The third in a series of three sermons given by Dr. Ralph Blair at the 2010 Preaching Festival held in Ocean Grove, N.J.
“The Light of the World”
In the biblical book of Revelation, at 3:14-22, we read Christ’s letter to the messenger of the congregation at Laodicea in Asia Minor. Here it is:
“These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were either one or the other! So, since you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I’m about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
A 19th century art critic referred to Holman Hunt’s famous painting, “The Light of the World”, as “a painted text, a sermon on canvas”. And, so it has been since it was first displayed. Jesus is knocking at a door in the dark, a door all overgrown with weeds and dead flowers. His lantern shines the light. As he knocks, he calls out: “Listen! If anyone in there hears me and opens this door, I’ll come in and we’ll dine together.” (Rev 3:20) And remember that, in the biblical culture, dining together wasn’t about just grabbing a quick bite. It was evidence of most intimate fellowship.
Jesus makes his patient appeal at the door of the pathetically lukewarm Laodicean church. But Hunt’s painting is often taken to be an appeal to the unconverted. Maybe this confusion signifies something rather too common: There’s often little or no difference between non-Christians and nominal Christians when it comes to paying attention to Jesus and his values and priorities. We can all be as indifferent to Jesus as were the Laodiceans. Let’s identify.
And, as we’ve learned from his conversations with friends, Hunt, himself, was saddened by the self-serving behavior he’d seen in so many Christians – especially in the missionaries with whom he’d had to deal in Jerusalem. He lamented to a friend who’d asked him to be his son, Hunt’s, godfather: “I see so many signs that the Church and even Christianity must go to the ground unless some radical changes be made in it.”
Anne Rice certainly isn’t the first of Christ’s followers to be disillusioned by Christ’s followers. But instead of distracting ourselves with what we see as others’ faults, might we not be wiser to be wise to ourselves? We, ourselves, must turn from the ways we facilitate others’ disillusionment with Christians? Do we spend our days dining with Christ, learning from him and implementing in our lives what’s most important to him? Or are we another reason people see no point in paying attention to him? Does our life whet another’s interest to turn to Christ or are we a turn-off to anyone’s ever turning to him?
The door in the painting has no handle on the outside. Jesus doesn’t barge his way inside a congregation that couldn’t care less about him and his concerns. Yet he waits patiently for even one Christian to stir from preoccupation with the trivia of obsessions over what’s so soon and so utterly to pass away into oblivion.
In 1978, I picked up this rock on the Aegean shore of Patmos. It reminds me that Christianity is rooted in time and place, in history as hard and as real as this rock. Hunt meant the very brilliant colors and authentic detail of his paintings to convey this same sense of the reality of Christ.
It was on this barren island of Patmos where John was exiled for preaching Christ that he received a vision that included the letter to the Laodiceans. The Book of Revelation is a first century pastoral letter to Christians in the Roman province of Asia on Turkey’s western coast. John wrote this letter one Sunday, in response to revelation from God’s Spirit in Christ. The recipients across the sea to the east were being persecuted for what was mistaken to be “orgies” (you see, they met for “love” feasts), “cannibalism” (they ate pieces of a body and drank that body’s blood), “atheism” (they had only one god – thus, almost no god) and they were “unpatriotic” (they refused to bow basic allegiance to Caesar as “the Lord”). Today, Christians who happen to be gay are targeted with variations of similarly ignorant accusations: we’re alleged to be promiscuous, predatory, godless, and raging against all traditional values.
The book of Revelation was to be read aloud as a pastoral letter when these Christians worshipped together.
At the beginning of the Revelation letter, there are seven short letters. They’re from Christ. Each of these is addressed to a specific church with a special message for that particular group. It’s in the little letter to the group at Laodicea that we find the biblical allusion for Hunt’s “Light of the World” painting – though that phrase, itself, does not appear in that text.
Let’s listen in as the letter to the Laodiceans is read aloud in their hearing.
“These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the source of all God’s creation.”
As with all letters of the day, the writer is announced up front. And with each of these seven letters, there’s a unique reference to Christ as author. In this particular letter, he’s identified as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the prime source of all God’s creation.”
