MAKING AN IMPACT: Character

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

The next value we will talk about with our MAKING AN IMPACT series is one that is stated in almost every organization, is incredibly important, and is yet a struggle for so many churches, organizations, and fellowships. This is the value of CHARACTER.

Why is this such a struggle for the Christian world? I think the short answer is that we are just a bunch of people who are screwed up. That is true, but how many of us are tired of reading what feels like a continuous news feed of Christian organizations that harbor abusers, struggle with sexual conduct, mistreat women, and succumb to other “moral failures”? It’s exhausting.

I think the answer is that theology matters. I won’t be taking this time and space to pull apart the pieces of theology I think are most responsible for these stories, but I will say that our theology is often the bedrock we build our culture on. The way we understand the nature of who God is and what He is doing in the world, the way we understand the nature of humanity, and the way we define the gospel, breeds a particular culture in the missional communities we belong to. If we foster a theology that believes God is looking for the unflinching devotion to a moral code, we will simultaneously breed a culture that puts on a show, afraid to be vulnerable to the struggle we all experience to become the kinds of whole people God has designed us to be.

So what do we do? Impact Campus Ministries has said — like so many others — that we want to be people of integrity and great character. How will we succeed where so many others seem to fail?

A large part of this will reside in our commitment to community and each other (more on this value in another post). The greatest form of accountability will be the fact that we don’t do life (or ministry) alone. Of course, this commitment is only powerful if we trust each other enough to be vulnerable. We have to work hard to build a culture of openness and honesty from the top of our organization all the way down to the bottom. We don’t want to be people who fight for privacy, but fight for each other.

This isn’t to say that privacy is not important or that wisdom would dictate open vulnerability with all people in all circumstances — it would not. But within our family at ICM, we need to learn how to trust each other with our struggles and our failures. This means we can’t be quick to punish others when they slip up, but we also need to be resolute in our commitment to each other, to help each other become the people God is inviting us to become.

Hopefully you can see how well our value of character works alongside the tension of excellence and compassion. We have to have a commitment to excellence in our integrity, but that will only be achieved if we can be gracious in our failures. I really believe that the destructive and harmful failures in character come as the byproduct of a culture that doesn’t foster healthy growth and compassionate belonging. When those things don’t exist, we begin to hide. When we begin to hide, our lack of character begins to fester until it erupts in something horribly destructive.

Unfortunately, this culture of hiding is often cultivated in our faith communities.

We want to be better than this. We want to be the kind of family — brothers and sisters — who make sure we all have a place to belong and that the space can be trusted. We want to build a culture that says, “I am FOR you!” — and doesn’t doubt the sincerity of that stance. Only then can we be honest about who we truly are and who we are trying to become. And only when we are honest can we find family who help us strive to develop as we pursue character in our organization.

This will be an ongoing struggle. We are far from perfect.

But may God bless ICM’s efforts to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly [together] with our God.

Top 12 of CiHD: #12

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

As we begin our look at the Top 12 Blog Posts of Covered in His Dust, we’re going to begin as any good countdown does — at the bottom! Let’s start with my twelfth-most-viewed blog post. It happens to be “The Redemption Cycle,” a post I published on December 26, 2013. It discusses the big ideas undergirding the book of Judges, and I contest the idea that the cycle represented there should be described as a “sin cycle.” You can read the post here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to this post? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

To be honest, one of the things you are going to get every time we do this is a very cynical and objective look at why people hit this post. The truth of the matter is that most of these page views are coming from web searches from people’s favorite search engines. Chances are good that many of these views came from people who were doing an image search for “cycle in Judges” and happened to click on the image that is linked to my blog.

In a similar fashion, I think many page views came from a Google search that had to do with “cycle” and “book of Judges.” As people were looking more into this idea, they were looking for additional material. Particularly on Google searches, my Google-based blog host is one of the first hits, and away we go. So let’s work with this idea: the people who ran across my blog were studying the book of Judges and the idea that there is an ongoing cycle within the literature.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope they found an idea that challenged the assumptions they were being handed from other sources. By saying this, I’m not suggesting that I hope they heard the right answer in a debate against what they had been taught. I simply mean to say that I hope they encountered an even bigger idea and that it made them think critically about the implications of the theology that serves as the foundation to our biblical interpretation — let alone our doctrine.

