Do You Have Ears?

Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 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.

To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Revelation 3:19-22

This week we head into what is known as "Holy Week" in the church. In some ways, what we remember this week is a microcosm of what I've been talking about in this series on Laodicea. As Laodicea may have seen it, there is the triumphal entry, some lag time, community time, then a turn, because things didn't turn out exactly how we thought. To Laodicea, the church that began well but then got distracted by their own goals and desires and perhaps the every day, finding that what they thought would match their ideals turned out not to, so they refused it; "We are rich and in need of nothing" (from God). God's reply to them, "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire..."

But what does it look like from God's perspective? Jesus told the apostles to go get the donkey upon which he would enter the city. That should have been the first clue that Jesus was not what many wanted Him to be in this "triumphal" entry. You see, a donkey is a symbol of one who comes in peace. Had Jesus ridden in on a horse, now there would be the image they wanted. A horse was a symbol of a war won, a conquering hero. Still they lauded Him as a king, but they still held to their belief that Jesus would be the conqueror and not the redeemer/reconciler bringing peace. And then He did nothing. For days, nothing. So they turned back to their own needs and desires and wrote off God. But God did not write them off. He gave them one more time to understand, the last supper. In essence, He once again offered gold refined by fire, His body and blood, a sacrifice for redemption. Some of those who had spiritual ears heard, others heard and were unsure of what it meant, and Judas heard that this Jesus was not the one He wanted. "His Jesus" would have been something else. And so he refused. But God was not done. Through pain and suffering and death, he sacrificed Himself for us, and then completed the salvation event through His resurrection, His defeat of death. And He gave us the opportunity to be one with Him.


So wake up from your sleep, Laodicea! Though we rejected Him time and again, He still says to us: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock..." and even Laodicea has the chance to repent and return and join in the victory won over spiritual death and into life in community with our father, as victorious heirs: "To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne..."

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Whitewashed Tombs

A few years ago on vacation, I entered First Mega-Church of the Love of Jesus and it was marvelous. Glass, lots of light, welcome center in the lobby (nobody came and greeted me, by the way) right across from the bookstore with posters of the pastor and his newest book release. Walking into the auditorium, I mean sanctuary, I took my seat up front. The music started, lights and sound were amazing. In fact, the worship team did everything "right,"  but there was something wrong with the sound. No, not the sound from the platform - that was fine. It was the sound from the congregation - or should I say the lack of it. It felt like a worship concert and not a worship service. It felt lifeless, like the congregation was going through the motions. It was, in fact, disturbing to me. There was no community prayer time, no attempt to connect the congregation. Follow that with another sermon about how "if you follow these steps, and here's how I support them from scripture..." and you have a very man-centered and not God centered experience. Where was the spirit? It was a cultural event, something we do because we were born in America between the '40's and the '70's.

A few months later, I was in another church with a membership of over 10,000. I walked in, and it looked very similar. There was a welcome center, and kiosks to tell of all of the small groups available, and I was greeted personally. I entered the sanctuary, referred to by the congregation as "the family room." Lighting, sound, platform, all the bells and whistles like the other church, even a cool follow spot that tracked an infrared device attached to the pastor's collar. They too "did it right." But something was very different -  the sound from the congregation was there - it was engaged, it was connected, it was worship! There was a prayer time for the community, not necessarily an altar call, but it included the option for people to respond to the movement of the Spirit - and the Spirit was moving.

So how does this connect to the title and to the series on Laodicea, the lukewarm church? Do not hear me saying that I am opposed to large churches, I am not. Its about what happens inside churches, large or small. Even ones that like the former one I described can be used by God as an entry point for new people, but it is about what happens after that. It should be fairly obvious if you "have ears to hear." You can look great on the outside, the trappings of worship can be there, but you can still be dead inside, Spiritless, powerless. It's not about what it looks like on the outside - it's what is happening on the inside, both on a church level and on a personal level. The Spirit does not come in, power is not unleashed because of appearances. It happens because people are connected, on a deep level, to their God. Here are two very  similar looking "Mega-Churches" but with dramatically different worship experiences. They both followed a model described by Sally Morgenthaller in her book "Worship Evangelism,"  but with a different slant. The service was not necessarily "Seeker Sensitive" in the second church, but very much so in the former. In the latter worship was focused on the movement of the Spirit in the family.

In a conference a few years ago, Sally announced that she was deconstructing her book because it wasn't really working. Then people argued with her about that - they were getting people in. But what were they doing with them? Its the whole milk vs. meat discussion:

In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food.

Heb. 5:12 NIV

Laodicean churches are milk-fed churches. Lukewarm comes easily from an entry level understanding of the scriptures yoked to long-time attendance. When the early movement of the Spirit wanes because people are not discipled well and they are distracted by the world's cares, and not focused on God; when church becomes a place to go and not a place to grow, when we put God into a compartment of our lives and do not make Him the center of our lives, we become lukewarm. The Word of God is still revolutionary, still rings out against the cultural sensitivity of our ears. When we back away from the message because we are afraid to make people uncomfortable, because we are afraid that we might be labeled "intolerant" where Scripture speaks against sin, because we fear we may lose people from the congregation, we water down the message and we become lukewarm. Its comfortable, but its powerless. 

God will not have His Word come back void, so He says that to be lukewarm, to be fence sitting "Christians" is to be spewed out. God is powerful, His Word is powerful, culture changing, not culture absorbing; And it goes way deeper than appearances.