"Wake up What Remains"

 

Revelation 3:1-6

August 3, 2025

 

¹‘And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars:

‘I know your works; you have a name for being alive, but you are dead. ²Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is at the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. ³Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. ⁴Yet you have still a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes; they will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. ⁵If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels. ⁶Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

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            I’ve decided to add a new place to my bucket list.  It’s the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California.  For the most part, it looks like this:

As gray as it is, you can spot a few yellow dots in this picture and some pale green.  The website for the park says a few things about rattlesnakes that I skipped over and then that the park has “92 different plant families, 346 genera and hundreds of flowering species”. 

            A lot of them are going to be cactuses or grasses adapted to a desert environment, but there will also be species like this desert lily:

 

That isn’t, strictly speaking, a lily.  It is from a similar family, though, and grows from a bulb.  The lily bulbs we are used to stay underground all winter and wait until it warms up enough in the spring to emerge and flower.  These stay underground all summer and come out when it is cool enough to appear above ground.

            The two major factors in this environment are, obviously, the heat and the scarcity of water.  Every so often, though, there are the torrential rains that southern California gets, the kind that cause flash floods and mudslides in Los Angeles.  Further out in the desert, if the winds are just right and various conditions permit, like in 2024, there may be a rare rainstorm and then this happens:

 

            When John wrote from exile to the church in Sardis, he sent a word to them on behalf of Jesus saying that there was a kind of desert dryness to them that could send them either way.  On one hand, they might look good, but that appearance isn’t everything. 

“You have a name for being alive, but you are dead.” [Revelation 3:1]

Then again, the Lord doesn’t just give up, and neither should his people.  Even a desert can bloom if the right conditions are met.  A place may have a name for being dead, but come alive.

“Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is at the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent.” [Revelation 3:2-3]

The challenge of living in a time or place of spiritual aridity, a time or place that cannot truly gauge the signs of when real faithfulness and discipleship are present is a time to lean even more on Jesus’ promises and to trust him more certainly when he says,

“I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels.” [Revelation 3:5] 

            Since Revelation sends this message to a church, it’s right to put it into the context of a church in our day.  Thom Rainer wrote in 2020,

“Western culture has shifted; and it has shifted largely against churches. …I can only imagine how the first-century Christians felt as they were trying to reach a world that needed to hear the good news of the resurrected Savior.  I can only imagine their excitement and their fear.  They knew the path ahead would be both difficult and dangerous.  But they also knew their efforts would be worth the cost.

As we enter this unknown era, we’re uncertain about the specifics of what will unfold, but we remain certain that the God of all wisdom and power will be with us every step of the way.”[1]

            The same message applies across the board in all sorts of situations for people who are doing their best just to be faithful followers of Jesus but who feel unsupported in that for whatever reason.  One writer, Kenneth Leech, points to and applauds a kind of Christian courage that is heroic exactly because it recognizes how upside-down the world’s judgments of success are.  His main focus is on what goes on inside people when they pray and he writes,

“All spirituality must learn to cope with doubt and confusion, and prayer which is true can never be cosy [sic] and secure. …Yet we do not pray in order to provide ourselves with defenses against danger, but in order to face the danger through the power of the God who has been there first, who has cleansed the waters and harrowed hell.”[2]

Or, as Jesus himself put things:

“In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!” [John 16:33]

 

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[1] Thom S. Rainer, The Post-Quarantine Church (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2020), 110-111.

[2] Kenneth Leech, True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 160.

"Shame!"

 

Revelation 2:18-29

July 27, 2025

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze:

“I know your works: your love, faith, service, and endurance. I know that your latest works are greater than the first.  But I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to engage in sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.  Beware, I am throwing her on a bed, and those who commit adultery with her I am throwing into great distress, unless they repent of her doings,  and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.  But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call ‘the deep things of Satan,’ to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden; only hold fast to what you have until I come.  To everyone who conquers and continues to do my works to the end,

I will give authority over the nations,
 to rule them with an iron scepter,
    as when clay pots are shattered—

“even as I also received authority from my Father. To the one who conquers I will also give the morning star.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

 

*********************************************

 

            In case you missed it, there was some excitement at a Coldplay concert in Connecticut last week.  Chris Martin, the band’s lead, was scanning around the audience with his phone, which was tied into the overhead screen, like the kiss-cam at a baseball game.  The lens landed on a cute, middle-aged couple who were cuddling and swaying with the music.  When the video appeared on the screen, that stopped in no time.  The woman tried to cover her face with her hands and she turned her back while the man pulled his arms away and tried to duck down out of sight. 