When I was handed a worldview that focused on the sinfulness and depravity of man, I found myself stuck in a theology that wasn’t compelling and didn’t inspire me to take up the mission and partner with God. Instead, I found a lot of despair and hopelessness for humanity. The idea that God simply “puts up with us” and with a roll of His eyes He forgives us — yet again — was portrayed quite clearly.

There are many things I can applaud in what I was taught. The fact that Bible teachers were able to show me a literary tool being employed in Judges was fantastic. At that stage of my learning, I hadn’t been exposed to many literary tools; but being handed such a clear and noticeable example launched the beginning of a very critical journey in learning the skills necessary to examine the Text. It was all of the doctrinal assumption that I hope people found critiqued when they got here.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

This post really expresses things quite thoroughly and I can’t think of much I would add. I would say I have learned how much scholarship (progressive textual critics, in large part) sees the book of Judges as a parallel record of history to the book of Joshua. What they mean when they say such things is that a redactor later pulled these two stories together and made them read sequentially, but they probably preexisted as different takes on the same period of history. On the one hand, you have the book of Joshua, which tells the story of obedience (for the most part) and God’s help in absolute conquest. However, another historical perspective tells the story of disobedience and God’s incredible patience. These serve as two sides of the historical narrative. For some of us, this may be a bridge too far, but I have been learning much about these theories and find them informative in my ability to think critically about the Text and wrestle with authorial intent.

I would also be remiss to exit this post without recommending Make Your Mark, a book written by a fellow teacher and friend of mine, Brad Gray. While the book focuses on the story of Samson, I find its contents to be helpful as I wrestle with the implications of the stories found in the book of Judges.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 1300 thru AD 1550

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

So Christendom emerges from the period of the Crusades in horrible shape: completely beaten up, completely broken. Having spent everything they had on war and conquest, they now turn their sights toward rebuilding. In order to do this, they need to find a way to get resources.

Well, in a world that is largely illiterate, where the educated are priests and leadership, studying the Text that is written in an archaic, foreign language is difficult. It becomes simple to manipulate the truth that the masses depend on you to communicate. With a little shaping here and a little gloss there, the narrative of God quickly becomes something that can enslave people in a system of fear, guilt, and control. At its best, you had priests and Church leadership who were maintaining a commitment to sound doctrine, modeling a self-sacrificial life, and instilling a message of hope into people who needed the gospel so badly.

At its worst, we saw the rise of the Age of Indulgences. While the entire conversation is incredibly complex and usually oversimplified (as even I am about to do for the sake of brevity), the general understanding of the problem is relatively accurate. As parishioners came for their typical interaction with the sacraments, the Church leveraged this need to help control the general populace.

To understand this conversation, one needs a basic understanding of sacraments. To the orthodox faith of the Middle Ages, people believed you would interact with the many different practices of the Church in order to experience the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God. You might remember the liturgy and order we spoke of when we talked about the contribution of Gregory the Great. The Church had identified seven sacraments to serve as corporate practices for experiencing the dispensation of grace. For these early thinkers, there is nothing magical about the sacrament itself, other than its service as a conduit to receive the grace of God into your life. Things like baptism, the Eucharist, confession, marriage — these all allow the grace of God to flow into your life.

You can imagine, as people come to engage these sacraments and anticipate the reception of God’s grace in their lives, it is a short leap for the Church to start manipulating this system for their ends. At some of its worst moments, the Church was even offering forgiveness at a monetary price. Come to confession and absolve your sins by going through the appropriate motions — and offering the appropriate gift.

In short, we are seeing a rabid abuse of Church leadership and priesthood.

Not all the educated were prepared to turn a blind eye to these abuses. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are littered with names of those who stood up against this corruption and fought to reveal the gospel as it ought to be seen. Two popular names in the world of scholasticism are Wycliffe and Hus.

John Wycliffe — Wycliffe was known for consistently attacking the imperial privilege of the Church at large. He hated the separation between the clergy and the laypeople and thought the gap should be dissolved. While he railed against the pomp of the high Church system, he also argued that the Text should not be held captive in an ancient language. He wanted the Scriptures to be accessible for all and thought they should be translated into the common vernacular for people to understand in services. In a lot of ways, Wycliffe paved the way for the Reformation.