When we say “amen” at the end of a prayer, what are we doing? We’re affirming our agreement with what’s been said in the prayer. When people reply, “Amen, to that!”, they’re saying “Yep, that’s true!” “Amen” is a Hebrew word for “the truth”. When Isaiah wrote of the “God of truth”, he wrote, literally, the “God of Amen”. (Isa 65:16) The Laodicean letter, in naming Christ, “the faithful and true witness”, repeats this same title for God: “the Amen”.
And, as John – speaking of Christ, the Word of God – wrote in the Gospel: Without him, that is, without Christ, “not anything was made that was made”, so here, Christ identifies himself as the source of all of God’s creation.
Christ assures the Laodiceans:
“I know all your ways.”
Do we fear that all our ways are known? Do we try to hide what we think we are and shouldn’t be? Do we pretend to others we’re what we don’t think we are but think we should be? In our hiding and pretending around others, though, we can’t hide from ourselves what we’re trying to hide from them. We can’t pretend to ourselves. We see in ourselves all that we’re trying to hide from others but we’re blind to the fact that they can’t see what we’re seeing. In fact, our trying to hide only highlights in our own heads what we’re trying to hide. It then gets reinforced inside our own minds. But the others don’t have any experiential idea of what’s in our minds. Besides, it’s all the others can handle to try to manage their own PR. Still, we’re foolishly trying to hide and pretend in the view of those who have no view of our insides and we’re foolishly indifferent to the view of the One who has a full view of our insides and sees right through all our efforts to hide and self-righteously pretend to be what even we don’t believe we are. If this isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is.
On her first CD since coming to Jesus, Euro-gays’ icon, Nina Hagen, sings “God’s Radar” in her rollicking punk rock way. I won’t try to imitate her singing, but here are some lyrics: “God’s radar is fixed on you … No matter where you go, no matter what you do, … He’s fixed on your feet, he knows how you walk, He’s fixed on your tongue, he knows how you talk, … He’s fixed on your service, he knows how you give, He’s fixed on your heart, he knows how you live, He’s fixed on you everywhere.”
Now, even without Nina Hagen’s weirdly over-the-top persona, that song can sound scary. It remind us of childhood’s threat that Santa Claus is coming to town: “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so … O! you better watch out!”
But, God’s seeing all is not “a gotcha” in the trap of disgrace. God’s seeing all is “a gotcha” in the grip of his grace. He came to get us because he gets us – our being lost, our need to be found and saved. He gets us – He “knows how we’re formed, remembering that we’re dust”. (Ps 103:14) He gets us, not as our puny versions have us or as our pretentious perversions have us, and not as anyone else thinks of us, but as he has us, in Christ. He knows all, and his knowledge is not for our harm but for our good.
Well, besides the all that the Lord knows – what, more precisely, does the Lord know about these Laodiceans? He tells them. He says:
“You are neither hot nor cold! How I wish you were either hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I feel like spitting you out of my mouth.”
On a hot day, there’s nothing quite so refreshing as an ice-cold drink. On a cold day, there’s nothing quite so comforting as a piping hot drink. On any day, a lukewarm drink is unpalatable. So, we think we get the point here.
But more to the point: Indifference to relationship between those who used to be close can be the presence of a painful absence to at least one party. And in hot-tempered rage, one might kill another. Or someone might freeze you out with an ice-cold stare or a silent pout, but these are all acts of aggression and evidence of your being perceived as a person of significance. But, when you’re treated with indifference, you have no significance. In indifference, people can “take you or leave you” – it really doesn’t matter at all to them. They don’t bother to lift a little finger either for or against you for you’re not even on their radar. You are insignificant.
Now, there’s much about which we can and should be indifferent. After all, we can’t always be attending responsibly to everything and everyone. And we shouldn’t make a big deal over what’s not a big deal.