Neither the man’s wife nor the Board of Directors at the company where he was CEO and she was head of human resources had anything good to say about it the next day.  But later in the week someone did, and that was Helen Schulman, who writes a column on ethics for the New York Times.  She said,

“I had thought that the toxic sludge of shamelessness … had wiped out the old-fashioned notion World Health Organization declared the disease eliminated in the United States in the year 2000.  I never thought I’d be glad to see shame as a concept, at least, brought back from the dead.”[1]

She’s kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but her point is right on target.  Three cheers for embarrassment!  It goes beyond mere propriety.  Their reaction reveals a sense of right and wrong that hasn’t totally evaporated into an atmosphere of shamelessness.  No matter what the media may project or the spirit of the age may claim, there are recognizable limits.

Rarely do we see the broken boundary come to light this dramatically, on the screen at a concert, but the participants’ reaction, and the reaction of the crowd and of the band, too, point out that fidelity matters.  Not overstepping the lines within business or sports or education or church matters.  And how we address their violation matters, too. 

            One of the big challenges that is built into Christian faith is to live with the proper balance between the awareness that God is merciful and kind and that there is no sin that is so heinous that it cannot be forgiven, that there is no person who is beyond redemption; and yet there is the simultaneous awareness that there is truly such a thing as sin, whose effects go far beyond any particular instance as to poison the world.  There need to be consequences or there will be worse consequences.  Following a long list of rules does not set us right with God, but we need clear-cut rules to prevent total chaos from overwhelming every relationship. 

God’s grace and understanding is there to help us when we fail to meet standards.  He knows us far better than we know ourselves, and spots our shortcomings even when we are too close to see them.  I John 2:1-2 says,

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

What gets in the way of God’s forgiveness isn’t sin but the very real temptation to look at our wrongdoing and faults and say, “So what?”

            It sounds like things were getting out of hand in Thyatira. 

“I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to engage in sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.”

Across the centuries, anytime that somebody calls someone else a Jezebel, that’s usually a way of saying, “She has a lot of influence, and she uses it for no good.”  Usually there’s also an element of “…and she’s a real floozy!” but that’s really secondary.  It’s leading people to do whatever they please without consideration of pleasing God that lies at the heart of a kind of spiritual destructiveness. 

We can be thankful for those moments when a sense of shame does kick in.  If that’s what holds someone back from sin, hurray.  It would be better arising from love of God, but even so whatever holds someone back from sin is something to be thankful for. 

In our national life, there was a time when Senator Joseph McCarthy was using fear of the Soviets to control the government.  He was attacking people left and right (okay, mostly left) as being Communists and accusing them of all sorts of crimes and corruption on the thinnest of suspicions, and was ruining careers and lives.  Then he went for the Army.  The story of what happened next is told this way on the U.S. Senate web page:

“The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: ‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.’ When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?’”[2]

It was the beginning of the end of that ugly period.

            Sometimes it takes someone like the prophet John, writing from exile to a group he knew and cared for deeply, to say, “Hold on a minute!  Is this what you think God made you for?  When Jesus set you free from sin, was it so that you could run headlong back into it?”

            Look, human beings are a mess.  All of us, without exception.  But God’s Holy Spirit is there to step in.  I can hear echoes of what God offers in one of the songs that I expect might have been on the playlist at that Coldplay concert last week.  It’s called, “Fix You”:

“When you try your best, but you don't succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streamin' down your face
When you lose somethin' you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it show

But if you never try, you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you”

 

 

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[1] Helen Schulman, “The Coldplay Concert Shame Is Something to Celebrate” (New York Times, July 21, 2025).

[2] https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm

"I Know Where You Are Living" - July 20, 2025

 

Revelation 2:12-17
July 20, 2025

 

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword:

“I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives.  But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel, so that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and engage in sexual immorality.  So you also have some who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent, then. If not, I will come to you soon and wage war against them with the sword of my mouth.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.

*************************************

 

            The message to the church in Pergamum is cryptic.  Untangling some of its threads, though, the key to it is the very beginning:

“I know where you are living.”

God understands the many and varied circumstances of our lives, and that a lot of situations we face are hostile to a life of faith and discipleship.