John Hus — Sometimes referred to as the true father of the Reformation, it’s hard to see Hus apart from the work of Wycliffe. Hus led an informal resistance to the papacy and was eventually executed for leading what history knows as the Bohemian Revolt. There were two successful regional Crusades against the reigning papacy. While his methods may be subject, his thinking deeply shaped the thought process in western Europe and definitely laid the groundwork for what we know as the Protestant Reformation.

Part of the issue in this period of Catholic history was the geopolitical context. With a new sense of what I call “medieval nationalism,” the power structures in the world were shifting entirely. No longer was the world ruled by one giant papacy; as Christendom tried to figure out how to hold onto their outdated systems of governance, the world changed around them. People were seeing their allegiance aligned more with the powers of the state and country than they were with a foreign church. People associated with being French or German as a more immediate identification than they did with being “Catholic.”

This made it easier and easier to reject foreign papacy and rule. The papacy of Avignon actually shifted the seat of power away from Rome and into France for a period of seven popes, leading to what would later be called the “Western Schism” — when the Western Church was spilt between western and eastern Europe.

The Church continued to suffer from divisions and schisms.

In light of the many abuses of religious power, the Protestant Reformation was simply waiting for good leaders. How “good” these leaders were is left to historical debate. I will leave my personal opinions out of it; so much material has been written about the Reformation and I encourage you to do your own study. Needless to say, people like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin led reformations away from the Catholic Church in their respective lands, each with their own nuances to their understanding of theology.

At this point, we begin to split over the smallest of nuances. No longer held together by a common hierarchy or papal leadership, we were free to disagree over the smallest details, often fueled by our nationalistic identifications. However, each national identity will get a denominational affiliation: Germans would be Lutheran, the French might be Calvinistic Reformers, and the Swiss would follow Zwingli.

Their many opinions splintered the faith of Christendom, and we don’t have time for that full conversation. However, as far as the good this movement did, it is hard to overstate. The invention of the printing press allowed the widespread distribution of the Text in the language of the common person. The Reformation changed the face of education and cinched up the gap between the educated and the uneducated, especially in reference to theology — both orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

And while this might seem like an unbelievable amount of change for the world to endure, the change is only beginning.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 1000 thru AD 1300

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

We left our last discussion with the world of Christendom having been rocked to its core. With the departure of the Eastern Church, the danger is that it would raise a whole new sense of papal rejection. If folks can just tell the pope no, then what does that mean?

Well, as the saying goes, nothing brings a people together like a common enemy.

To be fair, I’m not going to wade into the spicy conversation surrounding the Crusades and present myself as a historian or expert. I know talking about this period of history can be incredibly charged emotionally — as it should be. I know some historical reconstructionists have attempted to put a “positive spin” on the Crusades and what the intentions were behind them. I will be attempting no such explanation. For me, this chapter of Christian history is dark and marked with all sorts of problems, which most of us have simply kept out of sight and out of mind.

I remember the chapter in Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller where he spoke about his experience at the reverse confessional. He talked about how they set up a confessional booth at Reed College and — instead of receiving confessions from others — they offered confessions on behalf of their faith, both current and historic. I have not stopped hearing the kickback from readers or thinkers who say, “But why would I/they apologize for something that happened centuries ago?” This question shows our blatant disconnection from our faith and where it comes from. This disconnection stops us from being able to think critically about how we could ever get to that place. And a dark history disowned by the descendants of it will be bound to repeat itself. Some would say we are on the verge of such an era right now.

But I won’t try to present myself as an expert — only as a learner, a student of history, and a fellow thinker.

It’s my belief that in our desperate need to unify Christendom, we seized an opportunity that arose at just the right time. Shortly after the East-West Schism, the Islamic movement was making its way to capture Palestine. While there is no way I am going to give you a history of the Islamic faith here, it would be helpful to know that as Mohammed was doing the work of canonizing his teaching and creation of the Qur’an was underway, there were three dominant worldviews at play within Islam. There was what we might have called a progressive movement — which wanted to live peaceably with everyone. There was a moderate movement that saw itself as the correct faith, and others as largely apostate, but did not seek to convert them by force. There was also a radical branch of the faith bent on violent overthrow of the pagan idolaters.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We studied Judaism of the second temple period and its different sects. We have seen the same movements grow and disappear within Christian history, as well. (I cannot move on without recommending Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, a wonderful look at the history of the three faiths and the rise of radical fundamentalism in each.)

