Inferiority Complex

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Revelation 2:18-29

July 6, 2014 • Portage First UMC

Near the end of the school year this past year, Rachel had a class project in which she had to do a family tree. Now, I had done some work many years ago on tracing our roots, but had lost interest and quit. Her project reignited that interest, and I began once again searching the internet for clues as to where we came from. I was able to trace my family back to New Jersey in the 1800’s, though there don’t seem to be any records of where the “Ticen” family came from before that. But from New Jersey, the family moved to Ohio, and then to Indiana where they settled near a little town called Burlington. And, somehow, my grandfather moved from there to the big town of Sedalia, which is where I was born. Most of the time, when people ask where I’m from, I’ll tell them Clinton County or “near Lafayette,” because very few people know where Sedalia is. Even if you’ve been through there, and driven right by the home where I grew up, you may not know you’ve been there. Sedalia is a wide spot in the road, home to about 150 people, give or take. Sometimes it feels like Sedalia was similar to the town Philip Gulley describes as being on the map but tucked under the staple in the atlas.

Some of you grew up in large towns, or maybe you grew up in small towns that became large towns, like Portage. My 90-year-old uncle, who we got to visit this last week, took a job and moved to Orlando, Florida before anyone had ever heard of it. He’s lived in the same house for many years and has literally watched as his little town became a huge city once Walt Disney found it. My niece is experiencing the opposite; due to my brother’s job change, they are moving this summer from Noblesville to Rossville, and she will be attending the school both my brother and I graduated from. And she’s not too happy about it, because she’s been used to a large city and now she’s moving to a small town. Small towns have been given the reputation of being insignificant, less important somehow. We even see small town churches struggle across our denomination. It seems like they become places that time has passed by, and it’s easy for a small town church to feel insignificant, inferior, as if they have nothing to contribute to the kingdom of God. And yet, if they are faithful, they have everything to give.

This morning, we are continuing our journey through Asia Minor and the seven churches Jesus had a special message for near the end of the first century. Those messages came through the Apostle John, while he was in exile on the island of Patmos. And, as we’ve seen, in each of these letters, Jesus has both compliments and concerns for the churches, which reminds us that no church is perfect—because it’s made up of imperfect human beings! You and me. But Jesus, the Son of God, the perfect one, calls each of them to faithfulness and, as we’ve been looking at, he gives each church instructions for what they need to do to be “victorious” or “conquerors.” That’s a message we still need to hear, even in the twenty-first century. No matter how important or educated we think we have become, we are still human, and we all still have room to grow in our faith in Jesus. That’s what these letters are here for, to help us become more like him as we live our lives.

So far, we’ve been to Ephesus and Smyrna, and last week you visited Pergamum. About forty miles east of Pergamum was a town built by Alexander the Great to be a military garrison. The town’s name was Thyatria, and if you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. It’s not well known, and it wasn’t well known even in its own day. It was of “minor political importance,” an average town that was large enough but not huge. It may have been a lot like Portage, because it was, in many ways, a union town, an industrial town. There is evidence of a wide variety of industries that were well-established here: bronze workers, coppersmiths, tanners and other leather workers, dyers, wool and linen workers, potters and bakers (Mulholland [a], Revelation, pgs. 111-112; Mulholland [b], “Revelation,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pg. 443). The water at Thyatira was so rich in minerals that there was no other place that could make a red dye so bold and brilliant. Purple, the color of kings, was also made here, and the book of Acts tells us of one early Christian believer, Lydia, who was from Thyatira and was a “dealer in purple cloth” (Acts 16:14-15).

