Introduction
Have you ever been in love? Do you remember what it is like when you first fall in love with someone. We all act in different ways - there are some physiological signs and many psychological ones. When Ian and I met I couldn't stop talking or thinking about him. When a relationship starts we embark on that wonderful high energy stage called infatuation where we are absolutely horrible to be around if we are not the object of the infatuation!
Now those of us who have been around the block a few times know that the infatuation stage does not last very long. It is wonderful when it lasts and we use this time to get to know the beloved. But after a while what we once thought were rather charming little habits and mannerisms are rather irritating. The way he leaves his clothes in a pile on the floor is no longer reminiscent of a student who needs to be looked after. Her charming habit of picking her nose in bed is not as endearing as it once was. If we are mature we realise that as the infatuation stage wears off it is replaced by a deeper, more mature love. If we are not, or if we believe what our culture says to us, we will feel that we "have fallen out of love". Usually this means that we were never really in love in the first place, lust probably, but not love. Sometimes it means we haven't got the emotional skills to negotiate the change as infatuation gives way to commitment and we have to start working hard at a relationship. In a throwaway society, we throw our relationships away all too easily.
Many of us go through a similar stage of infatuation in our faith. Sometimes, particularly if we had a conversion experience as opposed to growing up in the Faith, we can become very infatuated with our new found faith. In my case I went through this process twice. As a teenager I became a committed Roman Catholic and became very regular at mass, serving at mass each day during school holidays, getting involved with various youth organisations and reading as much as I could about the Church. Later on I became attracted to an evangelical charismatic church and the infatuation, which had worn off a bit with Catholicism, was renewed in my new found, rather noisier, congregation. I entered a total society, read only Christian books, listened to only Christian music, went on Christian holidays and only ever had Christian friends. It was an infatuation stage, but inevitably the infatuation wore off.
I wasn't aware of it happening, as it happened rather slowly. But some cynicism returned - and there was much to be cynical about. This led me to make a choice about either working at my faith and what I really believed or to drift away. Eventually, and after various other hurdles around sexuality, I worked at it. Sadly many of the young people who were at church with me in the late 80s never did work at it. They were in the position of the two churches we are going to look at today from the Book of Revelation - they had lost their first love.
Overview of Revelation
We have already heard from the Book of Revelation in the reading Philip gave us before the sermon. Revelation, also called the Apocalypse, is a very difficult book to grasp. It is written in a strange genre called apocalyptic and the only other book like it in the Bible is the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. In New Testament times, however, people would have been familiar with this style of book. Apocalypses have ideas of a heavenly disclosure of truth made to a seer, a concern with the contradiction between God's rule over His creation and the apparently unchecked dominance of evil in the world, the hope of an impending final resolution of history in which God will bring eternal good out of all the evils of this world and renew His creation, the use of symbolic visions and more or less fantastic imagery to fund alternative perceptions of the word, its history and future. Revelation uses a style of writing which invites the reader to see different ways of seeing things. Its aim is to unveil or reveal the truth. However, to modern readers this aim is obscured by the style which confuses us. The Book is ignored by most lectionaries, though parts of it are used in the Easter season and at funerals. Those who seem to read the book most come from peculiar sects and are very concerned with the end of the world.
All this is a shame as there are many treasures in the book. This is a book that in all centuries has inspired the martyrs, nourished the imagination of visionaries, artists, and hymn writers, resourced prophetic critiques of oppression and corruption in state and church, and sustained hope and resistance in the most hopeless situations.
So, over the next four weeks we are going to be looking at one part of this book. Near the opening of the book comes a series of letters which are addressed to the angels of various churches in Asia Minor.
Today we are going to look at two churches, one in Ephesus and one in Sardis who have both lost their first love, the love we talked about earlier on.
The Letters
All the letters we look at have some common themes. First they are addressed to the "angel" of the church. Some people think that these angels were the pastors. You may not think that pastors are particularly angelic, but a very strange denomination which started in the Victorian Age, called the Catholic Apostolic Church called their priest's "angels" precisely because of this passage. They believed, however, that Jesus would return before their last angel died, but sadly he didn't and the church, which combined the rich ritual of Catholicism, with the exuberant worship of Pentecostalism died out. Most scholars believed that the "angel" was in-fact the guardian angel of the church. Christians at this time believed that each nation had a guardian angel, and so it was a logical, and rather nice, thing to think that each congregation has one too. Each letter starts with what Jesus already knows about the church - sometimes words of praise. Then they go on to rebuke or give encouragement, offer a promise of eternal victory for those who hold firm, and a final "hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches" to finish off.
