So. We return to the very last book in the Bible, the Revelation of John, that book of last days and last things. Last week we were a little surprised, perhaps, to see how Revelation started…with a huge picture of Jesus, Christ the Center. He was standing in the middle of seven lampstands, representing seven churches, real, earthly churches. That was Chapter One.

Now, next week John Chase will look with us into chapters 4&5, which will take us off of the earth and up into heaven. Most of us would probably prefer to go right there. Move from Jesus to heaven. But in between is chapter 2 and chapter 3. The Church. There’s no getting around it. We’ll have to go right through it. Just like real life.

Read Revelation 2:1-7

Doggone it. Here’s all the great stuff in Revelation, battles and dragons and cosmic happenings…and we get stuck with the church!

“I’m interested in Jesus, but I don’t like the institutional church.” I hear it all the time. And since I’m not much of an institutional person myself, and since I haven’t always been a pastor, it always grates at me a little bit.

Is that all we are is an institution? Or are we a community of people? What is “the church?” Is the church only people who meet in a large building like this? Or when your homegroup meets in your living room…is that the church? or just part of an institution? When my men’s Bible Study meets…is that the church? When our elders meet in the parlor, is that the church? Is the church a committee, or is it people? When two of you have coffee, is it the church? Or not?

One reason it’s important we figure that out is that in Revelation 2&3, seven messages in a row end like this: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” And if we don’t do anything else this morning, we need to think about whether these words are written to US. Are we included?

Because of time, we read only one message, the one to the church at Ephesus. But in chapter two and three, there are seven churches. Real churches. Seven churches located on one circular mail route in what we know today as Turkey. The Fed Ex driver could easily leave the Island of Patmos, start at Ephesus and do a circular mail route through Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea, making good time with about 30-40 miles in between each stop. And at each stop, he drops off a copy of all the messages to each church. Because each message ends with “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churchES.” Plural. All the messages are apparently for all the churches, even though only one is actually addressed to each.

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:”

They are the words, in other words, of Jesus. Each of the other six messages starts out differently, but each starts with a description of the speaker, and taken from the description of Jesus we read last week.

To Ephesus, they receive the words of the “one who walks among the lampstands.” To Smyrna, “the words of the First and the Last, who was dead and came to life.” To Pergamum, “the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword,” etc” all of which are to say, “this is what Jesus says to you.”

If you put all seven of the prefaces together, you pretty much have the whole description of Jesus from chapter 1. Which, as Eugene Peterson neatly shows, can mean that “each church is defined by only one piece of the vision.” Christ is not represented wholly in any one church. Or in any one person. That is such, such a good thing.

True confession time. You know this beautiful fellowship hall we have next door that gets used just a whole ton for wedding receptions, soup and bread, Dynamis, Alpha, Wednesday night dinner, youth group, boy scouts, memorial service receptions, concerts, community meetings and all sorts of other events? Well I attended this church when we were trying to figure out whether to build that Fellowship Hall. In fact, I was an elder on session.

Bethany, in typical Seattle fashion, had talked about such a project for about 25 years, and it was finally coming down to a decision point. Personally, I thought it was an awful lot of money for a building I figured would be empty most of the week, and that a lot of hands-on ministry could be funded with such a large sum of money. When the vote finally came down, it was 15 for and 1 against. I was the only one opposed! So no small irony that on a daily basis I walk through it several times, and that it gets such a phenomenal amount of use.

At the time, I didn’t want to be about buildings. But it’s a good thing Christ was not wholly represented just in me that day. It’s a good thing we had all parts of the church. It’s a good thing that other people listened and prayed and voted or we wouldn’t have this phenomenal resource. Good thing we have different kinds of people.

It’s a good thing we have all different kinds of churches. Different in size, worship style, evangelical, conservative, liberal, social justice, contemplative, charismatic, geographic location, leadership, theological emphases…because Christ is not represented wholly in any one of them.

