July 13, 2025
And to the angel of the church in Smyrna
write: These are the words of the First and the Last, who was dead and came to
life:
“I know your affliction and your poverty,
even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that
they are Jews and are not but are a synagogue of Satan. Do
not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware, the devil is about to throw some
of you into prison so that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have
affliction. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of
life. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the
churches. Whoever conquers will not be harmed by the second death.”
************************************
It
seems silly now, but I dreaded turning thirty. My annual physical that year didn’t exactly help
anything, either, since my family doctor decided that was time to look into his
crystal ball. “Yeah,” he said, “your
eyesight is pretty good right now, but in ten years you may be thinking about
glasses.” A few minutes later it was,
“Your weight is good, but if you aren’t careful, you may have some problems
keeping it off down the road.” Then it
was, “Given your family history, I’m not especially worried but you might want
to avoid whole milk and go easy on the fried foods and ice cream before they
sneak up on you.” Next, “We should really
take a baseline EKG so it’s in your records in case there’s a surprise in
fifteen or twenty years.”
Gee, thanks! Fortunately, I knew him well enough that I
could say, “Hey, Glenn! Remember when
you were a resident working with Dr. Hekking?
Didn’t you have all your hair back then?” and he smiled and backed
off. Mind you, I consider him one of the
best family doctors I have ever known.
He was totally right to try to prepare his patients (not just me) for
the predictable future.
John’s brief message to
the church in Smyrna is sort of a parallel to my doctor’s observations. John could foresee where events (no doubt
including his own banishment) were leading, and that the Christians in Smyrna
would be in a rough place very shortly.
He felt it on his heart to speak, and he did.
Part
of what John saw was increasing conflict.
As background, there was a time early in the church’s history – the
church as a whole, not just in Smyrna – when Jesus’ followers thought of
themselves as Jews who had identified the Messiah and were following his
teachings. To some extent, for many
decades the Romans saw Christians as a subset of the Jews. But then there were a series of wars in
Judaea and ugly infighting among the Jews as well as the destruction of
Jerusalem. The suspicion and resentment
spilled out into centers of Jewish life all around the Mediterranean,
apparently including Smyrna. John says
to his friends,
“I know the slander on the part of those
who say that they are Jews and are not but are a synagogue of Satan.” [Revelation 2:9]
Unfortunately, that language has been used unfairly against
Jews down to this day, long after the two sister faiths have grown apart, and has
been used to justify bigotry and persecution.
Ironically, John was warning the church in Smyrna that he was hearing
slander about Christians (not of Jews) from within the religious community that
he foresaw turning into a pretext for persecution from outside it.
Now, as then, when people
of faith fail to respect one another, it gives permission for others to follow
their example, and trouble follows. The toxic
atmosphere of our own day is one where it is increasingly common to hear church
people express their thoughts about who is the “real Christian” or the “fake
Christian”. Whether with indignation or sadness
or embarrassment, we could all identify a group or two who say they are
Christian, but we all know that they are really nothing but a gathering (that’s
what the word “synagogue” means: a gathering, a coming-together; a rally, if
you will) of the like-minded and the wrong-headed. “Those people!” “Them!”
Whatever happened to
“us”? We can question people’s actions,
but it’s not our place to question their faith.
Here’s the thing, too – the predictive element of the message. It’s easy to see this becoming worse quickly,
and for our self-righteousness to be exploited in very harmful ways and for
very bad ends by people who truly do not care about right or wrong.
It’s reached the point
where to say, as I’m trying to do, to leave party politics outside the church
doors can be taken as dragging politics into the pulpit.
Dr. Ortley could offer
his advice because he knew my family’s medical histories, and knew how we, as
people, behaved. Fifteen years later I
would walk into his office and he would start out, “I saw your parents last
week. What are they not telling me?” He understood how things work or didn’t work.
In my own capacity, I
feel like I’m in a similar spot. For
what it’s worth, I’m putting a few ideas out there, too, and you can take them
or leave them, but they’re not coming from no place at all. My observations and conclusions may be wrong,
but they aren’t random, and I think they are fully in line with the scriptures
and with what John needed to tell the Smyrnans.
Since
1954 in this country we have had an understanding that church and state each
have their place. They both have a right
to speak, but they should take their turns instead of shouting each other down
or manipulating each other. Neither
would hijack the other. Sure, there is
always a gray area, but people who live with complex identities and relating to
both God and Caesar in varying ways should treat one another with respect
without making power plays or using matters of conscience as means of
manipulation. Traditionally, we’ve
called this “a wall of separation” between church and state.
The
embodiment of that has been in an IRS policy (of all places) called the Johnson
Amendment. That has said that
non-profits, including religious institutions, have the right to advocate for
issues they consider important, but not to endorse specific parties or
candidates. Violations could result in
the loss of non-profit standing. So I
can stand here and tell you that from my reading of the scriptures, it is wrong
to support policies being espoused by a candidate, but I cannot tell you whom
to vote for. To push that further, I
will repeat that it is no one’s place to identify someone as Christian or non-Christian
by the color of their hat, nor to put down anybody whose social or political
views derive from their beliefs as a Muslim or a Buddhist or even an atheist.
That
has been the social and religious consensus embodied in law for the past
seventy-one years. It has, for the most
part, worked well. This past week,
however, the IRS reversed itself, declaring to a federal court that
“When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its
congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of
faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics
viewed through the lens of religious faith, it neither ‘participate[s]’ nor ‘intervene[s]’
in a ‘political campaign,’ within the ordinary meaning of those words. … Thus,
communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with
religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of
faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted.”[1]
In other words, the deal is off. But from my own perspective it was a wise
policy and I intend, to the best of my ability, to stick to it.
The
gist of Revelation, is to warn us that when rulers look for endorsement they will
start to expect endorsement and in time, as under the Romans, to demand
endorsement. When the churches of the
New Testament had to tell the political powers that they would not go along and
rubber stamp everything the authorities wanted to do, they ended up with a
situation where somebody like the exiled prophet John had to pass on a word
from the Lord to the rest of the believers, a word that said:
“Do not fear what you are about to suffer.
Beware, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be
tested, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be faithful until death, and
I will give you the crown of life.” [Revelation 2:10]
That was a true word.
That continues to be a necessary word.
It’s one that must not be forgotten or overlooked. But it’s not one you want to hear spoken in
your own day. Do not let the state
overstep its place, because once it has done that it is harder and harder to
keep it from trampling places it has no business going, and it is bad for
everyone.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.232590/gov.uscourts.txed.232590.35.0.pdf
cited in a New York Times article by David A.
Farenthold on July 7, 2025 found at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/us/politics/irs-churches-politics-endorse-candidates.html
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