Our text for today is taken from the Revelation of John, chapter 3, verses 14-22. Before reading this text, a little contextual background is in order. John is writing from the isle of Patmos, a very small island about 50 miles southwest of the city of Ephesus, which at the time was the capital of the Roman province of Asia. It was a thriving port city on the Aegean coast of what is known today as Turkey. John was exiled to the isle of Patmos and put in prison because, as a Christian teacher, he became a threat to the rule of the Roman emperor Domitian, who demanded that all must address him as “Lord and God.” Christians at that time were confronted with the need to make a public declaration, either “Caesar is Lord” or “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Revelation was written to both encourage and admonish the churches in this time of trial and testing.
In the early chapters of Revelation, John is writing to the angels of the seven churches in the province of Asia. The spiritual health of each church varied somewhat so that the message to each one varied according to the need. The church at Laodecia was the last church addressed and the one needing the most help. It was a church that seemed to be neither dead nor alive because it had slipped into a state of apathy and indifference.
So with this in mind, listen to these words from Revelation, chapter 3, verses 14-22 as I have translated them from the Greek:
“To the angel of the church in Laodecia, write this testimony from the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation:
I know your works, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were either one or the other! But, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have become wealthy, and I have no need.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and have white garments to cover the shame of your nakedness, and have salve to apply to your eyes so that you may see.
I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be hot, therefore, and repent!
Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you and you with me. To the one who overcomes, I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
The city of Laodecia prided itself on three things: its financial wealth as the banking center of Asia Minor, its famous luxury woolen garments, and its reputation as a medical center, especially for the salve used for healing diseases of the eye. The letter to the angel of the church in Laodecia reflects awareness of these sources of pride in the city but further identifies them as metaphors measuring the lack of spiritual vitality in the Laodecian church. The tragedy was that the church was financially wealthy but spiritually impoverished, beautifully clothed but spiritually naked, blessed with good physical vision but spiritually blind. The church had fallen into a state of apathy and indifference. Because of their wealth, health, and general prosperity, they found it difficult to deal with the question of whether their allegiance was to Caesar or to Jesus the Christ. And the silence of the church on this matter became deafening. As a result, the church floundered and fell into a state of meaningless and irrelevant Christianity.
And that floundering state of apathy is the condition that I see developing today both in our nation and in our churches. Serious moral issues have arisen to confront us as a nation and we as a people have failed to sound the alarm of warning that catastrophic change lies ahead if we do not wake up! But we have chosen instead the way of indifference and apathy.
No one has stated the case more clearly and emphatically than Lee Iacocca in his book entitled Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Let me share with you some excerpts from his book (excerpts that I have modified slightly to refine certain crude words):
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where [in the world] is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when politicians say, “Stay the course.”
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the [doomed] Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?
I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged. This is a fight I’m ready and willing to have.1
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them – or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don’t tell me it’s all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That’s an intellectually lazy argument, and it’s part of the reason we’re in this stew. We’re not just a nation of factions. We’re a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? Where have all the leaders gone?2
Perhaps the answer is that we have become wealthy like the people in Laodicea and like them we have become comfortable with the status quo. To deal with the tough moral and ethical questions that confront us makes us uncomfortable. It becomes easier to believe a lie than to face the truth and become engaged in a struggle to uphold and maintain the truth. Such struggle demands sacrifice and hardship and commitment and it disturbs our comfort level. Perhaps we are afraid to deal with the accusation from our critics that we are unpatriotic for demonstrating for peace rather than supporting a war that has no justification. Perhaps we feel uncomfortable when we find that President Bush and a few of his anointed insiders have made torture an acceptable way of treating our enemies. We know it is torture even when called by another name. We know it is torture when organizations like Amnesty International and the International Red Cross make the facts quite clear. We know what is happening but we seem to be unwilling to even think about it or talk about it. Rather than demanding and demonstrating for an end to torture, we instead find comfort in apathy and indifference.
And what about the financial institutions that have transformed mortgages from instruments of honesty and fidelity into instruments for advancing greed? Has the American ideal of a fair profit become instead a lust for money regardless of ethics and moral accountability? Have we become so focused on wealth that we are blind to the nakedness of our greed? And who is it that is blind to this nakedness? Is it only the financial institutions who are promoting a lie called “subprime mortgages” to people with no income, no job, and no assets, or is it also the purchasing public who eagerly claim the lie as their own? And where are our federal watchdogs when subprime mortgages are sliced up, repackaged, and sold to the world with a new euphemism called “collateralized debt obligations”?
