Marginal Christianity

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 (i...

       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 bo...

Round uP of Christ’s Seven Letters to the churches Our Resistical Worship Service So Far We have been called to Worship in a responsive way by John (1:4-8). John has introduced himself as Jesus’ interpreter (1:9-11) and Jesus as the Guest Preacher for the day (1:12-20). Jesus has greeted his churches with a message directed to each of the seven. We are ready to sing and sing we will with the two hymns in Revelation 4 & 5. In a world of pervasive and intensive indoctrination into the worldview of the Empire this worship service is a counter-blast challenging and correcting its mistakes and errors by casting Jesus Christ as the world’s rightful and true Emperor before whom the Roman wannabe is revealed for who he really is and whittled down to size. The vision of Christ John crafts to introduce him provides basic elements of the seven messages Christ delivers to his churches. That there are the symbolic number “seven” of them shows us that these messages offer in...