (v.16).

“Conquering” for this church means turning its “ear” to hear the Spirit’s leading for the churches. In sharpening its allegiance to Christ by listening to the Spirit the church at Pergamum receives gifts befitting that renewed allegiance. “Hidden manna” for sustenance even if one’s opportunities for livelihood were curtailed for their allegiance to Christ as could happen if one did not participate in the festivals and religious observances of their guild. Further, they receive a “white stone” with a name written on it that only they know. This seems to be something of a token of admission and belonging to God’s people and their life with God.

Thyatira (2:18-29): Imperial Economy vs. God’s Economy

The message to this church comes from the One with “eyes like flames of fire” and “feet . . . like burnished bronze” (v.18; cf. 1:14,15). Thyatira was a growing commercial and manufacturing city particularly working with bronze. This may account for way Christ is identified. Yet fire and burnished bronze can also connote power and judgment. The focus of this message seems to be on economic entanglements with the empire and the ways such commitments can compromise faith and witness.

Again, Christ offers a mixed report.   On the plus side, “love, faith, service, and patient endurance” in which they are growing (v.19). On the negative side, though, they tolerate a Jezebelian teaching (“the deep things of Satan,” v.24). Jezebel was the Canaanite wife of King Ahab of Israel who influenced him and nation to practice idolatry. The parade example was when Ahab schemed to take land from an Israelite who wanted to keep it as an inheritance for the long-term viability of his family as Torah instructed.  Ahab, though, had adopted an imperial land as possession policy which resulted in drastic growing disparities in wealth between the haves and have-nots. Amos, several generations later, railed against this kind of situation.[1]

Grimsrud thus concludes, “Given Thyatira’s role as a regional economic center and noting the condemnation of imperial economics later in Revelation (. . . ch.18), we can assume that the use of the symbol ‘Jezebel’ may well have been meant to include a connotation here that the accommodation has problematic economic ramifications.”[2]

Christ’s vigorous and violent response (vv.21-23)[3] to those practicing such idolatries and economic oppression gives us a clue about seriously he takes such matters. The Levitical Jubilee laws (Lev.25) show God’s intention that land and family are inextricably linked and that disparities of wealth are to be levelled out every 50 years (or once a generation). Christ works off that same set of priorities here.

The one who conquers is given a share in Christ’s rule over the nations (Rev.22:5) and receives the “morning star” (v.28). Jesus takes this name as his own at the end of the book (22:16). Thus the conquerors are united with him and share in his victory which follows the death and resurrection pattern.

Sardis (3:1-6): From Death to Life

The One who has the “seven spirits of God and seven stars” (v.1) brings his next word for the city of Sardis. The Holy Spirit and the reality of the churches are his. He discerns and knows what is really going on in and among them, far better than they know themselves. This community, Sardis, for instance, believed themselves to be safe from aggression even though it had been invaded with drastic results several times earlier in their history. Thus, “you have a name of being alive, but you are dead” (v.2). The church there was in the same boat.

Though a few members of the church have faithfully served God and resisted the lures of Empire (v.4), most  had not. And they were living on fumes at the threshold of extinction as the people of God. Sardis was a site for extensive worship of Rome and its deities. The temple dedicated to Artemis was especially impressive (Grimsrud at https://peacetheology.net/2011/12/10/revelation-notes-chapter-3/). The baleful influence of the Empire, again, casts its baleful shadow Jesus has a threefold antidote for what ails them (v.3)L

                                -remember: who they are and what God calls them to be

                                -obey: live that way

                                -repent: change their way of life

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Memory, as Jesus recommends it and the Bible portrays it, is our bulwark against the claims and siren call of Empire. But not as an intellectual exercise of recalling some piece of information or another. Rather, “to obey then is not the mere keeping of a command but responding out of our living relationship with God which is life-giving. Such remembering and such obedience make repentance possible. We can in this way truly change our lives, our direction, our loyalties, align our lives again with Christ’s (http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/remember-remembrance.html..

Conquerors will share in Christ’s white robe of victory.