But it’s possible to rationalize inappropriate indifference, turning vice into virtue – as Ernest Pontifex does in Samuel Butler’s semi-autobiographic novel, The Way of All Flesh. A former evangelical and a contemporary of Hunt and Klopsch, Butler was revolted by what he called Victorian hypocrisy. He raped a woman he’d mistaken for a prostitute. He was sent to prison and disowned by his family. In this novel, he argues that we shouldn’t feel strongly about anything – though, presumably his pouting means he wasn’t as indifferent as he pretends. At any rate, he judges that churches should be like Laodicea – at least so far as is “compatible” with still being “church”. He advises that each church member “should only be hot in striving to be as lukewarm as possible”. And it’s no surprise that George Bernard Shaw gave his “amen” to that, adding: “Thus the world is kept sane less by the saints than by the vast mass of the indifferent, who neither act nor react in the matter. Butler’s preaching of the gospel of Laodicea was a piece of common sense,” says Shaw.
Not so, says the Lord. He tells the Laodiceans that their indifference turns his stomach. And his illustration of their nauseating narcissism is mercifully understated. He’s being kind. His saying he feels like throwing up over their indifference is a very gentle rebuke in view of the magnitude of their offensiveness. It’s what they’re indifferent about and to whom their indifferent that makes the Laodicean indifference so outlandishly offensive.
The Laodiceans are indifferent to the One who, because of his love for them, took the deadly curse of their sin onto himself in order to give them the gift of his own life. They’re indifferent about the best news the world ever heard. They couldn’t care less about the most significant act of love in the history of the world. What’s more, they’re indifferent to what they’re alleged once to have tasted of Jesus and his love. And their indifference isn’t a matter of mere rumor. It’s the unimpeachable knowledge of the Lord.
What in this world could so preoccupy them? What navel-gazing is going on that so blinds them to the Light of the world? What “bigger deal” do they think they have going for themselves inside their clique than the One who stands knocking outside their door? Is their Facebook page more fascinating than face-time with him? Does their My Space crowd out his?
Yet, in spite of their indifference to him who died for them, he comes calling, wooing, even weeping over them and their careless plight.
He warns them of their misconceptions, their misadventures and their consequent misfortune in counting on their misplaced self-confidence.
“You say, ‘I’m rich. I have wealth. I don’t need anything.’ But you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
The town of Laodicea was, indeed, rich. It was a prosperous banking center on a major trade route with the East. And the Laodiceans bragged about it. We know from historical records that the Laodiceans took such pride in their wealth that, even after a devastating earthquake, they refused to accept any Roman financial aid for rebuilding. But it’s one thing to know you have lots more money than a lot of other folks. It’s another thing to delude yourself into thinking that your money will always buy you whatever you need or want. All the money in the world isn’t enough to buy what no amount of money can buy. Besides, what people try to buy often turns out to be a big disappointment because what they try to buy is a big fat fantasy and what they end up with is a mixed bag.
Some try to turn things around by returning that mixed bag for another big fat fantasy that, in turn, turns out to be another mixed bag. The rich either never learn the lesson to be learned and keep shopping into more and more discontentment and disillusionment, or they shop ‘til they drop into a defensive pose of cynicism. And tragically, few ever move beyond their self-delusion and denial to realize how really poverty stricken they are.
But the Lord, here, does warn them that they’re deluding themselves, that they don’t really realize what horrendous shape they’re in. He says they’re wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
Now the wretchedness of the rich is, at least, more evident to the rich than it is to the poor, for the poor have fantasies about what it would be if only they were rich. The rich know from disappointing experience that being “rich” is a mixed bag. The poor don’t know that. But the rich can think, as the poor can think, that they simply don’t yet have enough. John D. Rockefeller was asked how much money is enough. His answer: one more dollar.
Tragically, so many of the rich as well as the poor stubbornly refuse to learn how to be truly rich.
Now, there are other ways in which we boast of how well we measure up. We pretend to have more money than we know we have, so we go into deep debt to strut stuff we can’t afford and maybe don’t even own – and certainly don’t need. But we also pretend we’re better all around than we think we are. We pretend we’re smarter than we think we are. We pretend we’re less shameful than we think we are. We pretend our motives are less mixed than we know darn well they are.
As I’ve said, none of us believes our poses since our posing is an effort at camouflage that, itself, reminds us of how very much we think we’re not better, not smarter, not less shameful, not more purely motivated. We’re all in need of becoming truly rich in all these areas. Yet, the reminding that’s inherent in these poses provides opportunity to know ourselves more honestly and to seek a truer solution to our basic need.
