Harsh Realities, Tough Love

Revelation 3:1-6

Have you seen the bumper sticker that says Coexist, creating the letters using symbols from different religions?

Here is a link that includes a photo: http://www.blufftonicon.com/news/2012/03/12/co-exist-bumpersticker-and-its-meaning

It begins with the crescent moon and star of Islam. Next, the peace sign, so familiar from the 60’s is actually a wiccan symbol, the e is combined with the symbols for male and female so it represents science. Then comes the star of David for the Jews. The I is replaced by another symbol of pagan worship. The s is the Chinese yin and yang symbol and finally there’s the cross of Christ. Interesting that to do this, the symbol of Islam has to come first and Christianity comes last. I am sure the designer was pleased with that. But we can be pleased with that too since we know that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

The idea portrayed here sounds like Rodney King saying, “Can’t we all just get along?” There is a desire for humans to coexist peacefully. The bumper sticker is motivated by the desire to end all the violent fighting over different belief systems. It is a noble ideal and one that Christians ought to live up to today because it will finally be established through King Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God when he comes again to reign in glory. But to what extent can we coexist today? By nature, all humans fight to have their way. Historically, even the church has not always been very good at getting along peacefully with people of other faiths.

Each of the religions represented here, along with science, which many follow religiously, makes claims about the order of the universe such as who is in charge, and whether or not anyone is. These differing belief systems do not all agree on the answers. And it is not just that each has part of the truth. They actually make opposite claims that cannot both be literally true. If one says there is no god and another says there is a God they can’t both literally be true and it really does matter to try and find out which one IS true.

But it is a difficult task. As strong believers have tried to convince others of their own views, humans sometimes get frustrated and that has sometimes led to physical fighting in a last ditch effort to win converts by force. The church ought to know better. Our post-modern culture has tried to end the violence by saying something that sounds humble like, “We are so befuddled in our limited human perceptions that we can’t know the absolute Truth even if there is one. Therefore, you can believe whatever you want. We don’t need to fight about it. If there really is a God, surely he will understand.”

God does understand. That is why, instead of leaving us to figure it out on our own, he revealed himself, through the Word of God, through the history of the Jews, and supremely in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior who is the exact image of the invisible God! So the church has this mission of telling the whole world the whole truth. In the early church, which was small, in the minority, and unarmed, their insistence on the gospel often frustrated those in power. Those who declared “Caesar is Lord” could not coexist with those who declared “Jesus is Lord.” That was treason. This resulted in persecution. We have talked about that in earlier messages about the churches John wrote to on behalf of Jesus in the book of Revelation.

But in Sardis, there is no mention of persecution, even though the city was full of sophisticated paganism just as much as in the other cities, if not more! Significantly, Sardis’ Jews enjoyed one of the largest Jewish synagogues in antiquity. It was built right next to the Greek gymnasium. Apparently everyone was coexisting and getting along comfortably. The Jews were being tolerated and so were the Christians. Jesus' followers seem to have coexisted peacefully with the city establishment. Lacking the world’s opposition, they may have grown comfortable in their relationship with the world. Or, else they dodged the world’s opposition by quieting their message, basically giving up on the mission.

Living in such comfort and peace, the church may have thought it was really doing well, really alive! But Jesus says they are actually dead. This church got a very poor performance review. “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.”

And remember, the other six churches got to see what Jesus said about Sardis. I wonder if that embarrassed Sardis. Jesus’ oracle to Ephesus challenges a loveless church. His oracle to Smyrna encourages a persecuted church. His oracle to Pergamum addresses both persecution and compromise. His oracle to Thyatira challenges compromise. But Jesus’ words to Sardis summon a sleeping church to wake up!

The spiritual state of the believers in the city was hindering them from enjoying Jesus’ own resurrection power. They were asleep. And Jesus said that because they were asleep when he came he would come like a thief. It would take them by surprise. That didn’t only remind them of what Jesus had said to his disciples about his second coming. It would also have been significant because the city of Sardis was a strong fortress that had never been overtaken by conventional war. But twice in their history they had been caught unawares for not keeping watch carefully enough. They were conquered when guards were asleep on duty!

Obviously, Jesus wouldn’t have found very many of the healthy missional markers in that congregation. There was no evangelism, that’s for sure. They weren’t making much of an impact on that community so there was probably little effort toward justice and compassion in any transformative way. All they had was some faithful believers, like a remnant, hanging on to the true faith, holding services among themselves. So he said of them, “You have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.”

Well, is it any different today? What if we decided that we are a sleeping church? If a church is respected in a town and in a culture that is moving farther and farther away from Biblical values, does that mean that that church is too quiet about the dangers, not sounding the alarm, not preaching the gospel to those who are in danger, but only quietly holding forth among those who are already saved? What would this say about our own church and its prospects for a bright future? There is only one cure. Walk with Jesus!

Do we have the feeling of being helpless against a great impossibility? Then maybe we feel like the Israelites trapped against the Red Sea. The Egyptians are coming! What are we going to do? Why didn’t they ask a better question? What will God do? For as you know, God did in fact deliver the Israelites from the Egyptians by doing the impossible. He parted the Red Sea and they found a dry path in the midst of the raging ocean!

But that was before the Holy Spirit was sent on the Day of Pentecost. We really can’t blame them for having no idea how powerful God would be to save them from death. But they did watch God’s power and might displayed in the ten plagues in Egypt! They could have had faith instead of despair, there on the beach.

We however, have so much more history behind us. We know so much more than those Israelites. We have the whole Bible right through the death and resurrection of Jesus, right through the miraculous birth and spread of the early church, of which Sardis is just one congregation, and right up to the prophetic writings in the book of Revelation. We know all that.

Then there is also 2,000 more years of history in which we can trace the ebbs and flows of faithfulness in the Christian church as God sustained it through persecution, as God blessed it with prosperity and power greater than that of Solomon, and as the church sinned and failed in various and sundry ways, grew weak, was renewed and reformed, grew strong again, came to America, prospered greatly and now looks as if it is all weakening again.

Even this congregation had its hay day of great success in ministry, just a few decades ago. Are those days gone forever? Culture is against us! What are we going to do? If we want to wake up, how do we do that!? What can the church at Sardis teach us about our situation? Can we find any hope here?

We are going to have to cling to God and trust him, look to him for guidance and deliverance. We will have to honestly repent of our own faults and foibles, see the things that we think we have right but actually have wrong and be willing to change so that our clothes are unsoiled, both by preserving what faith we have and by repenting of what sins we have fallen into.

Now if we ask, “What will God do?” we can be confident that he will do something. If we are willing to face the harsh realities and accept God’s tough love, we will not be cast away. Why bother to speak to a church like Sardis if there were really no hope of recovery? Jesus called the church to repentance and he has the power of resurrection! He is eager to share it with us if we are willing. We will be toughened up too and renewed and prepared for a better more fruitful ministry.

And what will we do? We have this opportunity in the Navigate process that we will be taking on. Navigate is designed to help us open our eyes to the reality of the condition of our ministry. We will see which of the ten healthy missional markers are strong in us and which ones need improvement. And this is something that we all have to take on as a shared responsibility.

Notice how Jesus had said that there were a few in the congregation who hadn’t soiled their clothes? He was honoring the faithful remnant that was doing their best to live up to the demands of discipleship. But those few couldn’t make the church succeed or wake up. It takes the whole church to be the church. Amen?

I hear that amen! Does this mean that each and every one of you really Christian believers is determined to do whatever you can to help this church be the church? If so, let me hear that amen again! Amen?   Amen?  Amen!