As I said, Thyatira was a union town. In those days, such groups were called “guilds,” and in many ways they functioned a bit like modern-day unions, but they were more than that. The city’s entire social structure was built around the guilds. Guilds weren’t just about your work; they also touched on your social and religious life. Every so often, there were guild festivals, held in the Temple of Apollo. Apollo was the patron god of Thyatira, and therefore of the guilds as well, and he was understood and even proclaimed to be the “son of god.” So these festivals, held as they were in Apollo’s temple, became at least quasi-religious ceremonies, worship services of a sort. The festivals were a time to eat, to fellowship, even sometimes to engage in questionable activities with the temple prostitutes. They were a time when you asked Apollo to bless your industry with prosperity (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 25). That was a problem for these new believers in Jesus, who now knew that he and he alone is the Son of God. Now, today, if your union or your office invited you to a party and you didn’t want to go or you knew you wouldn’t like what was going to happen there, you would just politely decline. Not in Thyatira in the first century. Attendance was mandatory if you were going to be part of the guild. If you didn’t participate, they understood that as you rejecting Apollo, and leaders were afraid Apollo might then get angry and curse the guild. Refusing to attend or participate meant you would probably be expelled from the guild, and that meant you would lose your job, your career, your way of making a living for your family. The very social structure put a real choice before these early Christians: Jesus or career? Faith or job? In this little town, it was a stark choice. It still is.

So the first thing Jesus says to the church at Thyatira is this: “These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze” (2:18). Let’s get it straight, right from the top, Thyatira, who Jesus is. He is the one who is the real Son of God, not Apollo, and he is the one who is over and greater than any of the guilds. Their craft is only a reflection of who he is, and so they hold no real threat. And then he pushes on with further encouragement: “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first” (2:19). Outwardly, the church was doing very well, and each new thing they tried was more successful than the last. This was a church, it seemed to everyone, that, in spite of the persecution and the threats to their livelihood, was on an upward trajectory. They were “the little church that could.”

But then, as he has with the other churches, Jesus turns the corner with those no one wants to hear from him: “I have this against you” (2:20). By this point in the Revelation, they were probably expecting something like that, and yet I imagine that their ears perked up and their stomachs maybe tightened when they heard those words, and the words that followed: “You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet” (2:20). “Jezebel” was probably not the woman’s real name. People did not name their little girls “Jezebel,” certainly not anyone who knew where the name came from. In the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, we meet King Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, who was not an Israelite. She was a Canaanite, a worshipper of the god Baal, the prominent Canaanite god, and she had led her husband and the whole nation of Israel to also worship Baal (Johnson, “Revelation,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 12, pg. 444). In fact, she is largely understood to be the source of her husband’s demise, his wickedness and his death, and she herself came to a rather grisly end. You can read about it in 2 Kings 9. Today still, her name is often used to describe someone who is evil and scheming. No, “Jezebel” was not a compliment, and worse yet, this woman has passed herself off as a prophet, which means she had a following of some sort.

Now it’s not entirely clear what she was teaching, but we know she was in some sort of leadership and was leading at least part of the church to believe it was all right to eat food sacrificed to idols and to practice “sexual immorality.” When you consider the story of the Old Testament Jezebel, and the prophets then who spoke against her, it’s not likely these Thyatiran Christians were practicing actual immorality. That image is used especially in the Old Testament to describe any sort of behavior that goes along with worshipping other gods. Repeatedly, God calls the Hebrews to faithfulness and not to “prostitute” themselves to other gods. We might call what she’s teaching “spiritual playing around.” Thinking you can have it all, worship the god of the guilds and the God of Jesus Christ (Wright 26). That was a constant struggle in this first-century world where many gods cried out for attention. And it was often seen in this matter of eating food that had been offered to idols, perhaps the food at the guild festivals that had been dedicated to Apollo. Paul had also encountered such teaching. In his letters both to Rome and to Corinth, Paul addresses this issue of eating food sacrificed to idols, and his basic conclusion is that Christians shouldn’t do it if it causes one of their brothers or sisters to stumble in their faith. To Rome, he writes, “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall” (Romans 14:20-21). In Thyatira, within and around the guilds, “Jezebel” appears to be encouraging the people not to quit their jobs but to go ahead and attend the Apollo festivals—in other words, to compartmentalize their faith. Those so-called “Satan’s deep secrets” (2:24) really seem to have to do with that compartmentalization. You keep your faith and your work separate, and don’t let the two overlap. That way you can “have it all.” It’s an intellectual approach, spurred on by one who thinks she is a prophet but is not.

