The State of the Church: The Real Issue

11 November 2018

Isaiah 55:1-13; Revelation 3:14-22

I’ve shared before that the state of the modern-day Church is not really different from the state of the ancient Church.  The challenges we face today may have a different tag, but the essential human weaknesses are the same.  They hinge on faith and how faith is understood and lived into.  Apart from genuine faith, other church-y words like love and grace can have no meaning.

There are any number of analogies one can use to give meaning to the “lukewarm” admonition and what it means to be “hot” or “cold”, but the metaphor itself is likely linked to nearby sources of water in the region the people of Laodicea would have been familiar with. 

The “hot” springs of Hierapolis were believed to have medicinal value, and the “cold” springs of Colossae were known for purity.  The waters in Laodicea, however, were “neither hot nor cold”.  They were “tepid”, “lukewarm” and thus lacking healing or purifying properties.  This metaphor would have been understood by the people in Laodicea.

For us there must still be one focal point at which we can meet and agree – not on any single issue but on the broader invitation to live into a life defined and transformed by faith.  Beyond merely believing a thing, faith which transforms us does not change the world; it changes the way we view and interact with the world … and with The Lord and His Church, His people.

It occurs to me our understanding of faith is directly connected to a purposeful understanding of prayer.  When we pray, what are we trying to accomplish?  By prayer, do we hope for external changes?  By this I mean, do we pray others will change without our having to change?  Do we pray The Lord will solve homelessness or hunger or divisions within the Church or the nation without our having to be instruments of the change we seek?  Do we pray children in foster care will always have a home, though we are unwilling to open our own homes?

These are instances in which we must consider the “lukewarm” nature of our faith, the tepid waters of our hearts.  There is much we want and much we can see needs to be done; and while we may possess the essence of faith to know we must pray for these things, we may lack the depth of faith to stick our necks out and put ourselves at risk for these things.  We believe just enough to know we must pray for these things, but we lack the faith necessary to trust The Lord will provide for these things through us.  Maybe it can be said we have more faith in our “things” for our own purposes than in what The Lord can do if we surrender to Him these “things”.

Faith is a tricky business, if we’re gonna be real about it.  It is not enough to say, “You gotta have faith”, and it is misleading to suggest we can just “grab” or “claim” faith.  Faith is a Divine Gift from the heart of The Father.  Just as St. Paul wrote, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, without the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3), we cannot arbitrarily decide one day to believe in Jesus and claim salvation only because we are more afraid of hell than we are willing to live in and for Him.

The Lord spoke to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19).  Though it may sound arbitrary, The Lord is conveying to Moses that His mercy and compassion will go out with great purpose – as when The Lord spoke to His people through His prophet Isaiah, “My Word will not return to Me until it has accomplished that which I purpose”. 

Because our Father’s mercy and compassion are not arbitrary, neither can our faith be because it is inconsistent with the nature of The Holy Father.  We cannot claim faith today for the sake of salvation, and then put it aside tomorrow for the sake of personal gain.  That kind of arbitrary faith will not serve us when we need it most because it was never ours to claim.  It is The Lord’s to give – and for His purposes. 

Yet we know we cannot function without faith.  We cannot worship nor tithe without faith.  We cannot pray without faith.  We certainly cannot serve a purpose to humanity without faith nor can we love fully and without reservation without faith.  In short, as it is written in The Letter to the Hebrews, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God” (11:6).

So what is that component of faith that does “please God”?  It is that thing we can actually do to show our Father it is faith we seek, and it is faith we can be trusted with to His Good Name.  In a word, it is “submission”.  It is “letting go”.  It is a willingness to be vulnerable.  In order to acquire faith, we must be willing to act in faith.  We must be willing to trust Him and not our stuff.

This was the challenge – and the curse – of the people of Laodicea.  They did not trust The Lord; they trusted their stuff.  They trusted their own wealth.  They believed they had all they would need, not knowing nor really appreciating that the stuff they trusted would fade, rust, rot, or be lost or stolen.  Though they had a knowledge of the “treasures they were to store in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20), they trusted their own stores.  Underneath it all, they did not realize they were “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17) – because they were unwilling to Trust The Word of The Lord.

These letters to the Churches have been challenging for me on a personal level not only because I can easily see a component of each letter, each admonition, present and well – and often even defended – in the Church today … but I also see each of these things alive and well within myself. 

If we were to strip away every material component of our lives, if we were suddenly homeless, if we were suddenly broke, would we be rich?  Can we see the goodness and the mercy of The Lord apart from our “stuff”?  It is one thing to be thankful for our “stuff”; it is another thing altogether to become dependent on our “stuff” – to allow our “stuff” to define our understanding of love, of grace, of faith itself.  And this is where the Church in Laodicea – and perhaps the Church in America – has been judged to be.

Yet with all the other admonitions, all the other judgments against the other churches, there remains our Lord’s call to His people to “repent”, to turn away from those things and learn to use them as faithful stewards entrusted with much more.  The admonitions and the invitation into self-assessments can be hard when we are conditioned to those things, even to the point of hopelessness.

Yet it is our Lord, our Savior, our Shepherd who still “stands at the door and knocks”.  He still wants to come in.  He still wants us to have a place at the Table with Him in the Kingdom.  He still wants us to have peace.  He wants us to possess the faith sufficient to “conquer just as He conquered”.  Yet the conquest cannot be about only believing a thing; we must be willing to lose our “things”, even our very lives – “though we die, yet shall we live” (John 11:25).

This Invitation is still open … until He comes “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2).  This is our warning that everything we only think we have is at risk.  And this is His Promise that everything we need is in His Heart and in His Hands.  To the glory and the purpose of The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  Amen.