Revelation: Chapter 2, Verses 12 to 17
Revelation: Chapter 2, Verses 12 to 17
The two-edged sword uses words to swathe through those who prefer to fit in rather than build Jesus's kingdom on Earth.
The letter to Pergamum begins with a bit of a scary description: these are “the words of the one who has the sharp two-edged sword.” In other words, “Listen up, for my words cut when you don’t hear me!”
Pergamum is the third church in the seven letters to the churches.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
John lets the Christians in Pergamum know that Jesus understands their situation. They are living where Satan is enthroned. “‘the satan — ‘the accuser’, or ‘the devil’ — is referred to elsewhere in Revelation as ‘the ancient serpent’ (20.2).” N.T. Wright writes that Pergamum was famous for local religions, including, “…the shrine of the healing-god Asclepius, whose symbol was a serpent…” and for being a major centre of Rome’s imperial cult. The former may remind you of the symbol for a medical practitioner. The latter may sound strange to your ears as much as mine 2,000 years later.
Yet, we, too, are familiar with despots needing to be worshipped. We may not build temples to them. Instead, we build followings and rallies and the “cult of personality.” Such people, whether infamous for their billions or their greed-for-adulation or ability to invade other countries, grab hold of the public’s imagination and don’t let go for a long, long time. It reminds me of Jesus’s saying woe to those who harm his sheep and of how he said he’d go after the one lost sheep. Sheep follow blindly. They not only will follow a good and wise shepherd but also one who leads them off the cliff.
Few are they who go against the tide of sheep following a popular idea or person.
We had a poster showing masses of sheep heading to a cliff and falling off it, with one lone sheep pushing their way in the opposite direction, saying, “Excuse me…excuse me…excuse me,” against the masses. Away from the cliff. Even in the large-sized print poster form, you had to hunt for that lone sheep. It always gave me a “gulp” feeling whenever I spotted that lone sheep so close to the edge.
Groupthink, adherence to a lifelong political party or ideology, can push you to where you don’t want to go, no matter how hard you try to stick to your beliefs, ideas, sense of justice, faith.
My ex took the poster when we split up. I wanted to keep it. I guess we were both sheep going in the opposite direction. While I didn’t need to be reminded it’s the right direction, perhaps he did. <wicked grin>
Question 7
“Why might it have been particularly difficult to be a Christan in this kind of place?”
Jesus tells the Pergamum’s early Christians that they are like that lone sheep in the poster. They live in the midst of people known for worshipping Rome’s emperor, for their festivals celebrating gods. Yet even when the powers that be killed one of their community for his faith, they clung to Jesus, and he notices.
Still, they’re warned Jesus also notices that some participate in the festivals and in worshipping Rome’s emperor. It’d be like Christians elevating some politicians over Jesus’s teachings because the politicians say they’re defending [pick your pseudo-Christian belief society is breaking]. You cannot criticize those politicians nor point out that they’re not following Jesus or acting out his teachings at all, for their followers have elevated them to cult-worshipping status — just like some in Pergamum said that since it’s too hard to push against the crowd, let’s join them.
But that’s not what Christianity is. It isn’t placing a politician, idol, or emperor above Jesus. It’s keeping them firmly in our minds as beings as human as we are while reminding ourselves of what Jesus actually teaches. It’s holding their words against the light of the Gospels.
To those who prefer to go with the flow and fall off the cliff, Jesus says:
“So: repent! If you don’t, I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”
John writes that the world was formed by a Word. Words captivate, annihilate, compel, change minds, solidify, kill. Bullets may seem stronger because they kill with the mere movement of a finger. But words when written down live for millennia. They repeat in people’s minds like thought machineguns. They spread like viruses. And, like a two-edged sword, they cut coming and going.
Question 8
“The problem in Pergamum is that much of the church has lost its cutting edge, its ability to say no to the surrounding culture. For these people, Jesus has stern words. How do we take this warning seriously and not succumb to societal pressures that lead us away from following Jesus purely and faithfully?”
In the first couple of years of the pandemic after the lockdown ended, I read many social media posts and articles and watched interviews where people lamented their loss of friends. The pandemic, like a two-edged sword, had cut through the false ties that had bound people, ties that had blinded them to the rotten unethical core of their friends. Because they seemed simpatico before the pandemic, these people assumed their friends would also be for maintaining pandemic protections, for wearing N95 masks to protect themselves and others around them, for investing in ventilation and filtration, for not believing the popular-with-politicians lies that the pandemic was over and we could return to “normal.” They learned what we with chronic illnesses or disabilities know: when health dives, friends leap away.
Those who reach in and face the reality of the pandemic (or illness or disability) fully can work with the suffering to bring real health about. Public health measures that address the root cause will end pandemic meaures — not pretending all is normal. Even when we clean our air and vaccinate everyone with a transmission-stopping vaccine, we will not live as we did in 2019. We’ve all learned things we wished we hadn’t, and that affects how we live and what kind of friends we are.
Friends and family prefer to blame their loved ones rather than reach a hand in to help them out.
So I don’t think it’s societal pressures that are the real problem. It’s the friends and family who want to fit in with “the group” and are willing to discard their loved ones to do so, who are.
Christian leaders like to talk about the church family. Well, if Christians are a family, doesn’t that mean those who vote for cultural assimilation over clinging to Jesus, are like those who abandon their loved ones for the sake of “staying normal”?
I have to say, if normal is to abandon and blame people in their time of need, I want no part of it.
And neither does God.
Remember what God told Job?
The Lord said to “Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves….I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.”
Jesus is echoing God’s words. Job had remained faithful to God all throughout his ordeal. Even in his endless complaining, God counted that as faithful, for he resisted his friends’ pleas to accept blame for his situation and agree with them aka the crowd. Jesus knows that the Christians in Pergamum — and those alive today — must resist groupthink. Like God was willing to do with Job’s friends, Jesus is willing to accept their repentance when they give in to “normal” thinking. Otherwise Jesus will slice their spirituality. What does that mean for their eternal life, though?
Secret Manna and a White Stone
Wright suggests that where they live in Pergamum is starving them, but Jesus’s secret manna will feed them. Manna is a reference to how God fed the Israelites in the desert to keep them from starving.
Apparently, at the time, hosts gave guests at feasts a stone with their name on it as an admission ticket.
It’s interesting that their reward comprises a reference to God’s history and a reference to a cultural practice. It’s like Jesus is co-opting a practice and infusing it with God’s purpose.
The name on the white stone that Jesus will give them has a name known only to Jesus and the receiver. I suppose it’s like the nicknames close friends and lovers give each other. It’s something I’m chewing over for my third novel in the Resurrection trilogy. What new name would Jesus give to resurrected people?
“The challenge to avoid the false intimacy of sexual promiscuity is matched by the offer of a genuine intimacy of spiritual union with Jesus himself.”
I’ll only note here that people today are more comfortable with sexual promiscuity than they are with spiritual intimacy. I suppose there’s a kind of vulnerability in exposing what’s in your mind to another than there is in your mere physical body. The former can be sliced open by two-edged sword words. But in life after death and life after life after death, spiritual intimacy will be the norm. Are you ready?