A Letter from Christ to the Church in America

Icon of John receiving the revelation as found in the Cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos in Greece.

I usually feel pretty good about the sermons I preach in terms of the average sermon being a representation of who I am and what I believe.  I feel that way, because I am speaking for myself and in my congregation we have an understanding--what Chase preaches is from his experience and perspective but members of the congregation may have different experiences and perspectives.  I don't make any claims that I am somehow speaking for God, but rather I'm speaking from my understanding of who God is.  I'm human, so I can be wrong.  Certainly my mind has changed about a great many things during my time as a minister, so why should I expect to think or believe the same way five years, ten years, twenty years from now.  

But. . .

I recently gave a sermon where I didn't feel comfortable at all.  I gave plenty of caveats, but still feared deeply that the nice woman visiting for the first time sitting up front would probably never come back after hearing this experiment of a sermon.  (She wasn't back the next Sunday, but I'm crossing my fingers this week.)  I was uncomfortable, because I presented a letter I wrote as a letter from Christ to the Church in America.

Oh, don't worry, I was very, very veeerrrrrryyyyy open that this was a work by me, representing my point of view and NOT a claim to be speaking for Christ, but I grew up hearing fundamentalist preachers claiming to speak for God and I never want to even go near such blasphemy.  

This sermon was a part of a series I and the other ministers at my church came up with--"The End of the World: a Sermon Series for Progressive Christians about the Book of Revelation."  (If you are interested you can watch videos of them on our church's Facebook page. )  When we came up with the series, I had the brainstorm of writing a letter from Christ to the Church in America, modeled on the language of the letters to the seven churches at the beginning of the Book of Revelation.  On my sabbatical this past summer, I had visited six of the seven churches (or the ruins thereof) in southwestern Turkey.  It seemed like a good idea.

But when I sat down to write it, I felt deeply intimidated.  Who am I to claim to speak for Christ?  Isn't such an exercise merely me putting my own views out there as if they are Christ's own?  How often have I criticized fundamentalist preachers for doing the same?  I went ahead anyway hoping that at least I was aware of what I was doing rather than acting with an unconscious hubris.  Is hubris one is conscious of a good thing?  

I would say the finished product was helpful for me, if for nobody else.  Although I've known full well that the John who wrote Revelation riffs on imagery found elsewhere in what Christians call the Old Testament, it was eye-opening for me, as I tried to mirror his poetry and imagery, how much Revelation reads like Isaiah, Amos or most other prophets from the Hebrew Bible.  It helped me to understand that when we take Revelation out of the end times framework modern Christians have put it in, that it reads like other books we label as biblical prophecy.  They are not predicting some future end-time scenario happening thousands of years in the future, rather they are using over the top imagery to critique their present world conditions.  John wasn't talking about an end of the world in the 21st century, rather he was talking about an alternate view of reality than the one being sold by the Roman Empire in his day.

Still, using imagery of judgment and destruction is foreign to me.  It was hard to do so without images of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell saying live on TV that 9-11 was God's judgment on America for feminists and gays or similar horrible rhetoric.  For me and most folks in my congregation, we are in our particular faith community, because we grew tired of being abused by preachers using apocalyptic imagery to condemn whatever "other" they had their sites on that particular week.  Yet, I wonder if we couldn't use at least a little judgment of God to shake us out of the stupors which tempt us day to day.

Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza writes in her commentary on Revelation how North American Christians are offended by the judgment and lack of mercy in Revelation, but Christians in the global south cherish its confrontation with powerful oppressors.  When I've attempted to preach on Bible passages using apocalyptic imagery, I like to ask my middle class and above congregation whether or not they wish for the world to end?  For most folks in the room who happen to be Americans living comfortable lives compared to most inhabitants of our planet, the answer would probably be no.  Yet, if we were spending our lives picking trash at a dump in Mumbai, wouldn't we want the world as we know it to end?  If we were children caught up in the sex trade in southeast Asia, wouldn't we want the world as we know it to end?  If we were imprisoned on the U.S. southern border separated from our children, wouldn't we want the world as we know it to end?  Perhaps our aversion to apocalyptic imagery says a lot more about our social position in the world than anything else.

