Like a lot of men, I am not keen on going to the doctor. One time, several years ago, I forced myself to go because I was suffering from regular blinding headaches. The reason I didn’t want to go was that I feared bad news.
The first thing the GP did was put me at ease. He was quickly able to assure me that I didn’t have a brain tumour. He said, ‘Almost everyone who comes to me with bad headaches assumes they have a tumour, but the vast majority don’t.’
If men don’t like seeing the doctor, I venture to suggest as a parallel that many churches would rather not receive a diagnosis of their spiritual health from Jesus. In the case of the church at Laodicea, they are in for a shock when Doctor Jesus gives his diagnosis of their condition and prescribes treatment in our reading. Unlike a lot of men who fear they have a serious condition when they are more or less fine, the opposite is true of them. They think they are fine, but they are perilously ill.
Let’s remind ourselves of Jesus’ diagnosis. It’s devastating:
15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
We need to look separately at the problems of being lukewarm and being rich.
A lot of people misunderstand the criticism of lukewarmness. It is often said that to be hot is to be ‘on fire’, fiercely devoted to Jesus, and to be cold is to be hostile to him. Therefore in condemning lukewarmness, Jesus is saying either be totally for me or totally against me, both are preferable to being half-hearted. But why would Jesus want people to be against him? It makes no sense.
What does make sense is to put these images into the context of Laodicea itself. The nearby town of Hierapolis had hot springs which were used for healing and therapy. Nearby Colossae had cold water, which was used for cooling and refreshment. But Laodicea only had a lukewarm water supply, laden with minerals, which drinkers wanted to spit out.[1]
Applying this to the metaphor of hot, cold, and lukewarm water in our text, I think we are meant to understand that the Laodicean church’s so-called faith had no positive effect on anyone. They brought neither healing nor refreshment to those with whom they engaged. They were not a good news community. Nothing about them brought the transforming love of God in Christ into people’s lives for the better. Encountering them just left a bad taste in the mouth.
And as for their claim to be rich and self-sufficient, again this was something in which the Christians followed their city. Laodicea had been hit by earthquakes in AD 20 and again in AD 60. On the first occasion, they received imperial aid to rebuild. On the second occasion, they refused outside aid, saying they did not need it due to wealthy benefactors in the local farming community and a nearby centre of medicine.[2]
What does that sound like to you? Well, to me it sounds like pride. I don’t need any help thank you, I’ve got it all. In spiritual terms this is devastating to faith. In fact, it’s contrary to faith and kills faith. In the Gospel we are, as Jesus tells the Laodicean church, ‘wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked’. We need someone else. We need Jesus. We need the grace of God. And we need humility to ask for it. Pride stops us from receiving what God has for us.
And if they were full of themselves, full of pride, no wonder they were bad news for people they met. No wonder they left a bad taste.
It’s important for us to reflect humbly on where we are as a church in this respect. Are we a good news community? Is this a group of people where folk are being changed, bit by bit, so that they more beautifully reflect Jesus Christ to the world? Is this a society where the tired and weary find refreshment?
Alternatively, are we just a private club, maybe a bit harsh in tone, where rather than healing and refreshment people encounter judgmentalism and rejection? Which are we?
Because for any church that falls into the latter category, Jesus’ words, ‘I am about to spit you out of my mouth’ must be taken seriously. Did you realise that Jesus closes some churches? Not all – some churches that close have fought the good fight but run out of steam. But others, those like Laodicea, are ones that Jesus himself spits out of his mouth. He withdraws his blessing. He stops pouring out his Spirit. And these churches wither until they die.
These churches may be more familiar to you than you might think. How often have I heard people in some Methodist churches say, ‘I’m not interested in all that mission stuff, I just want this church to remain open to see me out and have my funeral.’ That is a statement of unutterable selfishness. It goes against the whole spirit of Jesus and his community. I think we can work out from today’s passage what Jesus does with a church like that.
Secondly, we need to reflect on Jesus’ prescription:
18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so that you can see.
19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
I wonder whether you have childhood memories of being made to take vile-tasting medicine. For me, there was one dreaded medicine bottle in a kitchen cupboard. It was one that my grandmother, who lived with us, was fond of reaching for as some kind of cure-all panacea.
Kaolin and morphine. Or ‘Kaolin-morph’, as she called it. These days I shudder at the thought that pharmacies sold over the counter a medicine containing morphine for unrestricted use with children. In those days, all I knew was that it had the most disgusting taste.
I want to suggest to you that here Jesus has no alternative but to prescribe some fairly unpalatable medicine to the Laodicean church. But nothing other than a drastic turnaround will bring them out of their spiritual death.
So – gold refined in the fire: a Christian life that is costly and sometimes means suffering.
White clothes to cover nakedness: I think this is about a willingness to go against the popular culture. For the Greeks, public nakedness was celebrated. You may recall that the athletes in the original Olympic games participated naked. Even our word ‘gymnast’ derives from the Greek word for naked.[3] They had to be willing where necessary to go against popular culture, rather than think they could continue to fit in and just tack belief in Jesus on top of that.
Salve on their eyes so they could see – they were so spiritually blind that they needed to see again what was truly important to God.
No wonder Jesus talks about rebuke, discipline (or, perhaps better, instruction) and repentance. When a church is dying spiritually the solution is almost never the introduction of new methods and techniques. All they do is put new clothes on a corpse. Much more likely is a solution that entails taking some difficult medicine to get back on the right track, or submission to spiritual surgery.
There are many churches that need to stop asking, what quick fix can we apply that will turn us around, and instead ask, what pain are we willing to endure in order to become more Christlike?
The great tragedy of the church at Laodicea is expressed in verse 20:
20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
That is not an evangelistic text. It is the description of a church that has shut Jesus out. And Jesus, who described himself to the previous church, Philadelphia, as one who could open doors, either cannot or will not open this door. He waits on the outside, where he has been exiled, until the Laodiceans welcome him back in.
We need to reflect on these matters from time to time. Have we just chosen the easy, comfortable life? Do we avoid the cost of discipleship by blending in with our wider culture? Have we lost sight of what is important to God?
Sure, there are times when churches decline because the wider culture has rejected the Christian Gospel. They struggle to get a hearing because of this. But at least they are trying to get a hearing.
Sadly, there are other churches that are uncomfortably like Laodicea, choosing the easy life and compromising with society. These churches face a hard choice, to know that the only way to spiritual life is the costly path of discipleship.
And maybe it’s the fact that the way of Jesus is a costly and at times painful route through life that puts us off and leads us to take the soft option. If that is the block, then let’s just take a step back and consider all Jesus has done for us. The universe was made through him. He left the glory of heaven for the poverty of the Incarnation. He was betrayed, falsely accused, tortured, and subjected to a cruel death. All this he did for us.
If he has done so much for us, what can we, his people, offer him in gratitude?
[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC), p113.
[2] Op. cit., p111.
[3] Op. cit., p116.
Big Circumstance 