[AI translation] Jesus gives alarming news about the church to which this letter is addressed. He begins this letter as he does the others, "I know your business"! But what he knows about this church is very sad, almost despairing. This Christian community is in a time of crisis, seriously ill. There is no telling what will become of it, will it live or die? Because it is terminally ill. It is dead alive! Jesus says to him, "It is your name that you live, and you are dead"! This letter is for a dead church! And therein lies the hope for him, that even to a dead church Jesus is speaking! He is speaking to a dead soul. And the word of the One who Himself rose from the dead to life can revive even a dead church, even a dead soul!I don't know why Jesus saw that church in Sardis as dead. It must have been a church living in outwardly orderly conditions: it did not have the schisms of Corinth, the heresies of Colosse, the persecutions of Pergamos. They could live their church life in peace and quiet. They were not disturbed about it. Of course, it may have been this very outward peace that tempted them, the fact that they did not have to fight life and death day after day for Christ and His righteousness. He lost his heroic determination and his fervour of faith, content to live the uneventful, colourless life of consolidated, well-established, tradition-keeping communities. Such was the illusory life of the church in Sardis, where ecclesiasticism killed the living faith, the letter the soul, tradition the living revelation! The congregation seemed to be alive and well, but this beautiful exterior only masked the dwindling vitality within. "It is thy name that thou livest, and art dead". Terrible!
Every congregation that seems to be doing well is threatened with the same mortal peril. Ours too! And ourselves, personally! Let's try to understand the concept of life and death as the Bible understands it! In the Bible, the word "life" does not mean mere existence: it does not mean breathing, speaking, moving, acting. In Scripture, Christ is life. "I am he... (John 14:6) And the man who truly lives is the man who lives in Christ, in whom the Spirit of Christ lives. The word life, then, means such life from above, a new germ of life grafted into us by God through faith in Christ. He lives in whom Christ lives! And whoever does not have it is dead, even if he moves and acts. He lives in death. That is why Jesus says to such people: 'It is your name that you are alive - you are alive in name - but you are dead. Such a man with a dead soul sometimes practices all the trappings of religiosity: he goes to church, he prays diligently, he does charity, and yet, all his apparent manifestations of life can be dead acts, if he is not pressed by the love of Jesus, but by habit, for example, or something else. There is living prayer and dead prayer: the difference between the two is that one has power, the other has none. One is a dialogue, the other a monologue. The one radiates the power of Christian love and goodness, the other is powerless and seeks to replace that power with sound. There is living and dead service. The difference between the two is that in the one there is the fire of the Jesuit spirituality, and in the other there is the human effort. It is alive in name, alive in name, but really dead, dead to Jesus, dead to the glory of God.
But let me try to bring the meaning of the Word even closer, as I know some of the symptoms of this dead state. You know what a formula is. For example H2O - it's a formula. Every schoolboy knows that it is a formula for water. Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, H2O. It's nice and good to know this, and in some cases it's absolutely necessary to know it. But if, for example, someone in the desert is thirsty, almost dying of thirst, a formula, a formula like this, however precise it may be, is not worth much. Then you need water, real, genuine, living water, not a chemical formula! Well, that's how we are with the Lord God Himself! He is also a formula for us. We can say in a wonderful way that God is holy, just, all-powerful, merciful. And it's all true, because He is. And it's good to know all this, but it's a big problem if it's just a certain logical formula. Well, yes, God is holy! But has your soul ever trembled in the presence of a holy God? But have you ever trembled at what will happen to you then because of your sins? - Yes, God is merciful. But have you ever come into His loving arms? - When one stands beside a sickbed, where a beloved soul is fighting a life-and-death battle; or when one's conscience is troubled because something of the reality of sin has dawned on him; or when one feels that there is no way out, no hope, no solution, because the problems are so tangled up: then a God-formula, no matter how dogmatically precise it may be, is of no help! It is no more helpful than the formula of water for thirst. It is indeed in vain to pray to a God-image. There is a difference between the image of God and the living God, as there is between water and its image, as there is between death and life. "Thou art called living, and thou art dead". Beware, says Jesus, beware, is this God in whom you say you believe, yes, believe, not just a formula, a definition, a theory of God? Or is it the living God Himself, as He revealed Himself in Jesus, surrounding you with His Holy Spirit, speaking to you with His Word? Measure whether Jesus' words apply to you: 'Your name is your living and your name is your dead'!
