Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: Today, we're gonna jump back into this extended look that we're taking at the book of Revelation. We are tracking with the release of our very own Jeremy Duncan's upside down apocalypse book that's just come out. Super exciting. And last week, before jumping into all of the surreal and complex imagery of this text, Jeremy offered us some suggestions for how to read and interpret it well without getting in over our heads. The truth is, for us here in our community, we always start with Jesus as our interpretive lens.
We always begin with the gospel accounts of Jesus' life and teaching as our foundation so that when we run across difficult ideas or we find confusing language or we find images that are violent and disturbing, we use Jesus' life as an interpretive guide for how to handle those things. And we're gonna do this over and over again in this series. We're gonna do it today. The book of Revelation does contain a bunch of ancient and wacky images that are hard to know what to do with. And what we want to explore together is the ways that this text uses those disorienting and disruptive images to spark some hope in us because it overturns the bleak and destructive views of the world with a message of how Jesus did, in fact, change everything.
Jesus is still committed to making all things new. And as we discussed last week, the word apocalypse doesn't mean destruction, doesn't mean the end, but rather it means an uncovering or a revealing. And if we keep this in mind as we read, perhaps we will find that we are able to see Jesus and see the world around us and see the wide sweeping arc of God's goodness in the scripture in new ways. Or at least that's our hope. Now today, we're going to look at the opening three chapters of the text.
We're gonna talk about writing letters and the cost of orthodoxy and victory revealed. But before we jump in, I wanna invite you to from wherever you have come today, to take a moment. Let's pause and pray together. God, that we see clearly in Jesus, We come to this moment now, and we are drawn from all kinds of places. Some of us are carrying the heaviness of our life with us, And our hearts are open to you.
Our deepest desires are known. And so we ask for courage to trust your goodness. We ask for peace to calm our anxiety in a world that's full of so much turmoil, where power crushes the weak, where injustice crushes our hope, and where our bodies and our minds betray us. Help us to pause even now and to catch a glimpse of the hope you bring. It's not shallow or passing, but it is with us in all we face.
I ask, would you guide us now into ancient word and truth? We pray in the name of Christ. Amen. Okay. We've got a little bit of ground to cover here.
So let's jump right into the text. I'm gonna read from the first few verses of this text together. I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus. I was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And on the Lord's day, I was in the spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said, write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and Smyrna, Pergamum, Theatira Theatira.
Let's try that again. Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Now tradition holds that this is the John of gospel fame. This is one of Jesus' closest friends who in the waning years of his life was exiled to a small island. He receives these images.
He hears these messages, and he writes to this group of seven Christian communities in Western Asia Minor, what is now modern Turkey. Now with that said, in our FAQ series that we just went through, the author of the gospel of John, and as we learned, is likely a second generation Christian from later in the first century. And the author of Revelation, this text that I've just read to you from, makes no claim to being an apostle or having an authoritative position in the early church. And so the modern scholarly consensus is simply to take this John at his word. He's a follower of Jesus.
His parents called him John, and he has a pastoral connection to these early Christian communities in Asia Minor. And this might be one of the most overlooked aspects of John's apocalyptic imagination that before he starts talking about grand throne rooms and monsters and disasters that are fit for an Avengers film, he just writes to those that he cares about or at least those he knew about. As you go through each of the short seven letters, we're not gonna do them all. It's okay. Relax.
You can see that the style of other letters in the Christian scripture shows up here, where early Christian leaders had a habit of stating their affection for their friends, and then they would position themselves as speaking for God. And they would offer a warning, or they would express their frustration. And ultimately, they often consoled their readers in identifying with the suffering and the displacement that early Christians may have been going through. And this is why John starts this way. He states their friendship status.
He assures them that Jesus is worthy of their commitment. And as scholars like to point out, in several places, he makes specific references to a city's history that his readers would have understood. For example, in chapter three, we read about the city of Sardis. And Sardis had an HR problem because they kept hiring guards that would fall asleep and let their enemies into the city. This happens twice in history.
So when John writes to that church that they need to wake up and pay attention, scholars think that he may have been referencing these events that everybody would have known about it. It's not unlike if somebody were to write to the church in Calgary and use the image of a rising flooding river as a warning to always be prepared. If you lived here in 2013, you understand. If you live here now and have to drive around in all this construction, you understand what the person's getting at. Correct?
And the point is just that there's some implied intimacy in the apocalyptic images that these letters contain. John knew real stories, and he knew real faces of actual people. And if we are training ourselves to think of apocalypse as unveiling and uncovering instead of catastrophe, then these letters would have hit the mark because they reveal John's affection, and they describe his concern for their well-being, and they include his plain and detailed warnings. And as modern readers, we have to keep that ancient audience in mind even as we start to see ourselves as part of the expanded broader audience of this text. And having done that, we can admit the intimate knowledge that these words seem to have for our experience in the world.