So, the Lord points to the Laodiceans’ deception to point the way out of it. He counsels them on how they might become truly rich, truly well off, truly healthy and truly self-aware. The counseling begins where all the deepest counsel begins: with Christ and his being able and willing to supply one’s every need in its deepest sense. He says:
“I counsel you to buy, from me, gold refined in fire, so you can become rich, and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes so you can see.”
Besides being a big banking center and standing so strategically along that lucrative trade route, Laodicea was famous for its rich black wool and its eminent medical school, famous for eye ointments. So Christ illustrates his appeal by relating their real needs to the very things in which they foolishly boasted their needs were all fulfilled.
They’re still shamefully naked, even when they’re all dolled up in their fashionable black woolen finery. They need garments washed whiter than snow. They’re spiritually blind, no matter how much of their celebrated eye salve they slather on. They need to wake up and open their eyes and behold the One who still stands at their door and knocks. They need their eyes opened that they may see the truth about themselves and the truth about the One who is the Truth.
These are not harsh words to no good purpose. They are the loving words of the Lord, words used to woo them back to life with him. He’s using Isaiah’s call of the Lord to “buy without money” all that is offered by the Lord. His calling attention to their inattention is not a thoughtless attack. He’s calling them back in love, so that their needs can be fully filled. He’s telling them what they need to hear for their good, not what they defensively think they want to hear for their woefully shortsighted sense of their good.
The Lord assures them:
“I rebuke and discipline those whom I love.”
Strange how we so quickly take rebuke of the Lord’s Spirit as mean-spirited – just as a toddler does in resenting the discipline of loving parents.
Jesus says:
“Look, I’m here! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and I will dine with him, and he with me.”
The Lord is always the “Hound of Heaven” in deliberate pursuit of us, going to all lengths to rescue us, as the destitute addict and poet. Francis Thompson, wrote from his own experience of the Lord’s tracking him down. And as our departed brother, Hoppe, reaffirmed from his experience of the Lord’s pursuit of him and his partner Burger. And as so many other saints from all the ages have shared of their experience of the Lord.
After Peter’s denying his Lord on the night of the betrayal and arrest, the very first word that’s passed on to Peter in particular is that Jesus would greet him again in Galilee. And so it is here with the indifferent church at Laodicea. The Lord has not deserted the deserters. He’s still standing there so near, just on the other side of the door, waiting, willing to be the closest friend and brother to those for whom he died, those who’ve lost their first love for him and are now living in indifference toward him.
Notice that Christ says: “If anyone [in there] hears me”. We don’t have to wait for all the others to hear and respond. Each is given opportunity to hear and respond on his or her own. Christ holds out his promise to the individual:
“To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Maybe, today, we’re so enmeshed in a culture of entitlement that we don’t think twice about thinking we have rights to everything – a right to someone else’s time, a right to someone else’s money, a right someone else’s body, a right to someone else’s boyfriend. But such talk of “rights” wasn’t common in the ancient world. If you weren’t a Roman citizen, you had no rights. If you were a woman or a child, an infant or a slave – forget about rights. You were property – like land was, like a beast was, like a tool was.
But the One his earliest followers called “Lord of all” is, here, promising to give to those who’d turn around and recover from their having failed to follow him, the right to sit with him in his authority over all things. As the Father honored him for his faithfulness even to his dying on a cross for our redemption, so he will honor those he redeemed.
The Laodiceans’ letter, unlike the other six letters, includes no word of praise for them. Nonetheless, the letter does close as each of the other letters does, with words of hope:
“He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says.”
Some 1,900 years ago, Christ spoke through this letter to the Laodiceans. In 2010, Christ speaks through this same letter to some gay men at Ocean Grove. As Laodiceans had opportunity to hear and respond then, we have opportunity to hear and respond now. His promise still holds, His invitation still stands: Anyone who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says.
Do we have ears to hear? Do we hear the voice of God’s Spirit? Today, at heart’s door, is there a glow of light? That’s Jesus, the Light of the world. The first bright rays of the Morning Star are shining. Wake up. Foresee by faith what no eye has yet seen of him who one day will be seen face to Face.