Listen
now to the letter to the Church at Ephesus:
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: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favour: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Those who have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To those who overcome, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
The lampstands are symbols of the individual churches. Jesus told us to let our light shine before others, so the lampstand is a powerful symbol of what the Church is supposed to be in our dark world.
Jesus is pleased with this church at first, he admires their perseverance. Being a Christian in this era was difficult. The Roman Empire was remarkably liberal about religion, so long as you were polytheistic and offered prayers to the Emperor you could believe what you liked. However, it was very suspicious about those who would not take part in this imperial cult and saw such people as anti-social. The Jewish faith had special dispensation to be different but no one else did. For this reason the Church was persecuted. Jesus is also pleased that this congregation has stood firm against false doctrine. Again in the Early Church there was a lot of concern that people believed true Christianity. The spirit of the age was similar to our own with lots of different competing religious ideas. It was important for the Church to understand it's beliefs and to stand fast against sub-Christian doctrines.
Despite their orthodoxy, however, Jesus is concerned that this church has lost its first love. The initial enthusiasm following conversion has not deepened and it seems they are doing things by rote, without any real deep enthusiasm. Jesus urges them to repent and if they don't he will come and remove the lampstand from it's place. Of course, eventually this happened, Ephesus now is a grand ruin and no one lives there, least of all a community of Christians.
Now let's listen to the letter to the Church in Sardis
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 not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, 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. Yet 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. Those who overcome will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out their names from the book of life, but will acknowledge their names before my Father and his angels. Those who have ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
This church doesn't have much going for it, or for that matter much against it! It is asleep! It has a reputation for being lively but according to Jesus it is dead! They are told to wake up. This is another way of telling them to recover their first love. Interestingly twice in its history before this letter was written Sardis had been captured by their enemies because of a lack of vigilance! It seems the sleepiness of the city had infected the church!
How Does this affect us?
So we have a picture of two churches which need to wake up and recover their first love. There are some powerful ideas here which we would do well to listen to.
When we first come to MCC we can be very excited. We are overjoyed to find a church where we can be ourselves, where our gender identity, who we love or ideas about inclusion are not criticised or demeaned. We enjoy the freedom of a church where lay people can minister alongside clergy. But after a while this enthusiasm can wear off. Maybe the enthusiasm was slightly misplaced; Jesus is the Head of our Church and perhaps we misplaced some of our enthusiasm for MCC. But, it happens to us all, what once seemed exciting now seems routine. What once seemed liberating now is rather annoying! We can become sleepy and content, secure in the knowledge that we have found a way to work out our salvation but sleepy to the needs of those around us.
Like the churches in Asia Minor we need to wake up and recover our first love. We can do this in three ways:
Prayer
Last week we looked at the different attitudes to spirituality shown in St Luke's gospel by Mary and Martha. We contrasted the active busy way of being a Christian with the prayerful contemplative way. We said we needed both. Before we can do anything as a church or as individual Christians we need to have a regular discipline of prayer. I say discipline as it takes discipline to set aside time on a regular basis to pray, to read the Scriptures and to see how to put what we read into practice in our lives. As we pray we renew our relationship with God - but remember prayer isn't just about telling God what our needs are - it is important to be still and listen as well.
Action
Our prayer needs to flow out into action. One of the things I am most excited about in our life together is the Amnesty campaigns that Steve gets us involved with. I loved our last one in particular when we sent letters of protest to the Jamaican Prime Minister and cards of support to an LGBT group in Jamaica. Hearing about how others are treated in our world serves as a wake up call in our own complacency. I am doing a wedding later on this year for a lesbian couple from Northern Ireland. They are quite well off and are both Christian. But they have decided to have their wedding here on the mainland rather than cope with the hassle of having their ceremony in that conservative province. Our social action keeps us awake and attuned to the needs of others. This flows from our common spirituality.
Evangelism
The last way we stay awake and revive our first love is through evangelism. As we show and tell others of what we have found here we realise what is important to us and we recognise the great spiritual transformation that is going on in our own lives.
Conclusion
Those letters written so long ago, serve as a wake up call to us now. We find we can easily loose our first love, we can fall sleepy in our faith and immune to the needs of other. Yet we don't want Jesus to come and remove our light from the lampstand, so we have to recover our first love and wake up to serve Jesus in the mission fields of our world. Will you pray with me?
Prayer:
Lord
Jesus,
Help us to revive our first love of you,
That as our love is deepened through our experience,
We may recall and renew our enthusiasm to follow you.
Help us to wake up the needs of others,
And through prayer, action and evangelism,
Make your love know in our world. Amen.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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