            The city of Pergamum was one of the first cities to jump on the emperor-worship bandwagon when Augustus let it be known that it was alright with him if sacrifices were offered directly to statues representing him.  Pergamum was the first city in the province to be allowed to build a temple in his honor and about a hundred years later the emperor Trajan made Pergamum the first city to add another temple for emperor-worship generally.  (Trajan was, of course, the emperor of the day, and had been the general who had leveled Jerusalem early in his military career.)

“I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is.”

What is it like to live in a place where civic pride is tied to pagan worship?  I don’t know… have you ever been to the Firebird Festival?  A giant bird is built every year to be burnt at the winter solstice while a crowd stands around and cheers on the way to or from the bars – maybe both.  That sounds kind of like a pre-Christian, northern European sort of thing to me.  The difference is that I don’t think anybody there genuinely believes that the return of longer days depends on that ritual, and that nobody is legally required to take part.  In some circles, though, there could be a kind of social ostracism of that one person who balks at it.  In some circles there’s reluctance to be the killjoy.

Backing out of the celebration of the emperor, though, would be worse than being a wet blanket, worse than being unpatriotic.  It would be treason.  Apparently the Christians in Pergamum had taken their chances on that, for which the scriptures honor them, even though one of them paid a steep price, as others would later.  Things were rough, we read,

“Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives.” [Revelation 2:13]

God wanted his people living there, with that kind of persecution in living memory, to know clearly that he is well aware of what they are up against.

            This should provide a word of support also for situations that are not anywhere near that extreme, but nevertheless real.  With less external social expectation that anyone will have any religious affiliation at all, Christian or not, there is also less acceptance when someone’s faith leads them to opt out of a group activity. 

            Sports is a big one.  Usually we talk about how kids’ leagues now have Sunday morning games.  We ignore the fact that major races for adult runners are usually scheduled for that time.  It’s more than that, though.  One of the things that the early Christians clashed with their society over was having gladiators killing each other for a crowd’s entertainment.  How Christian is it to watch somebody’s skull cracked open and to cheer, “Yeah!  Go for it!”  How Christian is it to bet on the outcome of a sword fight?  Then again, is it right to make money from or to find pleasure in a sport where somebody like Muhammed Ali ends up with so many slugs to the head that his brain turns to mush as he ages?  Say that your boss or an influential client invites you to ringside seats.

            Another spot people find themselves in is when they’re invited to be part of a wedding.  One time somebody I knew asked a close friend to be his best man because he said he was somebody he knew would keep the bachelor party (and I quote) “within the bounds of moral law and good taste”.  These days it tends to be bachelorette parties that get out of hand.  Neighbors of mine were getting married and the bridesmaids threw the bride into an SUV whose back window said, “Trudy’s getting hitched!  Venmo drink money to ______ .”  Should you just volunteer to be the designated driver?  If you do that are you keeping someone safe, or are you enabling their excess?

            Where is the line when someone tells an offensive joke or uses a derogatory term?  Have you ever ghosted someone online and, if so, why?  Would you do the same to someone else if your general relationship to them was different?  What if your dealing with somebody you sort of dislike to begin with; would you be acting on principle or would their behavior just be the excuse for holding them at a distance or blocking them in a way you’ve wanted to do for awhile anyway?

            I guarantee that these situations or ones akin to them are going to arise, and I guarantee that there will be times, no matter what you do, that you ask yourself afterward if you did the right thing, and I guarantee you that the answer you get will be “maybe” or “I hope so” or “we’ll see”.  In that moment

“I know where you are living,”

says the Lord. 

Jesus walked the earth in a time and place of deep ambiguity, and people who were out to get him tried to entangle him in easy answers to complicated questions.  He always turned things back on the questioners to make them examine their own hearts.

“And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’  And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this and whose title?’ They answered, ‘Caesar’s.’  Jesus said to them, ‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.” [Mark 12:13-17]

He does the same thing to us, understanding the pressures that people face when they do love both God and neighbor.  He’s asking us to be faithful in all our ways, not to be separated from life. 

It’s when we embrace his ways in the midst of life’s pressures that we become witnesses to his love, because it was the embrace of God’s ways in the face of an unfaithful world that led him to the cross, and his unflinching love for the human beings who put him there that guarantees our pardon.  He knows where we live and came in person to find us, and to help us live, here and now, and forever.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” [John 3:17]

He is the one who will always wipe the slate clean, no matter what.  In the midst of group pressures and all kinds of influences that is always going to be between each human being and him.

