Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-december-16
Revelation 3:14-22
To the Church in Laodicea
14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 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. 18 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.
19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 20 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 them, and they with me.
21 To the one 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. 22 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
As we said yesterday, it’s the fantastic apocalyptic part of the Revelation of John that gets the attention – the part with all the dragons and horsemen and cosmic battles. But there are seven letters at the beginning of the book that probably tell us who John was writing this whole thing for. Today’s epistle reading is the letter to the church in the city of Laodicea, and it has an important word that still speaks to people like us 2,000 years later.
God has a complaint with the church in Laodicea, John says. That complaint is that the people in that church are ‘lukewarm’ about their faith. In fact, God finds their ‘lukewarm-ness’ so revolting that he will ‘spit the Laodicean church out of his mouth.’ And actually, the text is even more harsh than that – the editors of our NIV Bible have apparently wanted to spare our sensibilities somewhat; the original Greek says God will “vomit” the Laodicean church out of his mouth.
A few years ago, one of the church leadership services I subscribe to sent along an article about ‘lukewarm faith.’ The author of the article said that in his opinion, this syndrome is the greatest problem of the western church in our time. He called it “Christian atheism.” Real atheists claim that God doesn’t exist. But according to this article, lukewarm followers of Jesus – the Christian atheists he writes about – are even worse. Because lukewarm Christians might not say that God doesn’t exist, but instead act like God doesn’t matter.
Years ago, I heard a talk by a Presbyterian evangelist. (And yes, I know, that sounds like an oxymoron.) The evangelist said that one of the problems the church faces in our time is that so many Americans were vaccinated with a weak strain of the Christian faith as kids, and are now protected against catching the real faith as adults. We’re stuck in a permanent state of ‘lukewarmth.’ And one of the symptoms of that lukewarm state is being convinced that we’re just the kind of religious folks God likes. We’re church members, we’re doing fine materially, so obviously God is happy with us. But this passage tells us that this attitude betrays a kind of spiritual blindness – a failure to see that in God’s eyes, our lukewarm faith leaves us “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
An uncomfortable truth is that Jesus has never called anyone to be a church member. Instead, Jesus calls us to be disciples. Church members can be “comfortably numb” – comfortably lukewarm; as long as we at least pay our per capita and show up for worship once in a while, it’s all good. But being a disciple is different. Being a disciple means making a commitment to learning and growing in the things of the faith. And not just learning in our heads – learning in a way that genuinely transforms our hearts. In a way that changes our values and our priorities in life.
And one of the biggest changes that happens when you make a transition from church member to actual disciple is that ‘the temperature starts to go up’ on your faith. You find yourself hungering to know more about the teachings of Jesus, and the rest of God’s Word. You find yourself wanting to genuinely know God personally – not just to learn about him as a subject in school. To commune with God in deeper prayer. You experience a genuine discomfort when you are unable to worship. And you begin to feel compelled to serve others in Jesus’ name, and to share your faith with others.
Later in this passage, God says to the Laodiceans (and to us, probably), “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline.” God rebukes us in this passage – and calls us to stop being satisfied with the lukewarm faith so many of us have settled into, and to pray that the Holy Spirit will begin to heat us up more and more so that we become the kind of ‘on-fire’ disciples Jesus wants. Because it’s when that happens that disciples become genuinely useful to God’s kingdom.
Let’s pray. Lord, protect us against being lukewarm in our faith. Let your Holy Spirit warm us with its fire, and fill us with a hunger to know you better and serve you more faithfully. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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