I used to
enjoy going to Grandma’s house because she served the same kind of food every
time, and it added a new and fresh enjoyment to my young life (especially as a
starving teenager!). In a similar way, God’s word gives us something new, and
good, and encouraging every time we read it, no matter how many times we have
already enjoyed a particular dinner. Something new stands out every single
time, and it is always good (although some things must pass over our spiritual
palate a few times before we develop a taste for them, if you know what I mean).
I am now
working through the seventh letter to the churches (Revelation 3:14-22), and
cringing through Jesus’ declaration to a smug and self-satisfied church that
they were so lukewarm he was very soon going to spew them out of his mouth. As
soon as we allow ourselves to sincerely open our hearts to possibilities of how
this applies to us, we enter the stage of the surgeon’s operating room, where
painful admissions turn into healed wounds. As Eustace explained when Aslan
turned him back from a dragon into a boy (in the movie, Voyage of the Dawn
Treader), “It sort of hurt, but it was a good
pain.”
Well, this
sort-of-hurting-kind-of-good-pain has opened my eyes to a new flavor in this
letter to a lukewarm church. In previous experiences of this particular meal, I
was quite aware of the intense bite of Jesus’ rebuke. It felt like all the red
pepper flakes had balled up into one mass and I got them all in one mouthful.
OUCH!!!
Enough time
has passed that the watering-of-the-eyes sting has worn off, and now a flavor
stands out that I had not noticed before. Perhaps a condensed experience of hot
pepper flakes prepared me; I’m not sure. All I know is that this journey
through this letter has taught me something wonderful, and encouraging, and
transforming, and I delight in what I have found more than I regret that I had
not seen it before!
The new
lesson, or spiritual apprehension, is that this letter to the Laodicean church
is a love-letter. Jesus’ response to a church that is so lukewarm to him that he
was about to spit them out of his mouth is to do everything he can to get them
back.
Part of what
fascinates me, especially in this day where writing letters (emails) has taken
on a completely new dimension, is that Jesus was writing a letter to try to get
people back. Of the seven letters, two of them were only encouragement to
churches that were walking in fellowship and needed the reminder to keep on the
path of love. The other five letters all needed a rebuke of some sort, but all
with this same nuance of expression, that Jesus was writing a love letter to
people he wanted back.
In this case, Jesus
did not want to spit out a church because it was lukewarm. He wanted them back.
He was not writing a letter of irreversible judgment, or of disdain, or of disappointment,
or of condemnation. This was not Jesus expressing a threat to people he could not
stand, giving them one last chance to get their act together before he spews
them out of his mouth. It is a declaration of reality, and warnings of danger,
and a precise description of what is going on, and what is going to happen if
nothing changes, but this is a love letter to people Jesus does not want to
lose.
This is also a
grace-letter to people who cannot get back to him on their own. They cannot
heat themselves up; they cannot keep the law in such a way that they could once
again win his favor and approval through good works. This is a grace-letter
reaching out to people with everything that God has for them to come back to
him.
This is grace
calling people to feel their poverty, to mourn their wretched condition, to
meekly accept they cannot fix themselves, and so hunger and thirst for the
righteousness of Jesus Christ that they will turn back to him to receive him
into their lukewarmness and have him heat them up and cool them down.[1]
This is grace desiring
to fill them with the living water that is hot like a mineral spring and would
bring such soothing comfort to aching souls. This is grace seeking to fill a
self-satisfied, lukewarm church with the living water that would make them cold
and refreshing like a mountain stream satisfying parched souls.
This morning’s
meal has satisfied me for the day. However, I am also anticipating tomorrow
morning’s offering of love and grace from the Lord Jesus Christ. He already has
in mind what he will present for the feeding of my soul. And, it will do
something more than what I have already enjoyed today.
Epilogue:
After I had finished the rough draft for this post, I was eating my oatmeal
down in the daycare room while watching the children play. One of the little
boys came to see what I was eating. In his two-plus year old voice he said, “Oatmeal?
Again?” I smiled to myself as I realized that, even in this, God reminds me
that I will never get tired of eating at his table every day for the rest of my
life when his recipes of mercy are actually new every morning.[2]
From my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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