That gets pretty darned awkward sometimes. Especially when a high visibility megachurch pastor falls off the moral wagon. Or when someone lumps you with a particular political position you despise…simply because they know you believe in Jesus.

Or when your denomination appears silly and divisive in the newspapers. Yet, somehow, all together, Christ is represented. It’s pretty messy. Henry Nouwen once defined community as “a place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

“We have our own faith, and it’s private.” Those are the words of an employer of mine. Years ago in college, I worked for a senior citizen couple mowing their lawn, painting fences, fixing sprinkler systems, whatever had to be done. They were great employers, very nice people and I got to know them quite well. Though I talked about working with a youth group and my faith, they never said a word about their own faith. Until one day I was painting the fence when a couple young men in white shirts and ties walked up and knocked on the door…Mormon missionaries.

My employer answered the door, listened long enough to figure out who they were, and said quite matter-of-factly, “Thanks for coming, but we have our own faith and it’s private.” And she slammed the door before they could say anything.

My mouth fell open, both because they’d had the door slammed in their face, but also because my boss said “we have our own faith.” It was news to me. “We have our own faith, and it’s private.”

I have to tell you, the Bible knows nothing about such a thing. Individualistic, independent faith apart from other people is not a biblical concept. No matter how messy, inefficient, uninspired, tired or apathetic the church might be, biblical faith is connected to other people. Here are the words the Bible uses: a nation, a people, a tribe, a community…the “church.” As messy as it is…it’s all over the Bible, all over Revelation…and Christ is in the midst of it.

But if you had to be part of a church, it would be better, wouldn’t it, if you could go to a highly successful church?

Well, perfect, because that’s what Ephesus was. Now remember, this church at Ephesus was in a volatile area. Ephesus had one of the seven wonders of the world, the huge and decadent Temple of Artemis, a fertility goddess. And temples to some of the divine Roman emperors. Much of the population were pagans, glorifying sexual immorality and practicing idol worship of various kinds.

There was also a Jewish contingent, some of whom were hostile to the Christian claims about Jesus. And apparently also some heretics called the Nicolatians, who were mixing all of these things together. And there was at least some persecution of Christians. Persecution that could cost a Christian their job, their income, their home, their freedom, their very life. Some of the people in these churches were paying a great price for following Christ. And apparently doing a great job. Listen to Jesus’ first words to them:

“I know your works , your toil and your patient endurance. I know you cannot tolerate evildoers…I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name and that you have not grown weary.”

John Stott once said these Ephesians were “energetic in their service, patient in their suffering, and orthodox in their faith.” They had it all together! I’d like to be a part of that church. Finally! One where they don’t argue over whether to get rid of the old pews in the sanctuary, or whether the youth can throw balls in the fellowship hall! No delays over getting things done, no need to check in with a committee. No difficult people. (Now, I’m not going to make you do this, but if you were to look down your pew, your row this morning…I can just tell you that you have some difficult people in your row!)

I remembered this week my very first pastoral hospital visit in Minneapolis. Her name was Agnes, and she was 91. Agnes had a reputation in the church of being feisty. That’s the nice word. She could be difficult. When I walked in, she looked me carefully up and down and said “So, you’re the new pastor, huh? Well, I’m not very religious.” They don’t teach you how to deal with these things at seminary, you know?! It’s messy. I finally said “Well, I’m not very religious either, but I’m really interested in Jesus.” We got along famously after that. Messy. Maybe Ephesus didn’t have people like that.

The first word to almost every one of these churches is a very positive, a strong affirmation. To the other churches, Jesus says “I like your endurance, your perseverance, your holding fast, your love and faith, the way you’ve kept my word, the fact that you haven’t denied my name.”

Those are good things, aren’t they? Jesus, the one walking around and experiencing these churches instantly says “This is good. Oh, and this, I like this. And this.”

But just as we get ready to shout “Yea, and Amen!” to Jesus’ affirmation of the Ephesian church, comes the “but.” “BUT I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first...” & “you don’t do the works you did at first.”