See, we're exhausted with keeping up appearances of having it all together just like they were in the ancient world. And we're unsure about the future with economic uncertainty and political grandstanding and unchecked violence swirling everywhere. I think we're wishing sometimes that faith wasn't so hard to hold on to. And if we're honest, we need a local imagination of how Jesus changes everything just like the recipients of John's letters did. So let's take a look at the first of the letters written to the community in ancient Ephesus.
Before we do that, quick personal note. Unlike Jeremy, I am not a trained theologian nor have I written a lucid or helpful book on one of the most difficult texts in scripture. But I have been to Turkey. Uh-huh. I visited all of these seven churches, in fact.
Sounds like I'm bragging. It's because I am. Some of you know some of you know this about me, and you wish I'd stopped talking about it. Just stay with us. Okay?
Let's stay together. In 2001, just a few months before 09/11, I was fortunate to be in Turkey and Greece on an educational travel tour. And one of the things that we were doing is attending to the physical landscapes that pop up in the Christian scripture, including these cities. And for me, the ancient site of Ephesus was the most striking. Many of the old streets are still intact along with several major structures that we know were there in the first century.
And so as I walked through the ancient market and listened to languages being spoken from around the world, it wasn't that hard to imagine the apostle Paul or the apostle John looking out from where I was standing right then. And Ephesus was in fact a hub of the ancient world. There was three major roads that sort of converged there from a as far away as modern Iraq. And they were all coming to the Ephesian Port in their journey towards Rome. The economic and political significance of the city meant that early Christians were coming there and settling there too.
And this also meant that they had competition. There was other religious groups that had significant bases there. There was large temples to the emperor and the goddess Artemis that we know dominated the first century skyline. And we know too that there were many religious pretenders and rivals and charlatans drawn to the city. And there's hints of them in the letter that John writes.
I want you to see if you can spot them here. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, these are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. John is picturing Jesus here. And Jesus speaks, I know your deeds. I know your hard work.
I know your perseverance. I know that you can't tolerate wicked people, that you've tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and you have found them false. You have persevered and you have endured hardships for my name but have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first.
Consider how you've fallen. Repent. Do the things that you did at first. And if you do not, I'll come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor.
At least you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Super curious. We're gonna get to that part. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Now, did you hear or catch the references to tension between groups and boundary keeping there? How apparently the Ephesians have done an admirable job of discerning the fakes, those who were not being faithful to Jesus' example in their teaching or in their conduct? This was a significant problem and concern for early Christians. It shows up in more of the seven letters. And this is because there were many individuals or groups contending over who Jesus was and what he meant and how his followers were supposed to live.
And this included the aforementioned Nicolaitans. This is a sect that John is happy to say the Ephesian church hates. Super curious. Because the catch is we don't actually know that much about this group. They may have been some early Christians that believed that because of Jesus' resurrection, there were no rules anymore.
People could do whatever they want. They they may have been early Christians that didn't distance themselves appropriately from temple cults or from the exploitative practices of prostitution happening in the city. We don't actually know. What we do know is that John praises this church's willingness to confront and weed out the counterfeits and fakes. And then he says, yet I hold this against you.
You've forsaken the love you had at first. And you know what? I don't know if this is true for you, but I have always heard this passage when I've heard it referenced. I've always heard it interpreted as a warning against the loss of personal passion. We're pastors and leader types.
Interpret John's words here with an overly individualist lens and encourage their listeners to recover the excitement they had for faith in an earlier season. Return to the vibrant energetic passion you had when you were younger, they might say. The only problem is that John had us already praised the Ephesians for their zeal, for their hard work, and their faithfulness to Jesus during difficulty. And this is why many biblical scholars don't think that's what John's getting at. They think John's rebuking the church for neglecting the love they had for each other at first.
As one commentator observes, it seems probable that their desire for sound teaching and their willingness to exclude all impostors had created a climate of suspicion where community couldn't exist. And this feels like the overturning of things that I need. See, because there's a way to tell the story of scripture where I get to be right and everybody else gets to agree. There's a way to talk about the story of Jesus where I'm required to defend it against all queries and against all detractors and especially against those who claim to love the story and then use it in ways that I don't like. There's a way to believe the story of Jesus where I get to prioritize thinking the right things and believing the right words and saying the right phrases while being mean and dismissive and exclusionary and totally righteous in the process.
And listen, I'm not trying to say that there aren't times when there should be clear differences between us and others. Sometimes, we have to make some of those differences for our own health and our own well-being, and the church has plenty of diversity for good reason, but we do have to be aware and suspicious of our tendency to trust the perpetual rightness of our own position. If I ever feel the desire to interpret Revelation's fire and judgment and punishment imagery, to see these things turned and aimed at my enemies, at those that I feel I have to protect my faith and my community from, that's when I know I've gone too far. That's when I know I need the revealing apocalyptic power of John's words in this letter. Because I don't know if you know this, but there is a form of orthodoxy that will cost you your soul.