I find this helpful because most people choose which groups they want to represent their own faith story. While Christians would (typically) never define themselves by the fringe, radical edges of fundamentalism, we consistently do the opposite to the “other” in the conversation. I would say the movement of Islam toward capturing Palestine did not represent the Islamic faith as a whole (not even close). It did have a lot of traction at this point in history, though, and it did provide a perfect opportunity for the Church in the west to find a common enemy and use it as a scapegoat to bring unity to a struggling kingdom.

This is my unauthoritative (and probably oversimplified) opinion on this point of history. I am no expert in the Crusades, so I will not try to explain my way through it. Let’s just say that these few centuries were an absolute mess, and the mess seemed to galvanize an unfortunate unity in Christendom.

But before we move on to the next chapter of history, it would be worth pointing out that not everyone is out fighting in the Crusades.

They never are. We let the poor, the uneducated, and the commoners do that work for us.

Simultaneously, as the Crusades are being fought, we witness the rise of “scholasticism” and an ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not. This is a gap we are well acquainted with today; we often talk about the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the world. In the Middle Ages, this gap was driven more by education and academic privilege. While the middle and bottom classes were fighting in the Crusades, the cream of the crop was being taught and educated at a level we simply hadn’t seen before. With the rise of science and the accomplishments it brought, a university system that we still understand and rely on today began to take shape. Apprentices were taught not only how to read and write (which was an incredible advantage, by the way!), but they were also instructed in the blossoming fields of mathematics, science, theology, and the arts — most of which was driven by the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic era.

One of the most revered names in Church history is often that of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, without a doubt, changed the face of Christian history by bringing into a logical order the many fields of education. Aquinas showed how the world of mathematics and science could blend with the world of philosophy and theology, and the western world would never be the same. The way we understand our education system today is largely shaped by the perspective brought to us through the work of Thomas Aquinas. Many would call him the father of logic and reason.

I’ll resist my desire to be critical until we conclude our study of history, but I’m hoping my western-minded readers will notice that somewhere around a millennia before this, we lost some things that were absolutely crucial to the health of the Church. While I realize we are all still enamored with the pillars of Hellenism today, I hope we learned enough to critically examine just how lost we are 1,000 years after the Judaic movement of Jesus. But I digress.

Or do I? We shall see.

CHURCH HISTORY: AD 500 thru AD 700

NB: For readers who missed it, I suggest going back to review my setup to this section on church history to know about my disclaimers. For the graphics used in this post, the timelines are not to scale, and the dates represented are not intended to be exact. They are meant to be visual aids for understanding the larger conversation.

So this (mostly) Gentile Christian empire finishes their councils, and Rome falls. The Roman Empire shifts from an imperial political state to what some would call the “Holy Roman Empire” and a[n imperial] religious state. To be sure, all of these labels are unfair to use, since the ancient world knew nothing about the separation of church and state, and to insinuate that the Roman empire of the Caesars was not religious would be ludicrous. However, I hope the reader understands my point: we shift from Emperors to Popes, from Rome to Christendom.

This newly established kingdom, often referred to as the Byzantine Empire, played its role in the history and growth of Christianity. It indeed had some bright, shining moments, but none of this could cover up some of the darker problems of the era.

Toward the beginning of Byzantine history, Justinian expanded their rule to its largest extent in history. This chapter is full of dark stories of Christian faith combined with the empire’s sword. People were forced to affirm holy creeds and Christian doctrines. If they did not, they were offered the opportunity to convert. If they refused, they were persecuted, sanctioned, or even executed. Christianity’s anti-semitic history continued in this era; there were corners (sometimes very large corners) of the empire where we would beat or kill Jews who did not affirm the doctrine of the Trinity.

How things change when you find yourself at the handle end of the sword.

We could (and maybe should) go on and on about this, but that paragraph will serve to sum up the darker chapters of this history for now. There were also some important developments in the Christian faith, sometimes connected and sometimes disconnected from the imperial efforts of the Byzantines.

Again, since we had cut the Christian faith away from from our Jewish heritage, we lost contact with a faith — and more importantly a practice — that had defined God’s people for centuries and centuries. Having spent over a century perfecting our doctrine and theology (something Gentiles have been very, very concerned with) and focusing on orthodoxy (right belief), we now needed to ask questions about orthopraxy (right practice).