A difficulty for me with the apocalyptic imagery in Revelation is that there is no gray area, only black and white.  You are on God's side or you are on Satan's side, there is no in-between.  I prefer to live my life and carry out my ministry in gray spaces where humility asks me to constantly admit God cares very little about the strict categories I like to pigeon-hole people into.  Yet Revelation has no time for such grayness--it is meant to shock its audience out of its complacency, because the evil systems of this world require an urgent response.  I confess I can easily use my progressive mode of considering all or at least most points of view to shield myself from the urgent demands of God upon my life.  I'm as guilty as the next white liberal in talking a lot about a subject and then thinking I've actually done something about it.  The words of Christ in Revelation allow for no such dissembling and demand a certain way of life rather than mere talk

Speaking for myself, I think I could probably use a little apocalyptic self-assessment now and then.  

So, it's with discomfort and humility, I present to you my sermon from October 20, 2019: A Letter From Christ to the Church in America.  If you'd like a refresher on this kind of apocalyptic discourse which I'm trying to make use of, click here to read the first three chapters of Revelation.

To the angel of the church in America, write:

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again.

I know of your great wealth, but in truth you are poor and wretched. You are so comfortable that you have no need of God, so you wander blindly wondering why life holds no meaning. In fact money is your God. Your dollar bills say “In God We Trust”, but it is only money you trust. To have money is to have power you say, but true power comes only when you give your money away. You see only the outside—the fine clothes, the expensive cars and pricey homes, but I tell you all these will burn, rust will destroy them and they will rot in landfills. I see what is on the inside and what a person is truly worth and the ones worth the most are those you do not welcome in your churches because they offer you none of the money and power you crave.

You claim to worship God, but in my name you break God’s commandments not to judge, not to oppress the poor and weak and not to kill. In God’s name you cast out your own children because of how God created them. You dare to call them sexually immoral and fornicators but I say it is you who fornicate with the false gods of this sinful age. You have forsaken God’s commandments by giving your true allegiance to evil leaders who cage children, rob from the poor and pollute the earth. I will cast down these evildoers and what is hidden shall be revealed. All who follow them will be shown to be unfaithful hypocrites. You who were given white robes now wear red ones for they are stained with the blood of innocents killed by weapons of war unleashed in your streets, your schools, your houses of worship. Those who call out my name while profiting from the blood of innocents shall taste the fire of my wrath.

You have made the color white a god. You have painted your churches white to match the color of your skin. Yet the white paint you use is mixed with the black and brown blood of those you have trod upon. So those who are white shall become black. Your white buildings shall burn and ash shall make your skin dark as midnight. You shall become like those you mock and despise.  Their blackness is a beautiful gift of God, but the blackness of your skin shall be the ash of judgment.

You were given God’s earth to care for and enjoy, yet you forgot the one who gave it to you. You thought of yourselves as gods having dominion over the earth, but you forgot the Giver of Life. So instead you bring death, fouling the seas, filling the air with smoke that chokes, killing the soil which produces food, strangling the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. So I am sending a great plague that will blow like a hot east wind. The seas will boil and the sun shall burn. The land will no longer bear fruit. Those who have ears to hear must repent before this judgment comes. If you do not remember your creator, the wrath to come will leave you crying out for God’s mercy.

Your megachurches are towers to pride that I will cast down. Your internet friends shall desert you in your hour of need when you require a friend to hold you as you weep. Your cities and mansions built by slaves, furnished by the broken backs of the poor shall all burn when I pour out my wrath. As you stand in the ashes, you shall call to your Gods, 

“Money, where are you?” 

“Power, why won’t you help me?” 

“Violence, save me!” 

“Privilege, protect me!” 

But those Gods shall not save you. The two-edged sword which comes from my mouth shall slay them.

In the end, all the armies of the world will be defeated by the lamb who was slain. The Kings of the earth shall bow down to the lamb. The injustices they have inflicted on my children shall be punished. The one whom they crucified, who committed no violence, shall defeat all violence. All the might of the nations shall quake with fear before the lamb who was slain.  Their tools of violence shall be as dust before a storm.

There are some who have not soiled their white robes with the blood of the innocent, those who remain pure I will never blot out the from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. To the ones who refuse to defile themselves with the poisons of this age I will give them fruit to eat from the tree of life.

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