It’s always dangerous to proclaim yourself a prophet. Several years ago, when I was a pastor in another town, we had a person arrive who declared herself a pastor, even though she had no church. She came to our pastor’s meetings and was welcomed with open arms. She began some benevolent works, and the rest of us participated, and then things got weird. She told us that the angel Gabriel joined her every night by the campfire in her back yard. And she told us that she had been sent to town to teach us all how to really worship. Then she began going by the title of “prophet,” and whenever any of us disagreed with something she said or did, we were the focus of her and of other people’s wrath. I had a confrontation that took place in the middle of a worship service, of all places, about this woman. It was a difficult time, and unfortunately I’m not sure it ever really got resolved. There were people in the community who believed her, and thought the rest of us pastors were demons. There were others who were wary of her. She did some good things, in spite of her unorthodox beliefs, but she also seemed to lead people astray, because it became more about “her” than about Jesus. Now, I don’t doubt that “Jezebel” may have begun as a solid teacher, someone who did great things in Jesus’ name. But by the time John writes down this letter from Jesus, she is leading people astray. It’s become about her, and it’s become divisive in an otherwise good church. How long this had been going on, we don’t know. The letter says, “I have given her time to repent…but she is unwilling” (2:21). And her actions have made this little church in this little town feel powerless. Something has to be done.

So Jesus says, “I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead" (2:22-23). If that makes you uncomfortable, it should! That’s a pretty harsh-sounding punishment, but it gives us a huge clue as to just how seriously Jesus takes the confusion and divisiveness “Jezebel” has created. It tells us how seriously Jesus takes this issue of worshipping Apollo or him—not that Apollo is any sort of real god. But Jesus calls his people to undivided loyalty to him and to one another. The punishment is not only directed at “Jezebel,” but also at her “children,” those who are her disciples (Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 772), and whether or not he’s talking about literal death or, as most folks understand it, spiritual death, the end result is the same: they will be separated from Jesus, cast out from the family of God (Mulholland [b] 442). And the reason all of this is to happen is very significant. Jesus says it’s so that “all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds” (2:23). The evil will be removed so that more people can know who Jesus is. And then there’s this serious reminder: “I will repay each of you according to your deeds” (2:23).

Now, that’s serious stuff…for Thyatira. “Jezebel” has been teaching that what the guilds are asking is okay. Does that have anything to do with us here in Portage in the twenty-first century? Our jobs don’t ask us to swear allegiance to other gods today…or do they? They may not ask us to bow down to little statues or to come to a party where we swear allegiance to Apollo, but there are ways today, more and more subtle, where we are asked to choose between our faith and our career, or our families and our job. We are asked in ways both subtle and overt to “swear allegiance” to the career, to the company, to the profession. Work later and longer, give time to the job you should be giving to the kids, miss the ballgames and the school programs…all for the sake of the job. And the reason we end up willing to do that, even aside from the money we earn, is the same reason Thyatira was listening to “Jezebel.” It made them feel good, “it” being the job. And so many people today—we find our identity, our worth, our value in our job, in the thing that was only meant to provide a living, not to become our life. The problem is we look for whatever gives us affirmation, whatever builds us up and makes us feel somehow less inferior. And while the Gospel message of the church may occasionally make us “feel good,” the call of Jesus is never about getting things for ourselves or making ourselves superior. In fact, the Gospel call is exactly the opposite. Jesus calls us to give ourselves away, to serve the least, the last and the lost, to not think of ourselves as higher than others. And along comes “Jezebel,” who says you can have it both ways. Or who says, basically, ignore the call of Jesus and pursue your worth in your work, even if it means selling out just a little bit to the false god, to the idol. Think about a town like Thyatira—or Portage—that always seems to live in someone else’s shadow, and then listen as “Jezebel” says, “If you work just a little harder and just a little longer, if you give yourself more to your work, then maybe we won’t be in someone else’s shadow. Maybe we’ll be great. All it takes is a little bending of the knee, a little compromise, less servanthood and more superiority.” We hear her whisper all around us, and the question before us is this: is there anything—even our career, our economy, our job or our money—that we value more than Jesus?

