Tuesday • 12/14/2021
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Zechariah 2:1–13; Revelation 3:14–22; Matthew 24:12–44
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Laodicea: a warning, a knock, a promise
A sobering warning. “I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15). The Book of Revelation’s Laodicea was a thriving city in west central Asia Minor, noted for its banking, medical school, and clothing industry. Christians there fit right in, thinking of themselves as wealthy and healthy; and they dressed the part. The angel of the Lord would have them understand otherwise: “[Y]ou say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17).
Laodicea happened to be situated in a valley within eyesight of two other cities: Hierapolis, up on a nearby bluff, and Colosse (really more a small town) down in the same valley as Laodicea. Hierapolis was home to medicinal hot springs, from which Laodicea’s water was piped in. Naturally, by the time that water got to Laodicea, it was tepid in temperature. It no longer had the medicinal value attributed to it at its source. Nor was it refreshingly cool like the spring that supplied water to nearby Colosse. Laodicea’s water either had to be reheated for some purposes, or allowed to cool for other purposes. As it was, it was good for nothing. “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15–16). Be healingly hot or appetizingly cold, writes the angel, but not uselessly neither/nor!
A gracious and persistent knock on the door. “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Revelation 3:20). The sobering thing about this verse is that it is addressed to people already inside the church. Somehow, the Laodicean Christians, with all their wealth and sense of well-being, had managed to lock him out! Yikes!!
I recall the sense of moral superiority that my Reformed teachers had in pointing out that evangelists who used this passage to appeal to non-Christians were taking it out of context. John, they rightly pointed out, doesn’t have a vision of Christ almost pathetically pleading with the unbeliever to let him in.
But, I repeat, Yikes! In context, the vision is even more ominous than that. It’s a picture of Christ having been shut out of his own house, and now trying to get back in! That concerns me week after week as I show up at church to lead worship. Dear Lord, don’t let us lock the door on you! May we never let ourselves slide into a smug sense of superiority, so that we cannot feel the warmth of your passion for the lost or lose the wonder of the freshness of your presence. May we never become so content with our possessions, our sense of well-being, our being so well put together, that you become a mere chaplain to our religion of self.
Until today’s wrestling with this passage, I had never thought to keep reading. I guess I was so struck by the strong warnings that I failed to see the promise that follows.
An astounding promise. “To the one who conquers (Greek, nikān, from which comes the name of the company Nike) I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Here’s the very One who, at the beginning of the letter to the Laodiceans, names himself “the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the very Origin of God’s creation.” Here he is saying to those of us who can stir our hearts out of lukewarmness, who will come to him for riches, who will humble ourselves to wear white robes of his gifting, and who will admit that our blindness must be healed by the oil of his anointing (Revelation 3:18)—he is saying that if we do these things, he will consider us overcomers, victors, and conquerors. We won’t be wearing the Nike swoosh on our tee shirts. We ourselves will be walking and talking Nike swooshes.
Not only that, but to us who have overcome, he will say, “Here, sit next to me. Share my rule and reign!” Un-freaking-believable. In fact, the early church coined a word for something like this: phrikodestatēs, or, in the vernacular, “most freakin’g awesome!”
So, this Advent season, I pray that you and I refuse to succumb to the laze of lukewarmness, and that we determine not to lock the door on the overtures of our Savior. But, rather, that we dare to believe that the extraordinary goal of his incarnation is to raise us up to royalty, and not just any royalty, but a share in his own!
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: iStock photo