“To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.” [Revelation 2:17]

"What You Are About to Suffer" - July 13, 2025

 

Revelation 2:8-11
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.

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[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

 

"The Love You Had at First" - July 6, 2025

 

Revelation 2:1-7
July 6, 2025

 

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:

“I know your works, your toil and your endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them to be false. I also know that you are enduring and bearing up for the sake of my name and that you have not grown weary. ⁴ But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, then, from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.  Yet this is to your credit: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.

 

************************************

 

            For some reason, reading this letter to the church in Ephesus leaves me with one question going around and around in my head.  I’m sure it’s a question that at least one or two other people here are asking themselves: Who were the Nicolaitans?  Why was it a good thing to hate their works?

            I went to my fallback source for answers, the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, pulled down the K-Q volume, and began to read.

“NICOLAITANS… Followers of a Nicolaus.  Their works and teaching in the churches of EPHESUS and PERGAMUM are condemned by John.  Since the same practice and teaching of immorality and of idolatry appear in the church of Thyatira, the Nicolaitans, though not named, were probably present also in this church (Rev. 2:20-25).  Thus three out of the seven churches to whom John wrote were afflicted with this heretical sect.  In Ephesus their deeds were hated by the church and by Christ; in Pergamum there were some who held their doctrine; in Thyatira the woman Jezebel, a self-styled prophetess, was tolerated and allowed to teach and to beguile Christ’s servants. …”

The author goes on for another paragraph until he writes:

“Nothing is confidently known about the Nicolaitans beyond John’s references to them.  Their works are hated, but not described, in the letter to Ephesus. …”

Another half a page goes by explaining not only why we know nothing about them, but listing a lot of ancient and early medieval authors who also knew nothing about them, either.

            However.

            The time and energy, paper and ink wasted on this question is, in fact, a wonderful illustration of the message that we can and should take from this passage, which is not to become distracted.  Stay focused on the main point of discipleship.  Live faithfully and proclaim the good news.  If you get off track, get back on.

“I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.   Remember, then, from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first.” [Revelation 2:4-5]

Churches do a lot of good.  The more good they do, though, the easier it becomes to find motivation in the sense of accomplishment rather than in the sense of Christian mission. 

            Every year, when December rolls around, you see advertisements for performances of Handel’s Messiah.  It’s a terrific piece of music, of course.  Putting it on is an achievement in itself because of the work it takes to arrange an orchestra, find the right venue, recruit enough singers and four decent soloists.  (And you really, really, really have to have a good soprano.)  At the end of the performance (speaking for myself here) there’s a sense of relief similar to the end of a baseball game that has gone into extra innings.

            Messiah was not composed for holiday entertainment, though.  It was written to raise funds for three charities in Dublin.  One was a hospital, one was a clinic, and one was a prison ministry.  In fact, the first performance raised enough funds to spring 142 people from debtor’s prison.  Seventeen centuries earlier, long before Dublin was founded by Vikings, a Galilean carpenter named Jesus announced himself as the Messiah using the words of Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” [Luke 4:18-19]

 

That first performance of Handel’s oratorio was right in line with that.  Subsequent concerts have often – not always, but often enough – had other impulses behind them.

            It’s so easy to slip off course, when some good but secondary cause presents itself.  It’s so easy to get wrapped up in a fundraiser and forget what the money is for, or to let numbers or applause or likes or human approval be the way to define success instead of asking if whatever is going on would make Jesus smile.

            Remember, as John told the Ephesians, “the love you had at first.”  Keep going back to that.  Then go and do great things for the sake of that love, instead of wasting time and resources on side issues and false starts.

“Rise up, ye saints of God! 

Have done with lesser things. 

Give heart and mind and soul and strength

to serve the King of kings.

 

Lift high the cross of Christ!

Tread where his feet have trod. 

As partners with the Son of Man,

rise up, ye saints of God!”

"Endurance and Testimony" - June 29, 2025

 

Revelation 1:9-11
June 29, 2025

 

^“I, John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.  I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”

 

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            The last book of the Bible, Revelation (no ‘s’ on that), is a favorite for people who want to convince others that they have a special inside line to God about what the future holds.  It gets mixed into a sort of stew with chunks from the books of Daniel and I Thessalonians and is served up with gravy made from the events of the interpreter’s time, and gets washed down with a glass of gloating at the ill fortune of the enemy of the day.  That does nothing in the long run to call people to faith in Christ or to strengthen believers.