John addresses it when he reminds us how easy it is to follow the rules and also forget somebody else's humanity. And Jesus undermined it when he told us that it's our love, real, difficult, gritty, extended to all kind. That's the kind of love that shows us we're on the right path. Now, having said that, there's one more shared feature that I wanna look at in these letters that we find in Revelation two and three. And it's this little piece that I read to you earlier.
It's in the refrain how John tells the Ephesian church this. He says, whoever has ears, let them hear what the spirit says to the churches. And to the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. And this is a device that repeats in each of the seven. This encouragement to hear, act accordingly.
This encouragement to the person who is trying to persist and be victorious. And in each of the letters, John imagines Jesus promising all sorts of things to these faithful individuals. He promises them the right to eat from the tree of life. Promises them the gift of hidden manna. Don't know what that means.
He promises them the authority over nations. He promises them a set of white garments. Clearly, this is symbolic language pulled from other places in scripture. It's not as though Jesus is literally promising people full stomachs and promotions and new outfits. That's not what's happening here.
What I wanna pay attention to is the language of the victorious ones. Because here, John is using the Greek verb nikao to describe victory. Yes. This is the same word that's used by Nike to expand its corporate interests and use sweatshirt labor. That's a topic for another day.
Right? John's using this word here to tap into his readers' imaginations because this is a word that was used repeatedly to describe the successful military campaigns of the Roman emperors. It was used to give honor and recognition to the athletes and the competitors and the performers that participated in civic and national games at this time. And in each letter, John appears to be painting a symbolic picture in line with those images the people would be assuming. Jesus promises his followers, you will have authority over all.
Your names will never be forgotten. Stay true, and you will be the winners. And then John flips the script. See, in the last letter, in the end of chapter three, Jesus makes one final promise. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat down with my father on his throne.
Oh, the audience would have said to themselves. We we get it now. See, because in the earliest forms of the Christian story, you can see it in the story that we tell about Jesus' interactions with the priests before he was executed and with Pilate as well. Early on in the Christian story, there was already this understanding that it was in his death, in his nonviolent way that Jesus triumphed and took his exalted seat as the king of kings. There would be no power grab.
There would be no humiliation of enemies. There would be no victory parade. There would be no political maneuvering. There was only Jesus' downward movement into our experience and our suffering, his willingness to trust divine love in the face of death, and his refusal to defend and to attack and to blame. And in reframing victory this way, John laid out a vision for a different kind of apocalypse in the world.
It's there in all the letters but one where he praises the everyday mundane local efforts of normal people as the sign of the good that's on its way. And this included everything. It had to. Their incomplete and misguided theology. It had to include their mistakes and their persistence, their kindness, their service, their generosity, and ours too, I think, which can feel like a bit of a revelation.
That even when your life is a hot mess and you're not trending up into the right, how it's then that you find riches of courage and self awareness and creativity. That your efforts, whenever you make them to change the direction or to be healthy or to stop the cycle of your family that you inherited, that these are the things that should be celebrated in the world. And that every time that you sacrifice and you start over when it's so hard and you care for others and they don't notice, you learn to see that these are the signs of sure faith. See, John was so sure that Jesus was a different and better kind of victor. And, yes, this is because of his life and his resurrection, but also this is because John was watching his friends reveal a better world without being the best and without having to destroy their enemies and in spite of their obvious weaknesses.
And this is why I think this letter might be addressed to you today with hope that your smallest and your weakest attempts to follow Jesus' humble way, especially when it's difficult, that these extend Jesus' upside down victory even further and make the world as it should be, slowly and surely. And should you, later this week, as I'm sure you will, hear a frightening news headline and learn about some difficulty that's bigger than your capacity or feel questions rising about how to stay calm despite how bad things are. First of all, I promise you, John has something to say about all that. Come back in the coming weeks. Okay?
But then, may some quietness find you, and may you hear what the spirit is always saying to every anxious heart. I am with you always. Let's pray. Loving God of ancient text and our unfolding stories too. Some days, there is good reason to wonder just how this is all going to work out with all the unrest and the violence that breaks our hearts and our bodies and with the daily reminders that we do not have it all together when we feel like we have no control.
And today, we trust that these are not mysteries to you because you have walked a path like ours. You faced resistance and difficulty and you came to the end of yourself and you came through that darkness to assure us that sometimes victory can be so unexpected. So give us grace to trust your humble way. Give us grace to move ahead in all our uncertainty and give us strength to hold this tender hope we ask in the name of Christ. Amen.