To the “rest” of the Thyatirans, those who have not embraced the teachings of “Jezebel,” Jesus gives a comforting word: “I will not impose any other burden on you, except to hold on to what you have until I come” (2:24-25). These are the victorious, the overcomers, the conquerors. To be victorious in Thyatira involves remembering what is most important and holding tight to that. It’s not a matter of becoming legalistic or dogmatic, but of becoming convinced of the truth, of standing up for that truth in whatever context you find yourself in: work, home, daily life. “Holding on” involves walking in the footsteps of the Savior who was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), the one who revealed God’s desperate love for our broken world. “For God so loved the world,” we’re told, “that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God gave everything when he sent Jesus. So being victorious means we ask this question: is there anything in our lives we value more than Jesus? And are we willing to give even that up if it means taking a stand for him?

Of course we want to know “what’s in it for me,” and each of these letters makes promises to the victorious. In Thyatira, those who “hold on” are promised this: “I will give authority over the nations…just as I have received authority from my Father” (2:26-27). Now, that’s an amazing promise to these Thyatirans who have felt overlooked, inferior to the rest of the empire. There are echoes of Psalm 2 here, one of the psalms that the early church saw as a promise of the Messiah. In that psalm, the Lord says to his son, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery” (Psalm 2:8-9). The first promise to the victorious, then, is that they will participate in Jesus’ victory over the fallen world (Mulholland [a] 117). Though they seem to be powerless and insignificant politically now, one day they will be rulers over the world if they stay “full of grace and truth.” How can Jesus give such authority to them? Even Rome hasn’t given them any authority, but Jesus stands above Rome. He can give authority because he has received it from God the Father (2:28; cf. Matt. 28:18).

And then there is a second promise to the victorious in Thyatira: “I will also give that one the morning star” (2:28). Once again, this is directly taking on the local gods, because the “morning star” is Venus, the planet that appears at its brightest in the sky just before dawn. Venus, for the Romans, was the goddess of love, beauty, fertility and prosperity, and she was seen as the promise of a new day, each day. But Jesus is not promising to give them Venus. He’s promising to give them himself. He’s promising the same thing he’s been promising throughout the book of Revelation: that he will dwell among his people and be near them. Near the end of the book, in 22:16, we’re told Jesus is “the bright Morning Star.” Venus is not a god; neither is Apollo. Jesus is the real Son of God, and he is promising to come and be with his people. Not only do the victorious receive Christ’s authority, but they also receive his presence, his going with them, his empowering them to be the incarnation of Christ to the world. So it didn’t matter what happened to them in the guilds. It didn’t matter whether or not they became the best city in the Empire. Jesus was with them and he wasn’t going anywhere. His word, and their witness, was the promise of a new dawn, a new hope for the world (cf. Wright 27-28). That’s the truth they must hold onto, and so should we, because once that truth gets ahold of us, everything changes. Everything is different.

To the ones who feel inferior, Jesus gives the promise that they will rule over the nations. To the ones who hold on, Jesus gives the promise that he will be with them. One of seminary professors once said, “The secret of being an agent of God’s grace to others seems to lie not so much in the depth of my growth or maturity in Christ but in the depth of my abandonment and availability to God” (The Upper Room Disciplines 1997, pg. 365). Are we available to God? Are we open to his presence? When we come to the table, this communion table, we open ourselves to what Jesus wants to do in us and through us. These are simple tokens—bread and grape juice—simple things that don’t seem to matter much. They’re common—you can find them on many tables today. And yet in these common, insignificant elements, we find not just a reminder of Jesus’ love for us but a promise of his presence, a reminder that he will be with us. We are his church. We are his body, and the gates of hell will not prevail against his church (cf. Matthew 16:18). May we dare to be a church that “holds on,” that stands for truth and that trusts in the Christ who is over all. As we come to the table this morning, seeking Christ’s presence, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:29). Amen.