Since Gentile Christians did not believe in following Torah, they were missing the “playbook” on what it meant to walk the path of faith. (In fact, Augustine had written a horrible edict commanding the African Christians not to even entertain Jewish relationships. He penned a seven-point document that forbade doing business with Jews and lighting candles for Sabbath, in addition to commanding the consumption of ham on Easter, etc.)

In this setting, the monastic movements shined. While many flippantly critique the monastic movements as being secluded and isolated (somewhat reminiscent of the Essenes), we owe much of what is good in our Christian faith to their faithfulness. They were committed to trying to preserve the physical Text, becoming people of service (they continued the work of what we would call hospitals and clinics), and being devoted to their faith. When we needed to know what it meant to create space for God in this new world, these movements helped many spiritually blind folks see. They were experts in prayer and discipline, corporate spiritual practices, and service. Because they struggled with isolationism, great thinkers like Gregory of Nissa and Basil taught some very important things about community.

As history turned the corner into the seventh century, Gregory the Great (who would be the pope) came along and became what some have referred to as the father of medieval spirituality. Gregory brought the world of Christendom its first large-scale taste of liturgy (church order) through things like Gregorian Chant and a public, corporate practice of worship — many elements of which can still be found in Catholic mass today.

While there are always ways to look at history through overly rosy lenses or overly critical lenses, it’s important to note the things this era brought us. Unfortunately, this period of history did very, very little to undo the imperial abuses of Christian freedom; in fact, quite to the contrary, they only systematized the chronic power struggle that had (and would) ruin the trajectory of our Christian story.

However, the next century would be spent learning to create space for a God we (maybe) largely misunderstood. I am a firm believer that this allowed God to continue to work through the story of Christianity, in spite of itself. As God told the Hebrews in the Tanakh more than once, there is always a remnant. There will always be a group of people who are trying to follow the Creator to the absolute best of their ability. And because of that — be them Jews, Christians, or pagans — God will always be looking for partners.

But we will continue to have a hard time getting along, and it won’t be long before we find more problems to argue about in our next chapter of history.

REVELATION: The Fall of Greatness

Now that we’re getting used to the tool of interpreting the literature of Revelation, the eighteenth chapter will be pretty straightforward.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:

“ ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’
    She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
    a haunt for every unclean bird,
    a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
For all the nations have drunk
    the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
    and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Now, even though this is straightforward, it certainly doesn’t mean it’s simple or slight. To quote the footnotes in the Zondervan Archaeological Study Bible, John “wrote a funeral dirge for the mightiest empire in the world.” While this doesn’t seem so impressive as we read it almost 2,000 years later, please realize the prophetic, subversive, and chutzpah-laden message John is communicating. John is proclaiming the downfall of an empire that — at this point in history — nobody would see coming.

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

“ ‘Come out of her, my people,’
    so that you will not share in her sins,
    so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
    and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
    pay her back double for what she has done.
    Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torment and grief
    as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
    ‘I sit enthroned as queen.
I am not a widow;
    I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
    death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
    for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:

“ ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,
    you mighty city of Babylon!
In one hour your doom has come!’ ”

The invitation extends itself to all of God’s people. If this is how sure the apostle is that empire is going to fall, it would stand to reason God’s people will want to decide which side of the conversation to be on.

And this is not the first time God’s people have been faced with such an invitation. Consider the ending of Isaiah 48:

Leave Babylon,    flee from the Babylonians!Announce this with shouts of joy    and proclaim it.Send it out to the ends of the earth;    say, “The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob.”They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;    he made water flow for them from the rock;he split the rock    and water gushed out.

“There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

Or how about Jeremiah 50:

“Flee out of Babylon;    leave the land of the Babylonians,    and be like the goats that lead the flock.For I will stir up and bring against Babylon    an alliance of great nations from the land of the north.They will take up their positions against her,    and from the north she will be captured.Their arrows will be like skilled warriors    who do not return empty-handed.So Babylonia will be plundered;    all who plunder her will have their fill,”declares the LORD.

But John continues,

“The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore—cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.

“They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out:

“ ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,
    dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet,
    and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!
In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!’

“Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, ‘Was there ever a city like this great city?’ They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out:

“ ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,
    where all who had ships on the sea
    became rich through her wealth!
In one hour she has been brought to ruin!’