Philadelphia (3:7-13): Christ Opens Never-to-be-Closed Doors

The One who has “the key of David” and opens and shuts doors for this church brings a word of approbation only to this church. They are small and powerless (v.8). They lived in a city formed to be a conduit for and incubator of Hellenism in the region, a “missionary” city of sorts. Boasting a large Jewish community, Philadelphia was also known as “Little Athens” for the number of temples dedicated to Dionysus located there (Daniels, Seven Deadly Spirits, 106).

Philadelphia was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 a.d.  Aftershocks abounded and left its residents fearful. Many remained living outside its precincts years after the quake. Some left it at night to sleep outside the city so as not be caught unawares by another quake.

This most-praised-by-Christ church of the seven addressed here faced numerous obstacles. Three of them were conflict with the Jewish community in Philadelphia (v.9), lack of power (v.8), and the ubiquitous specter of the Empire. In spite of all this, Christ promises this congregation that their witness would prevail (the “open door,” v.8).

Thus, the city created to evangelize the region for the Greco-Roman worldview would host a church mandated by God to evangelize that same region for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the promise of the “holy” and “true” One rested with the latter. Because he is with them, crucified but risen and installed by God as world ruler (”key of David,” v.8), this church clothed in weakness will prevail by Christ’s power. Fear made perfect sense for a church in this setting. But it makes no sense because the one they follow had “opened the door” for them. And they heard that assurance and acted on it. And Christ promises them a place in his city from which they will never have to leave but reside securely there bearing his name.

Laodicea (3:14-21): Shutting the Door in Christ’s Face or The Dangers of a “Country Club” Church

The “faithful and true witness” brings to the church in Laodicea a word about the source of all things (“origin of God’s creation”) and their costly blindness to this truth and the corruption of their witness.

Laodicea was a wealthy “can do” sort of town. Shortly after a devastating earthquake in 60 a.d. the city rebuilt itself in an even grander fashion and refused imperial aid to do so.

Situated in the Lycus valley, Hierapolis was 6 miles away and Colossae 10 miles. The former was known for its pools of hot water known for their healing qualities. The latter for its cold springs which proved recuperative for weary travelers after a long day on the road.  We’ll return to this shortly.

Laodicea was known for its medical schools (especially its eye salve), its sophisticated and secure banking system, and its manufacture of garments of raven black cloth.

They could do, did do, and expected to keep on doing what they needed to do for themselves.

The church there imbibed the same attitudes and reflected them religiously. “You say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing” (v.17) is Christ’s damning judgment against them. He spells this out in terms of each point of Laodicean pride. “Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see” (vv.18-19). They do not realize that they are poor, naked, and blind (v.17).

Further, this church is neither “cold nor hot” though Christ wishes they were one or the other (v.15). Being “lukewarm” they only make Christ sick to his stomach!  Often, we take the terms hot, cold and lukewarm psychologically as our spiritual temperature. We use those terms that way. The oddity of taken the terms this way, hot (spiritually alive), cold (spiritually dead), and lukewarm (spiritually apathetic) it that it puts Christ in the position of commending no faith (cold) to apathetic faith (lukewarm). And claiming that the latter rather than the former makes him ill. This is not usually how the Bible or Christ sees these things.

In John’s world these temperature terms were not used psychologically. In fact, John tells us it is our “works” that show us neither hot nor cold. If we remember the geography mentioned above, we have the clue to what John means. Hot refers to the healing waters of Hierapolis; cold to the refreshing invigorating pools of Colossae. Laodicea had not water supply of its own. The hot water of Hierapolis was carried by an aqueduct system down to Laodicea. It arrived lukewarm, useful in that state only as an emetic to induce vomiting.  John uses this imagery to suggest that the ministry of the Laodicean church was neither healing nor restoring or energizing but lukewarm, making God want to vomit them out.

This bleak judgment is tempered only by Christ’s reminder that he loves these folk and that is why he “disciplines” them (v.19). So there is hope. But it is the hope of a community that has closed its door on Christ, leaving him outside knocking on the door to gain entrance to them and their lives (v.20). This verse does not refer to Christ knocking on an individual’s heart as popularly thought. The idea is that the community has shut its gates to Christ, just as they closed their city gates to protect against intruders every night. Christ wants to gain entrance again so that the community’s meal will be a true Eucharist. This is the way they can conquer and share in his victory (v.21).

In the next post in this series I will try to pull the various threads of these seven letters in a synthetic portrait of a resistical church.