Ch.3: Jumping into Revelation (1)

       Jumping Off into Revelation

Before jumping into something we must jump off something. Same with Revelation. Before we jump into it we must jump from where we currently are. And where we are is discerned by where in the profile of the seven messages of Christ to his church(es) in Rev.2-3 we find ourselves. Let me spell that out in more detail.

-Christ delivers prophetic messages to seven actual churches in Asia Minor in the late 1^st century a.d.

-In John’s world numbers are symbolic and often used as adjectives (see FAQ).

-Seven in this symbolic world means “completeness” or “fullness.”

-Thus, Christ addresses both the seven actual congregations in Asia Minor and through these messages the whole church (including us).

-these messages provide a differentiated portrait of these churches (the church).

-Where we discern our church(es) fit in this profile (which of the churches we most fully identify with) helps us identify both where we jump off from and where we jump into Revelation.

Robert Wall writes

“The perception of Revelation’s relevancy for its reader’s faith depends on the congregation to which one belongs. If the author’s description of a particular congregation suits a reader, that reader will  understand the importance of John’s subsequent vision in ways appropriate to that congregation, whether as a pastoral word of hope (e.g.,  the congregation at Smyrna) or as a prophetic word of judgment (e.g., the congregation at Laodicea)” (Wall, Revelation, 105).

What does that mean For North American churches? In general, as part of the affluent world, it means most of us likely fit the Laodicean church type (Rev.3:14-21). As Harry Maier asks:

“For where is a first-world white male of privilege to find himself described in the Apocalypse if not in this seventh message-rich, not needing anything, neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm-the typical citizen of a reigning order that keeps the majority of the planet's inhabitants in servitude to furnish me with my comforts? Who if not me needs persuasion that I am naked, blind, pitiable, and wretched, I who walk down golden-lit streets in my expensive clothing with the jingle jangle of money in my pocket, window shopping as recreation beneath jewel-colored neon lights urging me to buy? Who if not me should be frightened when there is a knock at the door-maybe a thief to steal my riches or even my life away? Who if not I should be offended at the suggestion that a stranger should invite himself over to eat in my house, challenge me with shortsightedness, and invite me to a new economy of scale? Who if not I needs salve for my eyes and to be rescued at last ‘from single vision and Newton's sleep’? And who should tell tile, seduced as I am by the beauty of my weapons, that there is another way to conquer and be conquered?” (Maier, Apocalypse Recalled: 627-634).

Reading as Laodiceans

If it be the case that we find our spot alongside those Laodicean Christians and, thus, targeted by Christ’s message to that church, how does this impact our reading of Revelation.

In the first place, it means we must be open to varied readings and emphases as one might end up reading John’s visions from at least one of seven different “jumping off” points. From churches persecuted to those more-or-less assimilated to the ethos and ethics of the Roman Empire to those fully assimilated thereunto, Revelation provides a differentiated profile for reader to find themselves in.

Once we have identified our place in John’s profile based on where we “jump off” in our reading and its similarities or analogies to our own situations, we must read with care and particular attention to the way John’s visions impact the kind of church we most closely identify with as we “jump into” the text. That means reading it as much like a member of the church we identify with as we can. How does what John see and says impact us as readers and churches.

Following Maier, it means that we North American Christians and churches must read Revelation as “Laodiceans.” If we were among the many Christians and churches physically persecuted by their enemies today then we might well read Revelation through Smyrnan or Philadelphian eyes for their comforting by Christ under their own local and sporadic persecution by the Jews. Laodiceans, though, beset by the iron-fist-in-velvet-glove persecution we will look at in the next chapter, cannot rightly claim this comfort because they embrace and promote this assimilation to Roman ways and values. It’s only the hard words of Christ to them that have a chance of enabling them to “conquer” their addiction to wealth, status, and comfort. So also us, modern Laodiceans, North Americans who by and large embrace and promote “Roman” (that is, American) ways and values.

What might it mean, then, to read Revelation as a Laodicean? First, it means to step away from the usual paradigm that comfort for churches suffering from imperial persecution was John’s aim in writing. There was no such imperial persecution happening at the time John wrote. Local persecution from the Jews in a couple of places, yes. But not imperial persecution. So we must adopt a different view of John’s aim. Rather, as John says in 1:9 he shares in the persecution (both physical and iron-fist-in-velvet-glove kind as they live toward God’s kingdom in the mode of “patient endurance” or “consistent resistance.” The latter is what John focuses on. The persecution will come as and from whom it will. The kingdom is God’s doing. “Consistent resistance” is something we are to do. Energized by the Spirit, to be sure, but still our calling and response to God’s gracious plan for our lives. Thus John’s aim is nurturing and strengthening his readers’ consistent resistance to Roman ethos and ethics.”