“Rejoice over her, you heavens!
    Rejoice, you people of God!
    Rejoice, apostles and prophets!
For God has judged her
    with the judgment she imposed on you.”

Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said:

“With such violence
    the great city of Babylon will be thrown down,
    never to be found again.
The music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters,
    will never be heard in you again.
No worker of any trade
    will ever be found in you again.
The sound of a millstone
    will never be heard in you again.
The light of a lamp
    will never shine in you again.
The voice of bridegroom and bride
    will never be heard in you again.
Your merchants were the world’s important people.
    By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
In her was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people,
    of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.”

John utters a prophesy about the downfall of this empire and makes sure to emphasize the economic nature of this calamity. This is easy for us to relate to, as we put so much of our own stock in the stability of our economy and its ability to provide us with security. Keep in mind that Caesar Augustus had ushered in an unprecedented time of Roman prosperity — 84 years of uninterrupted economic growth. To proclaim the downfall of such a system would be nonsense to the average listener.

But this wasn’t the first time his readers heard such a claim. Not only does this chapter close with words that are echoed from Jeremiah, but the entire lament is pulled directly from the prophesy of Ezekiel (chapter 27). To place the entire chapter here would be overkill, but I urge you to take the time to pull out your Bible and read it through. You’ll see how much time Ezekiel took in proclaiming the economic ramifications of Tyre’s arrogance.

And this is one of those passages that stings a little to read in our culture. Not only do we cry “persecution” in places where those true martyrs would balk at our struggle, but I’m not sure we would pick the right side of this imperial showdown. The woman on the beast has been judged and the sentence pronounced; her downfall is imminent and the funeral dirge has begun. This all sounds well and good when we are talking about metaphors and pictures, but this becomes a little more personal when the empire being denounced is the basic description of what most of us would call “the pursuit of happiness.”

It might be that the invitation of Revelation 18 falls to you and I as much today as it ever has. Maybe the idolatry of security and the lust of empire have its talons in us deeper than we’d like to admit. And maybe there’s a “mark” on our forehead that we’d like to head to the bathroom and start scrubbing off.

Maybe…

REVELATION: Thyatira and Her Jezebel (part one)

We will now take an in-depth look at the letter to Thyatira in order to fully understand the principles we just introduced. In this first part, we’ll be studying the cultural context of Thyatira to understand the cultural relevance of the letter. In part two, we’ll look at where John is getting his material and the brilliant way he is using Old Testament Text to preach a sermon within the letter to Thyatira.

So first, we need a little background on Thyatira.

By far the smallest of the seven church cities, Thyatira was estimated to be around 25,000 to 30,000 people. The city sat on the main road and was founded by Seleucus I around 300 BC (or Humenes I around 250 BC, depending on who you ask) as a military outpost. Very much unlike places such as Smyrna, Thyatira was very “blue collar” and unsophisticated in its demographic. Thyatira was a hard-working city full of labor guilds. In fact, we found a list of the registered guilds in Thyatira and its one of the longest lists we’ve ever uncovered. The guilds in the city included leatherworkers, wool workers, weavers, bakers, tailors, dyers, candlemakers, cobblers, potters, bronze smiths, blacksmiths, slave merchants, dyers of purple cloth, and stonecutters. For a city the size of Thyatira, that list is very long, and the jobs are for hard workers.

One of the leading guilds of Thyatira was an extensive network of bronze smiths. They specialized in a very famous kind of bronze that we know as “burnished bronze.” In a world that didn’t have the glass technology of today, burnished bronze was the material used to produce the closest thing to mirrors they had. The Greek word for this special bronze was chalkolibanos.

What little we know about Thyatira comes mostly from coins and currency circulated through the area. The one thing we know about the worship of Thyatira was that their chief god was Tyrimnos, son of Zeus. Scholars have always found this quite perplexing, as Tyrimnos is certainly not a major player in the Greco-Roman Olympiad of gods. Why choose such an obscure god to worship? Some have suggested it's because such a blue collar city would have wanted to root for the underdog. Others have pointed to an obscure reference to the honor of a very young son of Domitian who passed away while still an infant. One inscription was found where the late son was being held by Domitian and the child held the seven stars of the Roman zodiac in his right hand. Could the choice to worship Tyrimnos be a pointed reference to the song of Domitian? It’s a possibility.

