ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

3 EASTER, 2006
EVENSONG & BENEDICTION

Fr Alan Moses

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holes the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lamp-stands.”

“To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.”

Revelation is probably the most controversial of the books of the Bible. On our recent trip to New York I picked up a book called “American Theocracy” by Kevin Phillips. In it, the writer, a former Republican Party strategist, takes a critical look at the role fundamentalist religion plays in American politics and foreign policy. It seems for much of the religious right, for much of the time that only two books of the Bible exist, the first one and the last. The first, Genesis, generates rows over creation and evolution. The last over the end of the world with people looking forward eagerly to Armageddon fought out in the Middle East.

One point which the author makes is that what in the US are known as the mainline churches have failed to mount a serious critique of this kind of bad and unbiblical theology. They have tended to see the evangelical right as so whacko as to be not worth bothering to engage with its theology. This is a mistake. Its theology is dangerous.

Our second reading gave us the first two the Letters to the Seven Churches which make up the first major section of that book of Revelation. Taken together, the letters constitute a sort of written visitation of the churches of Asia to see whether they are in a fit state to face a crisis. Fundamentalists tend to see this in terms of the imminent end of the world. They transfer John’s warnings to our own time, even though this really means admitting that John got his timescale completely wrong. In fact the text really suggests that the test John has in mind is not the last judgement but persecution by the imperial authorities.

The examination is conducted by Christ himself - “the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.” He says in four of the letters that unless there is repentance or watchfulness he will come in judgement.

The virtues most frequently praised in the letters to the seven churches are patience, endurance, constancy and loyalty. In normal times these would not be ranked first among the Christian virtues. There is no mention of joy and hardly any of love. The stern virtues are of supreme importance when the church is facing a struggle for survival under persecution.

Ephesus was an important trading centre. It was also a major centre of pagan religion, the site of the famous temple of the goddess Artemis - Diana of the Ephesians - as she was known to the Romans - as well as being a centre of the imperial cult. The Romans skilfully incorporated local religions into the official religion of the empire as a means of encouraging political cohesion. Religions which resisted such incorporation were vulnerable.

The city was also home to one of the major churches of the province of Asia. Paul had spent a significant time there, it had an association with St. John the Evangelist.

Under the scrutiny of the Lord, the church in Ephesus seems to acquit itself well at first. The people there have strenuously resisted all threats to the purity of their faith - both those which come from without, from false apostles, and those from within – the group called the Nicolaitans. These seem to have believed that it was fine for Christians to take part in the excesses of pagan worship because they were saved..

Issues of holy order, of properly authorised ministry, continue to be of importance in the Church. This is not a just a matter of the clergy acting as a vested interest group - although it can be. Canon Law exists in part to protect the laity against the abuse of clerical authority, and certainly against its use by people who have no right to it.

Matters of doctrinal truth are still vital to the life of the Church as it seeks to proclaim the gospel in ever-changing situations. We cannot just pretend that these things do not matter in a mood of free-thinking anything goes. We might wonder whether those who claim that Christianity should bring material prosperity to its followers, as a branch of American evangelicalism does, are not Nicolaitans in a pagan capitalist culture

“But this I have against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”
The one charge which Christ does bring against the Ephesian Christians, however, is that their intolerance of apostolic imposters and their unflagging loyalty, their hatred of heresy, had bred an inquisitorial spirit which left little or no room for love.

A sense of theological correctness, combined with an awareness of having persevered, having kept the faith in hard times, can breed a sense of superiority, a sense of our own merit. It is then that Christian communities need to recall what Moses said to Israel: “It is not because you were more numerous than any other people than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you - for you were the fewest of all peoples.”

This stress on love in the Revelation of John is important because that book is so often associated with a grim, vengeful understanding of Christianity – one which is particularly influential in American evangelicalism today; one which looks forward gleefully to Armageddon; to the destruction of God’s enemies; until recently the Communists and now the Muslims. As one commentator has said: “God so loved the world that he sent the Third World War.”

The stress on love is also important in our dealings with our fellow-Christians. We may be experts at spotting heresy at a hundred yards, the doctrinal unsoundness of the clergy - but if we have not love we are “a noisy gong and clanging symbol”. We strike a harsh and jarring note which has no place in the chorus of heaven.