Then let me express another symptom of death - the spiritual death we are talking about here - as "Christianity proper". This is a very strange word, 'actually'. For example, when one thinks to oneself. Or: 'Actually, I should try to live much closer to God, because I'm completely immersed in the spiritual emptiness of the daily chase. Or: I should actually spend much more time on my spiritual life, I should take prayer and Bible reading much more seriously. In fact, I should forgive that wicked, wretched waster. I should actually go and visit that poor, lonely old man. In fact, I should make a much more serious sacrifice for the cause of God... - go on, everyone! Always that strange word: actually. In this "in fact", it is that I recognize, I see what is necessary, but I immediately capitulate, and yet I do not do it. This word implies defeat, defeat. One still sees the high, ideal standard, but no longer sees the possibility of achieving it in this hurried life, and has already given up trying to fight for it. There is always a little guilt in that word, but also a surrender, a painful smile at the impossibility of a life that would want to take God seriously. It accepts defeat in advance. Do you feel the absurdity of this? Imagine if the Bible said that: In fact, you should not kill, be angry, steal, commit adultery! Or imagine if you read in the Bible: Jesus should have actually died for our sins! Isn't there a danger that we are slowly becoming "proper Christians"? Those who have fine slogans but have already capitulated! Do they already reckon that all their efforts will be defeated anyway? Is this what we call Christianity? Is that what our whole faith means? I'm afraid so. And that is not life from a Christian point of view! "It is thy name that thou livest, and art dead!"
And, you know, it is indeed the only hope that even to such a dead church, to such a dead soul, Jesus speaks! That even the dead can be raised to life by the word of Jesus! Here too, what He says to the dead is so strange: "Strengthen others who are dying"! (verse 2a) He is saying to the dead, strengthen those who are dying! This command is like saying to a man who is on the verge of freezing to death, "Begin to rub with all your might, to revive the other man who is half frozen to death;" and if he does this, he himself will be so warmed that both will escape the terrible death of frost. So, as a way of reviving from the dead, Jesus recommends that he who himself is limping along, should turn to his fellow human beings who are barely able to struggle, who are tired to death, who are drowning: he should strengthen them. For in so doing, he too will be strengthened. He who is weak in faith, let him turn to one who is even weaker, and strengthen him in faith. He who is sorrowful, let him go to comfort those who are sorrier than himself, and he himself will be comforted. So that your own burden does not weigh you down, take on someone else's! To be better able to pray for your own troubles, pray for others! To get closer to Jesus, take someone's hand and try to lead them to Him.
It is a humanly incomprehensible law of survival, of awakening from the dead, of being strengthened. There's a great verse in the Bible, I often quote it to myself, "He who refreshes others will be refreshed" (Pro 11:25). We always think that we need to be strengthened ourselves in order to give to others, but it is the other way round: we need to give in order to receive! So it is with joy, so it is with love, so it is with goodness: we must give, we must give to others, and then we ourselves will receive something new and fresh from God. In a way, it's like a tap needs to be opened, it needs to flow in order to fill the pipe with fresh water. Otherwise there is only stagnant water in it! Don't be sorry to "waste" your strength when you have hardly any left for yourself - through it our Lord will always miraculously give you new strength!
Jesus describes the Christian life as a life in activity, in motion. In a way, one enters into the great flow of God's love, and immediately lets all the love, strength and help that one receives flow through oneself to others. For example: to receive forgiveness of sins and to give forgiveness of sins: that is a great event, - to receive help from God and to give help to someone else: that is a great event. I can't receive but not give! The Christian life, according to Jesus, is a wonderful and real event: letting myself be taken up and carried away by this ever-moving tide of God's grace. And the wonderful thing is that when I really try to strengthen the dying, that is, when I stand with warm, compassionate love beside a lonely or searching or broken soul, I find myself standing right beside Jesus! "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me" (Mt 25,40).
Again, this is how this letter ends, "He who overcomes". So even spiritual death can be overcome by those who obey Jesus' command: go and strengthen those who are dying! "He who overcomes ... I will not blot out his name from the book of life" (Rev 3:5) You probably couldn't even list the many names in the index of names you have. In the register, the tax book, the telephone book, the land register, the electoral roll... But is your name in the Book of Life? If you have just heard something that the Spirit Himself has said to the church through human words, if you are alive, if you have passed from death to life, then you can be sure that your name is written in the Book of Life.
Amen
Date: 17 July 1966.
Lesson
Jel 3,1-6