One last point of interest about Thyatira is the presence of a Jewish prophetess that operated at a Sybil shrine by the name of Sambathe. Sybil shrines were like minor league oracles and dealt in pagan witchcraft (you might remember our discussion about oracles here). Apparently, from what we can gather from the little information we have, Sambathe was a big proponent of the Roman labor system and the many guilds that not only powered the local labor force, but also — if you remember — would be steeped in pagan idolatry and sexual immorality.

Inside the oracle temple at Didyma

Now, let’s look at the letter of Thyatira and keep our eyes peeled for culture.

“To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:

These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, except to hold on to what you have until I come.’

To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’—just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give that one the morning star. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

“These are the words of the Son of God …” This is the only reference to “Son of God” in all the letters to the seven churches. Why here? Is it because their worship centered on the son of Zeus and the son of Domitian? Fitting that the reference would be found here and nowhere else.

“… feet are like burnished bronze.” Here we see that special export that Thyatira specialized in.

“… your service and perseverance …” This is a fitting reference for such a hard-working, military town.

“You tolerate that woman Jezebel …” Here we have an obvious reference to Sambathe, the Sybil oracle.

“… she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.” This points to the ever-present temptation to engage in guild feasts as would have been widely available in a city like Thyatira.

“So I will cast her on a bed of suffering …” The actual reference in the Greek is to the word cline (where we get the word “recliner”), which is the same word used to reference a “guild couch.” This is where sexual immorality happens at a guild feast.

“I will strike her children dead.” This is a possible reference to the dead child of Domitian.

“… Satan’s so-called deep secrets…” These secrets are a reference to the underworld oracles proclaimed by the Sybil oracle Sambathe.

“… iron scepter … pottery …” These are some of the guilds present in Thyatira — particularly the potter’s guild and the blacksmith’s guild.

“I will also give that one the morning star.” And finally we have the son of Domitian who held the stars in his hand.

Every line of this letter to Thyatira came directly from the immediate culture of the city; the letter is stunning in its clever, cultural relevance. But now, let’s ask the question of what the source for John’s material would be…

REVELATION: Pergamum and Satan's Throne

The next church addressed in Revelation is the church in Pergamum. Pergamum was a cultural center in the early Roman empire, and Augustus even declared the city his capital in the province of Asia. Sitting atop the acropolis of Pergamum to this day are the ruins of the vaulted platform that held the temple to Caesar Augustus (later redone under the name of Tiberius and other later emperors). This temple to Caesar had an altar that doubled as a “throne” (very common in Greco-Roman altars; the altars were often shaped like thrones to communicate the rule and presence of the god). Some historians spoke of how you could see the shining temple atop the acropolis in Pergamum from miles out to sea.

Because of the political prominence of Pergamum, the city was also given what was known as poteste gladii, or “power of the sword.” The Romans had a double-edged sword known as the symbol of power. If a city or colony had the “power of the sword,” then they had been given the right to make decisions with the authority of Caesar. Their rulings were as true as if they had been uttered by Caesar himself.

But this wasn’t the only throne residing on Pergamum’s acropolis. In fact, decades ago, the gigantic altar to Zeus was moved to a museum in Berlin (you can see pictures of it by doing a Google image search for "pergamon altar of zeus"). This altar sat just a couple hundred yards away from the temple to Caesar. Covered in gold leaf, this “throne” stands 44 feet tall from the base of the stairs (which still sit in Pergamum), and would have been another attribute to make the acropolis visible from miles away.

But there aren’t only two thrones that sit in Pergamum. No, Pergamum also served as the neochorus (think “capital”) of Dionysius, the Greco-Roman god of wine and orgy. The temple to Dionysius served as the starting point for what was called “the Sacred Way,” and also warranted the construction of the tallest theatre in the ancient world, still an acoustic marvel to this day. The Sacred Way weaves its path down the acropolis and past some seventeen other temples to major Greco-Roman gods. Without a doubt, the pagan worship present in Pergamum was second to none. This Dionysian worship culminated in the annual festival to Dionysius every year where there would be consumption of raw meat, drinking of incredible amounts of wine, and indulgence in rampant sexual immorality. Local law stated that a woman was not free to marry in this pagan culture unless she had lost her virginity in the Dionysian festival. One of the stops I make with participants on my trips is at the ruins of a three-story storefront. The first floor had the remains of giant wine vats (used for serving, not for storage or selling), the third floor has tricliniums (the three-sided banquet table of the first century), and the second floor has large vats that are plumbed for drainage. The archaeological team that did the work there believes these storefronts, found on the Sacred Way, were used during the Dionysian festival to serve wine and raw meat to the public. They would dine and party until sick, at which point they would descend to the second floor and vomit into the vats.

