York Minster

Faithful in Pergamum

Date: 3rd May 2009
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Dr Jonathan Draper

I can hardly believe that I have the good fortune of preaching on the Book of Revelation two Sundays in a row; and not only that, but on passages that follow one another. Last week I took the opportunity of the first 11 verses of Revelation 2 to explore who the Nicolaitans were and what they believed, and low and behold, they turn up again this week. Well, as it happens, we know no more about them this week than we did last week so I think we can safely give them a miss this time.

But, in the infinite research I am able to do for you week by week in preparing my sermons, I typed ‘commentary on Revelation’ into Google and entered, once again, into the weird and wonderful world of ‘end time prophecies’. This week I learned that our current global financial collapse is seen by some as an actual event of the end times, and not just a pointer, as predicted in the Book of Revelation. This is one of the so-called ‘seven thunders’ – no, I’d not heard of them either – which bring about the end. So, it appears, the world will end in the second half of 2011 following a war in which billions will die: at least this puts swine ‘flu into perspective.

Today’s reading comes as a part of a little series addressed to what are called the seven churches of Asia, all of which are on the western side of modern Turkey and near the Aegean coast.

Smyrna, which we heard about last week is the modern city of Izmir; Pergamum, in today’s reading, is north of Smyrna and is now called Bergama.

Pergamum was an important city with a long and proud history at the time of the writing of the Book of Revelation. Significantly, it was a place in which many religions and cults and places of worship existed side by side and was what we would called a ‘syncretistic centre’, a place where the religions would rub up against and borrow from each other, and where one might belong to many religions rather than just one.The letter to the church in Pergamum makes much more sober reading than the one to Smyrna we heard last week. While the Church in Smyrna was warned that they might be tossed into prison as a part of the persecution the church was facing, there had been a martyrdom among the Christians at Pergamum: a man called Antipas has clearly been killed. He is held up as an example of one who was faithful, like Christ, unto death, and the Christians in Pergamum are being called by God to that kind of faithfulness too.It seems that the difficulty the Pergamum Christians were facing was that some of their numberwere doing what everyone else in Pergamum did, and that was to bring some of the practices of the other religions – what are called here eating food sacrificed to idols and immorality – into the Christian fellowship. This, it appears, is what is meant by what is called the teaching of Balaam. A few, it seems, also had dealings with the Nicolaitans, again, and this, too, we know, won’t do. The point that the Spirit wishes to make to the church here is that they need to remain pure and faithful and not dilute their faith with the ungodly practices of other religions. Eating food sacrificed to idols does not seem such a big deal in the 21st century, and I’m sure I did it when I was in Sri Lanka and shared the blessing of an event with a Buddhist monk. But Christianity arose out of a Jewish faith which was very particular about food and purity laws. What you ate and how you ate it was of central significance in the Jewish law and reflected an understanding of how God wants his people to live in the world. As the Christian faith turned Gentile this much of the food laws was retained along with an injunction not to be immoral.

Churches under pressure are more than likely to be angry with those who are seen to compromise with those outside the church; purity movements are born which seek to draw a distinct and sharp line between those who are pure and therefore faithful, and those who cave in to what is often called the ‘spirit of the age’. We can see this happening in all the churches today as times get hard and cash gets tight; as numbers dwindle and the faithful get worried. People often feel in those circumstances that if only they are really faithful and pure and got back to the original faith and practice of the church then God will bless them once again.

It doesn’t, of course, work like that; not least because your ultra pure version of the Christian faith might not be mine, even though we may both believe it is God’s. No matter its purity, there has never been any guarantee of so-called success for the church. Our job is not necessarily to triumph as an institution, but to live out the love of God in the world. This is not much about what we believe, and is much more about the way in which we live. That Christians disagree with one another is not, in fact, news; that Christian disagree with one another and don’t burn each other at the stake is.

This side of the trump of doom, whether that is in 2011 or 5 billion years into the future when our sun is burnt out, we will not know the full mind of God, and we might as well stop pretending that we do. But starting tomorrow we can live as if Christ was living in us, and that might just change the world.

Amen.