[AI translation] For a person who loves his church, it is always a learning experience to visit another church, to look around, to see how that church lives. Let me now invite you to visit a church. Let us go to old Smyrna, guided by our Word, and see what life was like there, what the people were like, what the conditions were like for the church in Smyrna, what problems they had to face, what message and advice Jesus, who was dead and is alive, sends them. As we look around us, we will see that this message is as much for us today as it was for them then.The city itself was a great trading city. Its port was one of the busiest gateways to ancient trade of the time. Its streets were wide and rich, its houses were stately and its wealth was radiant. One of its wide avenues was named Golden Street. Evidently, many wealthy and prosperous people lived in Smyrna. In this noble, wealthy environment, a handful of Christian congregations lived at the end of the first century. This is the exhortation: 'Be faithful even unto death' (Rev 2:10), that is, be faithful. What was the reason why Jesus urged his believers in Smyrna to be faithful? Two major problems are evident from the letter: the economic situation of the church and the social situation of the church. Only one small word refers to the economic situation of the church: poverty. Poverty is not shameful, but it is unpleasant, especially in a rich environment. When everyone wants to make you believe that gold, money, wealth, civilisation, bread is the most important treasure of life, it is easy to shake loyalty! After all, it only takes a little loosening of loyalty to get ahead on the road to the desired wealth. In an environment where everyone is honest, everyone is loyal, trustworthy and honest: it is easy to adopt this tone. A man with good hearing can adapt himself without difficulty to the singing voice next to him. In fact, even a person with a weaker ear can do it. But how much better hearing is needed to sing an independent melody when other voices are ringing in one's ears! Something of this difficulty was experienced by the Christians of Smyrna. They were constantly tempted. Life, the environment, was humming a different tune around them than the one they had in their hearts. They were surrounded by the temptation of an easier life, the temptation of greater income, and all that goes with the better way: a more relaxed moral life, a more easygoing, frivolous approach to life as a whole.
Even then there were people of mixed religion. The pagan part of the family understood nothing of the honesty, the selflessness, the purity that the Christian man wanted to live. A relative, a brother-in-law, a brother was a constant temptation: can't you see how much easier life would be for you if you weren't bound by the Sermon on the Mount? If you didn't have to follow the commandments of Jesus? You need not weigh so accurately that commodity on the scales; - you need not take so strictly that tax return; - you need not be so conscientious in that work, lighten yourself a little! You'll never have a car! Money has no smell. He's appreciated who doesn't have to pinch pennies! It's enough if loyalty only extends as far as they can see. As long as the husband or the wife can see it, or as long as the boss, the teacher, the authority can see it! Then, as soon as it is not seen, it can be relaxed. What remains secret is free! Just don't let it get out! Appearances are everything! It's a better way to get along! Someone told me the other day that he earns well enough where he works, but he could earn better, if he would only give up his moral sense. But you can't do that. He'd rather stay on his modest income, but he can't go the way his peers do. More than anything else, he is concerned to be right with his conscience.
Well, such were the temptations of those Christians of Smyrna. And with such temptations, it is not easy to stay on the path of Christ! Hence the exhortation: be faithful! To the death! Even if you are laughed at, even if you are ignored, even if you are left behind in the fray: you hold fast to the truth you have come to know! Even at the cost of sacrifice, remain a man who can be counted on, who can be trusted, who can be believed! It is so great that when Jesus says to the church in Smyrna: "I know your ... poverty", he immediately continues: "but you are rich" (Rev 2,9a) You may be poorer than many other people, but you are the rich one! Can there be greater riches than a quiet conscience? Is there more wealth than peace of mind, peace of mind? Is it not precious to you to know that even when you are poor, you can place your destiny in the hands of a rich God? Isn't it great to have a divine friend, Jesus, with whom you can calmly discuss all your problems, who counsels you, helps you, takes care of you, forgives you, and leads you to victory over death? Try to see yourself through Jesus' eyes. He sees riches in those who remain faithful to him! Is not the greatest riches in this life on earth to believe in God? Would you be willing to sacrifice that for a little illicit gain, pleasure, ill-gotten income, joy? Would you give up your faith, your peace of mind for anything? Or even for anyone? Do you know how many people secretly envy you for your faith in God? How many would like to believe if I dared to confess it? Give up if you can! If you can! Give it up! But you can't, can you? Someone puts an invisible hand on your shoulder, and, as if radiating strength into you, says: 'Be faithful to the end! Be true to the riches you have! You will never regret it!