The view from the Dionysian temple, looking towards the Asclepion

And this wasn’t the only pagan worship that found itself centered in the city. Pergamum was also home to the largest Asclepion in the ancient world. Asclepius was the god of healing, and the Asclepion was their equivalent of a hospital. One could think of the Asclepion in Pergamum as the “Mayo Clinic” of their day — the best of the best medical treatment the pagan world had to offer. One would check in to the Asclepion, wash themselves for spiritual purity, make offerings and gifts to the gods, and proceed to treatment. The treatment was incredibly holistic and included education (each patient had to study their disease/condition in the massive library), entertainment (the drama of the Asclepius myth was displayed twice a day in the theatre on the grounds), medical diagnosis, and spa treatments at the bathhouse and mud treatment center. When patients were healed, they would return to write their name and their healed condition on one of the many white stone pillars that stood in the courtyard. In the center of this courtyard, to this day, sits a spring they plumbed throughout the facility in order to give the acoustic ambient sound of rushing water, which they believe was the voice of Asclepius himself and had healing properties.

We could easily write three times as much about the relevant context of Pergamum, but that should set the stage for us to look at the letter to Pergamum:

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:

These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

“… who has the sharp, doubled-edged sword.” or “… fight against them with the sword of my mouth.” These are references to the poteste gladii that was present in Pergamum and a cross-reference to the power and authority of Christ. While we didn’t have time to unpack the temple and library of Athena that sits on the acropolis, as well, the “sword of my mouth” reference only gets juicier as we realize the power of words — or, more particularly, God’s Word.

“I know where you live — where Satan has his throne. … where Satan lives.” Whether this is a reference to one of those particular thrones we mentioned (Caesar, Zeus, Dionysius, or the myriad others), or a blanket reference to this incredibly pagan city, the cultural reference is unmistakable.

“…the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.” John nails the message to the neochorus of Dionysius right on the head. This annual festival was steeped in idol meat and sexual immorality. To live in Pergamum would be to reject the daily temptation to give into the cultural narrative of your day.

“I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it…” This is a reference to the healing God offers and a subversive reclamation of the practice so prevalent in the local Asclepion.

By now we should be getting the idea that Revelation is deliberately playing off of the cultural context of its original audience. These aren’t vague references to future entities, but direct references the original audience completely understood without hesitation. But there is a new idea we need to introduce ourselves to, one likely to make our minds explode as we realize what John is doing in the writing of this incredible letter. It’s one thing to use the culture to brilliantly craft a teaching the audience needs to hear. We would call that clever.

John is doing so much more than that.

Besides culture, where is John pulling his material? While we hinted at this earlier in our discussion of Revelation, it’s time to bring it back and put it to work here in our study. John is getting all of his content from the Hebrew Scriptures. Everything John is writing about in his references to culture also comes from the Tanakh! And often, these references are coming from other pieces of apocalyptic literature — books like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. This is almost impossible to grasp immediately, and I had to study this concept in Turkey for some time before it finally settled in my consciousness.

Here’s an example from Pergamum: Why does God choose to use Balaam as his reference to the people of Pergamum? Because the book of Numbers provides the contextual (think remez) material for the lesson John is trying to teach. As we mentioned in our study of Jude and 2 Peter, Jewish tradition teaches that Balaam was the one who told Balak to entice the Israelites into sexual sin (Numbers 25). By using Balaam as his reference to the Tanakh, John teaches an entire sermon without writing it down. Every Jew who hears that reference is going to understand that John is saying, “Hey! We’ve been here before! We can’t fall into temptation here in Pergamum!”

The same principle could be used for every reference. “Sword of my mouth” or “where Satan has his throne” or “a new name” written on a white stone. Where is John getting his material? Obviously from the culture, but each one of these references comes from the Old Testament!

Next we will take these principles and apply them to the letter written to Thyatira.