First the affirmation, then the correction or rebuke. In almost every one of these seven messages, the pattern is the same. Address from Jesus, affirmation, then correction. It gets messy.

The corrections seem to come in response to a couple different threats. Two churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, don’t really receive rebukes. They are apparently churches under persecution, and are just exhorted to hold fast.

Two churches, Sardis and Laodicea, are sternly rebuked for their complacency and told to wake up! They are too comfortable, they’ve been given soft lives in cultures that don’t threaten them and they’ve gotten lazy.

The other three churches, including Ephesus (& Pergamum and Thyatira) appear under great pressure to accommodate to cultural practices and pressures that work against the gospel. In the case of the Ephesians, they’ve quit “doing the works they did at first.” That doesn’t mean legalistic works, but they’ve quit living out the gospel in a way that sticks out in the world. They’re fitting in. And Christ is calling them out.

Maybe you can understand Jesus’ corrections of the first century church, but it’s hard to imagine what he might say to us. I dug back into the archives this week to pull out a series of one page articles that Christianity Today magazine ran back in 1999, just before the millennium. They were patterned after these Revelation messages to the churches, seven letters to different kinds of churches, written by well known authors.Our staff read through them last week. They use the same general format of these in the Revelation- address, affirmation, correction. Let me read you a couple of passages of the correction parts:

William Willimon, the former dean of the chapel at Duke Divinity School and now a Bishop in the Methodist church wrote To the Church Called Mainline. It starts out in that same voice of Jesus: “Behold I make all things new! Even you.”

And it ends with this correction: “Personally, I think you tend to be open-minded to a fault…I wish you would hire some theologians with some guts for a change. Can’t you find something more fun to do than General Assemblies and General Conferences?...Some of your good ideas from the last century may need a decent burial if I can work birth in you in the next.

One more thing. Please get out of the middle of the road! That’s where all the accidents happen, theologically. Remember, I wasn’t crucified for my moderation.”

Or, To the Suburban Churches of North America by Eugene Peterson.

“I have this against you: you’re far too impressed with Size and Power and Influence. You are impatient with the small and the slow. You exercise little discernment between the ways of the world and my ways…the suburban church has a lot of people in it, it functions very well, you can make almost anything happen. But honestly, now, do you think that this is what I hand in mind when I said “Follow me,” and then headed for Golgotha in Jerusalem?”

It’s no accident, of course, that I pulled these two out. What would Jesus say to Bethany Presbyterian? It so happens that our denomination is squarely in the mainline. And though you might say Queen Anne isn’t a suburb, I would argue that it’s a type of suburb in the middle of the city. What would he say to us here today?

I wonder if he’d say, in some form, as he did to Ephesus, “They’ve forsaken their first love.”

I remember meeting Christ for the first time, realizing it wasn’t just a religion I’d grown up with but a relationship with a God who loved me. I remember being so motivated to do things, change how I lived, try things, talk to people. And I know how many times since I’ve had to stop and discover that I’ve allowed things far more trivial to submerge my first love.

Love for Christ, love for people. This letter to the church says the only antidote is to “remember and repent.” Remember who you are, who you love. Turn around, get headed back the right direction.

Isn’t it interesting that now we’ve peeked into three chapters of the Revelation, this book of end times…and all we’ve gotten to so far are pictures of Jesus Christ and His Church?

And isn’t it interesting, that here from this book where so many people want to build complicated structures and predictions of the future, where for centuries there have been movements that have interpreted Revelation as motivation to drop everything and await the Second Coming…isn’t it interesting that so far all we’ve heard are calls to live.

Authentically and obediently and faithfully live now.

Remember, repent, live as solid followers of Jesus in a challenging world, renew your love for Christ and other people.

And we can’t do that alone. We can only do it together, no matter how messy it gets. “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

Are we listening? Are we really listening?