But it was not only the economic situation of the church in Smyrna that tempted you to be unfaithful, but perhaps even more so the social situation. They lived in a world where a person who professed Christ was regarded with suspicion, often considered an outright enemy of the state, indeed persecuted for their faith. They lived in constant anxiety because they were under constant threat from the authorities. Many of them could no longer take the strain, they failed, they denied their faith in order to keep their jobs, to keep their lives, to get on in the world. Others dared to commit themselves to Christ only in secret. They pretended openly that they had nothing to do with believers, but in their hearts they were drawn to them. They dared not openly profess Him. In this situation a new form of Christian man developed: the fearful Christian man. He is secretly drawn to Christ, but he does not dare to openly admit that he belongs to Christ. They were tempted: it might be better to live the Christian life in seclusion, in secret, between four walls, at home where no one could see, praying, worshipping God, but not exposing themselves to being looked down upon and marginalised for it. Are we not also familiar with the kind of loyalty that lasts only as long as it does not do you any harm? Until death? Oh, no! Not even to a little suspicion, not even to a little inconvenience, but only as long as there is no harm, as long as there is no sacrifice, no suffering, no danger. But not beyond that! And yet it is disproportionately easier to confess openly one's allegiance to Christ in Budapest or Los Angeles or Tokyo or anywhere else in the world today than it was in Smyrna. Today, no one is persecuted for this, at most they are considered to be of a rigid mind. Being a Christian believer today is not dangerous, it is just not fashionable, not modern enough. Today, the authorities do not harass anyone for their religious beliefs, at most, the question is raised by the secular spirit of the age: how can a modern man still believe in a loving God? Why do you even go to church anymore? What is the point of having your children confirmed? Why don't you leave the church, that obsolete institution? At that time, in Smyrna, the faithfulness of Christians was tested by persecution, today it is tested by the spirit of the times all over the world.
But then, as now, Jesus exhorts us. and you will have tribulation for ten days" (Rev 2:10). In fact, this abstracted zeitgeist can only benefit our faith. Because for once we are forced to seriously confront such questions as, why am I a Christian, why do I go to church, why do I want to swim against the tide of the general public spirit? It's a bit like when you take your health for granted, for granted. You don't even think about it, you're not even grateful for it, you just accept it, as if it couldn't be otherwise. But if you fall ill, if your health is in crisis, if your life is at stake, then you look back on your life and realise what a great good and what a precious gift health is in your life. This is how most Christian people feel about their faith. You are simply born into Christianity, you have always belonged to the Church, you have grown up in it from childhood. He called himself a Christian because that was the general custom, a natural custom that became the heritage of his fathers. He did not think much about it. Nor was he particularly grateful for it. Christian customs and the church way of life were simply something he did with the others, as if it could not be otherwise. But then came other times. Times that radically challenged what had been taken for granted. And now we have to face up to those question marks. We need to think hard about whether the old Christian heritage can still mean anything to us and our children in the future. Today, no one can spare himself a serious decision: either to discard this old heritage for good, like a moth-eaten, out-of-fashion garment that is now an obstacle to his future - or to discover anew the value, the essence, the core of this heritage. Then he realises that under no circumstances can he give up this precious, magnificent gift, but that he must take possession of it and use it in a completely new way!
Even a great illness has its meaning and its blessing if it makes a person to go within himself and to be different from what he was, to learn to be grateful and to rejoice in the new found life and health! Even in a time of ideological struggles and debates that have made our Christian faith a crisis, it can be a profound meaning and a great blessing for the whole Church and for all people of faith if it leads us to discover, at last, in a deeper way, what our faith in Christ really means for us. Or to be able once again to feel thankful for biblical revelation, for prayer, and to rejoice in things that we used to take for granted - like the church door being open, the Lord's Table being laid for us, the church having a spiritual home, God being present, and I can call on Him, "Dear Father!
Fear nothing," says Jesus, "this time, this age of secularism, can be a great blessing if it leads us to draw once again from the original source of Christianity, and if we who have for so long deluded ourselves that we are Christians can begin to be truly Christian! Either we truly understand what our faith means to us now, or we never will! Now it is really up to each one of us to fight for our faith! But what is not really precious is that for which there is no price to pay, no struggle, maybe even no suffering! "Fear nothing", says Jesus. Just be faithful! Dare to be faithful, now! Dare to be truly Christian right now! Not a conventional Christian like in the old days, smearing yourself with a little thin Christian glaze - it really is like a moth-eaten, outdated garment in this modern world - but a truly Christian, serving people in the world with the love, kindness, understanding and willingness to help of Jesus!
Be faithful to the end! And so be faithful, because God is faithful! Even if you are unfaithful, He remains faithful! Our faithfulness can be nothing else but a falling into His faithfulness, a falling into Him. Let no one trust that he will have the strength to hold on to Jesus, but that Jesus will have the strength to hold on to him in all circumstances. Do not trust in your own faithfulness, for it will soon falter, but in Jesus', for it will endure. Never look to yourself, but always to Him, the faithful God! Thus, only thus, clinging to His faithfulness, can you win, persevere and remain faithful - and even if you fall away, you can return and remain faithful to Him! The secret of our faithfulness is that God is faithful! Faithful in life, and faithful in death!
Amen
Date: 5 June 1966.
Lesson
Jn 15,1-8