For Laodicean Christians, or those reading Revelation as such (depending here on Maier: 533-620), this means first that we acknowledge that we’re in as much trouble as they were. That we’ve bought into the American version of Roman ethos and ethics, i.e. the American Dream - pursuit of wealth, status, self-sufficiency, reputation, productivity, and achievement – as fully as they did the original. And in doing so, Christ’s verdict that they have shut him outside their community even though he is knocking to gain entrance – a terrible verdict indeed! - devolves on us too who follow their pattern. That’s our true situation before God.

Secondly, reading as Laodiceans also entails having a sharp ear for John’s “money-talk.” He uses financial and monetary imagery throughout his visions. By using such imagery in an upside-down way, that is, not connected to work and reward in the usual sense but correlated with reward or punishment for spiritual performance in an way opposite that usual sense, John critiques our usual valuation of money and wealth. The abundance pf such imagery suggests John finds money and wealth a problem for all his churches and not simply Laodicea – as it is for us today.

Money, wealth, riches, and the attitudes of self-sufficiency, pride, and arrogance that usually attend these achievement are shown to be bases of human resistance to God in need of redemption and also purged and redeemed in the upside-down way of the kingdom for those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

Thirdly, a special case of this money-talk is how John develops the “good” and “bad” characters in his visions. The great Harlot (Rome) and the Bride, the New Jerusalem personify the evils of debauched, wealth-saturated power and the beauty of genuine wealth rightly-ordered by God. Through these characters, and pushing readers to choose between them, John displays (shows as well as tells) the transformation of the world God intends. Maier writes: “The result is a textual world that introduces to the economic expectations of John's hearers an unanticipated semantics, resignifying the lives of John's listeners, urging those too invested in the Roman imperial order to revisit their priorities and allegiances” (Apocalypse Recalled: 616-617).

Finally, to read Revelation as a Laodicean is to discover that things-as-they-seem-to-be is not the ways things-truly-are. And not only in matters having to do with wealth. The visions of Revelation are John’s versions of the red pill Morpheus offers Neo in “The Matrix.” Taking it enabled Neo to see the world as it really was, a devastated hulk after a world-wide catastrophe and not the pleasant comfortable virtual world the computer the Matrix lulled people into believing but enslaving them and drawing off their life energies to sustain the illusion. John similarly pulls back the curtain on how things really are and who’s really in control. In a sense Revelation is the answer to the prayer Jesus taught disciples to pray for God’s name to be hallowed, his kingdom to come, and his will to be done on earth as it is on heaven.

Summary

To read Revelation is to first find one’s vantage point from which to read the rest of the book. The seven messages of the risen and reigning Christ to his churches in 1^st century Asia Minor give us a differentiated profile of the church from which to work. For North American churches, in general, the church at Laodicea best illuminates our captivity to the values and virtues of empire, that is what I call the I. C. E. Age of our cultural moment:

Individualism – primacy of the individual, I am.

Consumerism – I shop therefore I am

Experientialism – I feel therefore I am

John addresses churches not individuals, a “kingdom of priests,” a “holy nation” (1:6).

John speaks clearly and distinctly against any form of consumerism.

John offers a bald-faced rejection of the claim that following Jesus is about good feelings and experiences.

The Seer has one word for individualism, consumerism, and experientialism: martyrdom. The word “witness” raised to the nth degree. The “faithful witness” and the faithful who witness to him even following him to death. Those who even in heaven cry put in longing and pain for God to act quickly to avenge their blood and his faithfulness. Yes, martyrdom. That’s John’s and Jesus’ vision of the response God desires from his people in the kind of world we live in. John’s book is an extended defense of just this claim. And it will be clear through that exposition the precise ways that individualism, consumerism, and experientialism founder on the rocks of John’s call to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. 

This I. C. E. Age spirituality is “Laodicean” to the core. And given “the numerically . . . rhetorically significant last position of Christ’s message to that church (Maier, Apocalypse Recalled: 542-543), its emphases appear to have a more general applicability to all seven churches (and, hence, to all churches!). In our day when global capital hopes to and in substantial measure already has expanded this spirituality worldwide. globalization, perhaps, becomes the chief form of John’s beast the church faces today. In this sense, reading as a Laodicean is incumbent on all of us.