            Nevertheless, it is a great book, one that the church has taken as inspired by God himself, although because of its strange imagery and complicated symbolism it took centuries longer than the other books of the New Testament to gain acceptance.  Its greatness lies in its message, that comes to us through a man about whom we know little and that was first directed to churches spread out along the southwestern coast of what is now Turkey. 

That message, delivered to them at a time of threat and fear and suffering, is about as audacious as it could be – dangerously so, which is why much of it was sent to them in a sort of coded, symbolic way.  That message is still a courageous declaration: the world is going to keep on being the world, and making the innocent suffer; but keep on doing what is right – no matter what – and the true Lord of all will sort things out and set them right in the end. 

“‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.  Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.’

‘See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work.  I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’” [Revelation 22:10-13]

            At the start of the book, the author, whose name was John, establishes his right to speak that message on behalf of God.  He tells us who he is and what his Christian experience has been.

^“I, John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” [Revelation 1:9]

He speaks as a brother, an equal, to the people he writes to.  Like them, he is going through a time of persecution that calls for endurance, which he does for the sake of Jesus and his kingdom. 

For John that had meant exile to the island of Patmos.  In the words of Karen Engle,

“Juvenal, the Roman satirist, active toward the end of the first century AD, describes several Greek islands that are near to Patmos as ‘rocks crowded with our noble exiles.’ While Juvenal does not mention Patmos specifically, this smallish island, no more than 30 miles in circumference, might well also have served such a function, a place to which to send largely elite undesirables, removing them from their places of influence where they might foment trouble or otherwise cause embarrassment for Rome and its leaders.”[1]

If exile was all that John had faced, he had gotten off lightly.  It was around his time that the Roman emperors were beginning to get rid of Christians more permanently.  The problem was that the emperors had decided that it would be good for an empire that included peoples who worshiped a variety of gods to have at least one unifying divine figure they could all worship together.  That would bring a sense of one-ness to everybody from Britain to Syria to Egypt and North Africa.

That one additional god would be whatever Roman emperor was in charge at that time.  Failure to recognize Nero or Caligula or Trajan or whoever as a god when called upon to do so would be seen as treason.  And we all know what happens to traitors.  Not every place in the Empire enforced those laws all the time, but for two centuries they were a constant threat used whenever local rulers wanted to assert their control or prove their loyalty to Rome. 

One comparison in our own day would be to North Korea.  A group called Open Doors describes conditions there this way:

“If your Christian faith is discovered in North Korea, you could be killed on the spot. If you aren't killed, you will be deported to a labour camp and treated as a political criminal. You will be punished with years of hard labour that few survive. And it's not only you who will be punished: North Korean authorities are likely to round up your extended family and punish them too, even if your family members aren't Christians. …

Recognising any deity beyond the Kim family is considered a threat to the country's leadership. ‘Anti-reactionary thought laws’ were enacted in December 2020. These made it even clearer that being a Christian or owning a Bible is a serious crime and will be severely punished.”[2]

Consider the powerful message of Revelation to North Korean Christians: Kim Jon-Ung is not a god.  His father was not a god.  His grandfather was not a god.  His successors will not be gods.  He holds power now, through his use of starvation and terror, but he will fall under the more powerful judgement of the true God, who does not forget Kim’s victims and their suffering.

            Consider the powerful message of Revelation for all the peoples of the earth, even our own nation.  Love your country but love God more.  Honor the laws of your nation but honor God’s laws first.  There are good rulers and bad rulers, and they will do good ill to their people.  But while rulers come and rulers go, the King of kings remains, the Alpha and the Omega.

Revelation describes a vision of the rule of that Lord of lords as an eternal and righteous kingdom ruled not by the likes of Caesar or Genghis Khan or Pol Pot or even the less lethal but still proud George III or Queen Victoria.

            John wrote what he heard and saw, and it would be far better.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’”

 

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[1] https://www.logos.com/grow/where-is-the-island-of-patmos-and-whats-it-like/?msockid=3cea78d49e6d6d323f9d6df69fdd6c4d

[2] https://www.opendoorsus.org/en-US/persecution/countries/north-korea/  This report is cited in official report on religious freedom published by the U.S. State Department in 2022, found at https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/north-korea/  .