Do we have an answer to these moral and spiritual dilemmas that confront us? John provided an answer to the church in Laodecia when he wrote, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and have white garments to cover the shame of your nakedness.” What is this gold refined by fire? I can tell you what it is not. It is not church dogma or doctrine or a perfect record of attending Sunday school and church. It is not a religiosity that says “I am right and you are wrong; therefore, there is no room for both of us in this world.” Rather, it is a spiritual wisdom that comes from the awareness that Love is the answer, that God is Love, that we are all God’s children by virtue of our creation, that we are created in the image of God as spiritual beings having the power of choice and the capacity to choose our own way of life, and that it is God’s intention that we should choose always to live a life of love. It is the message of Jesus when he proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom of Love. He made it very clear in his sermons that we are to love as God loves. For example, in Matthew 5:43 ff, we hear him saying:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
What Jesus is saying here is that there are no boundaries or limits to God’s love, for God’s love is unconditional. If we want to fulfill God’s intention for our lives, we must open the door and let God’s love come in to fill our hearts and direct our lives. In so doing, we will find ourselves traveling on the highway of love, learning more fully each passing day and year what it means to love perfectly even as God our Creator loves perfectly. What a wonderful life it is when we spend it exploring the nature of, and experiencing the wonder of, God’s all-encompassing love.
But the learning process is not easy on the highway of love. There are ruts, potholes, and bridges washed away by the hurricanes of nature. Sometimes we find ourselves weary and thirsty from traveling through the desert, while at other times we are exhilarated by the view from the mountaintop. Sometimes there are forks in the road and we are faced with the question as to what direction is right for us. We have decisions to make every step of the way, for such is the nature of life. As I see it and experience it, we are always walking in the tension between the opposites, that is, the opposites of good and evil, love and fear, hope and despair, peace and war, wholeness and brokenness, harmony and discord, health and sickness, chaos and order, success and failure, and so forth through every aspect of life. And in all the tension between the opposites, we are required to make choices. And you know what? God planned it that way. Just as gold is refined and purified by fire, God wants our spiritual awareness and experience of the power of love to be refined through the choices we make in life’s trials, testings, and temptations. God wants us in all circumstances to be empowered by a love that inspires and enables us to make the right choices --- the way of love rather than fear, goodness rather than evil, beauty rather than ugliness, truth rather than lies, harmony rather than discord, order rather than chaos, and peace rather than war.
And I have found out something else about this process of choosing and learning and growing and becoming. It is that sometimes it takes tragedy to awaken us to the blessings of life that surround us every day. For example, I think of Tedy Bruschi, the popular linebacker for the New England Patriots, who at the pinnacle of his football career was struck down by a stroke that left him hospitalized with little hope of returning to his football career. But Tedy never gave up hope. Doctors discovered that the cause of his stroke was a hole in his heart, one that had been there since birth. That hole finally created a blood clot that traveled to his brain causing him to lose control of his body. Fortunately, doctors were able to patch the hole, thus enabling Tedy to fully regain his health. Amazingly, after only eight months of medication and testing and physical therapy, he was able to return to the Patriots and play football again. What is just as amazing, however, is the change in attitude that accompanied his recovery of physical health. In his book entitled Never Give Up, he writes:
I consider myself a good Catholic, and I was one before the stroke happened. The only difference is that my prayers now are a little different. I do spend more time giving thanks for life. I always try to take the attitude that every day of life, good or bad, is great. I may have gone through a frightening time with the stroke and all the questions and issues that came with it, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it (italics added)3
Later on, when reflecting further upon the power of this change in attitude, he writes:
After thinking about it – and this is easy to say now -- I think things would have been okay if my vision hadn’t returned and my career had ended. Heidi (his wife) would still be there. I’d still have my kids. I’d be able to watch them grow up and even be active enough to wrestle them to the ground on occasion, just like we do now. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to drive anymore, but I think I would realize just how blessed I was to be alive (italics added).4
This change in his thinking changed his physical tragedy into a spiritual triumph. In terms of our text from Revelation, we can observe that it was the fire of testing that refined Tedy’s spiritual awareness so that an attitude of gratitude for God’s gift of life and love became more precious than anything else. In opening the door to God’s love and allowing a change in attitude to enter, he purchased spiritual gold that enabled him to overcome all of the challenges that life could bring.
How about us as individuals, as a congregation, and as a nation? Are we willing to purchase the spiritual gold of God’s love and acquire white garments to cover our spiritual nakedness? Are we willing to open the door of our hearts and let the Spirit of God’s love come in and empower us to overcome all of the challenges that we face? If we say ‘yes’, the deafening sounds of silence will be replaced with shouts of joy for the change that comes upon each of us individually and all of us collectively.
In the name of Jesus, and of God our Father, and in the Spirit of God’s Love. Amen.
1 Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (New York: Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, 2007), 3-4
2 Ibid., 4-5.
3 Tedy Bruschi with Michael Holley, Never Give Up: My Stroke, My Recovery & My Return to the NFL (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) 172.
4 Ibid., 204.
