Saturday, February 5, 2011

Of Lamentations and Candlesticks

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about the Letters to the Seven Churches in Revelation Chapters 2 – 3.  To the church in Ephesus Christ says, “Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent,” Revelation 2:5.

As I write this I am conscious that when I read the Seven Letters that I tend to focus on the promises to the “overcomer”. I have studied those promises, preached on those promises, and I meditate on those promises. I have never preached on the judgments of Christ in these letters; I have never preached on the words, “…or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place.” To be sure I have taught on the dynamics of the Seven Churches; I have taught on the sin and disobedience that Christ speaks to in those churches; but just as surely I have never made it a point to focus on the pending judgment of Christ should the disobedience continue.

However, a couple of weeks ago I asked myself, “What does it look like when Christ removes a candlestick? What does it look like when Christ removes a church?” (In Revelation 1:20 we learn that a lampstand in this context represents a church). When Christ removes a candlestick/lampstand does anyone notice?

I don’t think that removal of a candlestick means physical removal of a church, of a people. While it could mean physical removal of a people; it need not mean that; it could culminate in physical removal, but it need not end in physical removal. When Christ removes a candlestick does anyone notice?

This morning I read Lamentations in one sitting, and I think perhaps for the first time I sensed the lamentation in Lamentations. The language is grim, “The hands of compassionate women boiled their own children; They became food for them because of the destruction of my people,” Lamentations 4:10. While this describes the siege and destruction of Jerusalem around 586 B.C., Josephus has a similar description of Jerusalem in the siege of 70 A.D. It is dark business indeed when a lampstand is removed.

Because ancient Jerusalem and the Seven Churches are both examples of syncretism and alliance with the world-system; because they both are perhaps examples of people using cultural common sense to sustain themselves in what would otherwise be a hostile environment; I’m not sure that it would be easy to see anything wrong in much of what these people did – unless God’s Word and character were the benchmarks. It is so easy to rationalize syncretism, to rationalize adopting the world’s ways and means, to rationalize making Yahweh and Jesus inoffensive and perhaps even cuddly. And yet…and yet…the judgment of God in Lamentations is indeed the judgment of God; and the warnings of Christ in Revelation to the churches are warnings of judgment – the judgment of Christ.

If Lamentations speaks to us today as a metaphor of God and His people; and if Christ in Revelation speaks to us today as the One Who walks in the midst of the candlesticks; then can we really think that when professing Christians in our nation live as the world lives that there are no candlesticks being removed? But then I come back to my question, When Christ removes a candlestick does anyone notice?

If we are accustomed to functioning in our own strength, why would we notice?

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