Sardis, the fifth town in the province of Asia to which John wrote, had once been the capital city of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a city of great wealth. Indeed, it was in Sardis that coins were first minted - it was the birthplace of modern money. It boasted a shopping precinct we today would see as surprisingly modern, split level with a traffic free pedestrian area.
But in John's day, though wealthy still, the city was in decline. It had suffered a great deal from fire and earthquake, but even more from the laziness of its inhabitants.
A number of factors combined to encourage a certain flabbiness in the town: five trade routes converged on it in mountainous country where no alternative routes were possible, and its geographical location rendered it almost impregnable. Sardis was built on a flat ridge of rock that jutted out from half way up the slope of Mt Tmolus, rather like a pier. Behind it rose the mountain, and from the other three sides, sheer cliff fell away from the town walls. The roads poured trade into it, the mountains protected it, its altitude made its climate congenial, and its citizens felt that they had only to sit back and enjoy the advantages.
Yet twice in its history it had been stormed, the first time because a soldier on the garri-son battlements dropped his helmet, and his descent down the cliff face to retrieve it was ob-served by spies who led an assault party up the same route, and found the garrison unde-fended. No-one in Sardis thought it needed a guard. The church in Sardis would hear Christ's counsel to "Watch" with a clear memory from their town's own history of the disaster that followed from neglect.
The citizens of Sardis had become, as it were, a population of dance-band musicians and indifferent shop-keepers, and the spirit of the town was reflected in its church. It had sunk into lethargy.
The Christian community in Sardis was not threatened by any of the perils that menaced the others. The townsfolk took nothing seriously, so emperor worship was too perfunctory to produce persecution of those who neglected it. The trade guilds that presented such a problem in Thyatira hardly existed. Even the Jews in Sardis, despite the splendour of their marble-columned synagogue there, could hardly be bothered to oppose the Christians. The situation of the church in Sardis was surprisingly like that of the church in our own country, where the prosperity of its people led them to treat the church with an easy-going tolerance. There was not even any heresy within this church that called for rebuke. It was a church quite untroubled from without or from within - a church at peace.
But its peace was the peace of the dead.
It is worth noting that of all the seven churches, only Sardis and Laodicea were free from persecution, and they are the two least satisfactory churches of them all. "The church is never in a more perilous state," wrote Martin Luther once, "than when she has peace and quiet."
Christ is described
to this church as ...
• the "One who has the seven spirits of God" - for the Holy
Spirit is the giver of life, the Creator-Spirit, and as ...
• "He who has the seven stars" - that is, as He who knows what
this church has it in it potentially to become.
The description is exactly suited to a church which is lifeless, and
has failed to realise its possibilities.
"I know your works," says the risen Christ to this congregation, "that you have a name for being alive."
The church was not lacking in activity then. A full programme of services was regularly held; there was a well-rounded pattern of activities, as it were, catering for the needs of all age groups, and none of them lacked support; the place was well attended. All this Christ sees, and says to them, "But you are dead. You have a name for being alive" - everything in Sardis to satisfy the visitor; "but you are dead" - nothing in Sardis to satisfy the Saviour. There were prayers in this church, but no prayer. There was preaching in this church, but the voice of God was not heard. There was giving in this church, but no-one gave himself with his gift. There was singing in this church, but no true praise. There were crowded services, but no living worship. "Nothing," says their Lord, "Nothing you have done is complete in the eyes of my God."
"There must be a beginning of any great matter," wrote Sir Walter Raleigh once, "but it is the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished that yieldeth the true glory." That glory was missing from Sardis. It sometimes happens that you will see muscular movements and twitches in a creature after its life is extinct. And so in some churches you may see routine movements when the living impulse that once produced them has really died. How far are the activities we pursue in our church life evidence of real, pulsing spiritual vitality? And how much of it is the twitching of a corpse under galvanism?
1. Rouse
yourselves
Over the graveyard of this church in Sardis, there trumpeted the
mighty voice of the risen Christ: "Awake! Rouse yourselves, and
strengthen the things that remain."
This is surprising. For what Christ is saying is the reverse of what we would expect Him to say. We would expect Him to say, "All these things are lifeless - sweep them away. Make a clean break with them and start afresh." But no. He says, "Keep them, but bring them alive." The forms then were not wrong. Christ does not ask that they be done away, only that they be filled with a new vitality. He has no complaint against the music or the liturgical forms or the patterns of organisation. These things become hateful to Him only when they have become grave-clothes on the dead. What does it matter what the body wears, only so the body lives?
2. Remember
Then Christ says, "Remember!" They had forgotten then ...
forgotten the joy of their first faith ... forgotten the surge that
swelled in their hearts when deep conviction first laid hold ...
forgotten the invigorating wonder that swept in like a breeze from
the hills when the refreshment of forgiveness blew the stale fug of
guilt from their lives, and made them clean. The sunlit waters that
once had sparkled in the light of God's love and laughed its rippling
way through the meadows of their new life was all turned now into a
stagnant backwater, full of mud and stench and death. "Remember,"
their Lord counsels them ... and let the memory turn you back to the
source whence the springs of faith first flowed.
3. Repent
"Let your hearts be changed. Your whole church life calls for a
revolution - a revolution, not in its programme, but in the hearts
that maintain it. If not, then I will come to you ... like a thief,
and you will not know the hour of my coming - as it happened to your
own town sunk in the lethargy of a false sense of security, and
surprised into defeat."
Many see in this warning a reference to the second coming of our Lord. That He will come again, and at an hour when we least expect it, is true. But I am quite sure that is not what is intended here. What is indicated here is a local visitation: this church is in danger of losing its place in the candlestick, to use the metaphor from the opening vision. No church has the right to expect, simply because it has enjoyed a splendid past, that it must therefore just go on. Neither a big building nor a large congregation are any guarantee that a church will not fold up. It may have the momentum, like a steam engine whose steam has been shut off, to carry it on deceptively for a time. But unless the living spirit of faith burns within it to drive it forward, it will soon grind to a standstill. A church only ever has one source of life, and that is the living Christ Himself. Once Christ Himself in His living person is shifted away from the centre of its devotion, once He Himself is not exalted as supreme in its midst, once He Himself is no longer the goal of all its striving, that church is beginning to die, and paralysis, like a clammy fog, will creep up its body and lay its chilling hand upon its heart. Once the note of personal devotion to its living Lord has ceased to sound like a deep and steady chord beneath the music of all its activities, that music turns to a jangle of noise.
Rouse yourselves, remember, and repent.
But all was not death
in Sardis.
"You have a few names in Sardis of people who have not soiled their
garments. They shall walk with me in white, for they are
worthy."
1. He who conquers
shall be clad thus in white garments.
Almost certainly, the reference here is to the practise in the
early church of clothing the candidate in white at his baptism, as a
sign of the purity of life to which, in Christ's strength, he was now
pledged. A few in Sardis "had not soiled their garments." They had
been true to their vows; they had not besmirched the testimony they
had made before many witnesses. No doubt they were unpopular with
their fellow church members ... too keen by far, a bit narrow-minded,
if the truth were told, and always threatening to stir things up. Why
can't they let be? And no doubt these faithful companions of the
risen Christ must have wondered sometimes if it was all worth
it.
And then ... this word from their Lord, this one precious word that must have cheered their hearts like a man who has stumbled through the snow and finds a fire: "for they are worthy." To be pointed out like that ... all their lonely, secret devotion drawn out of them and lit up like a pillar of fire in the night! They are promised that they will walk with Christ, clothed thus in white. All that was implicit in their baptism, then, will come to fulfilment. None of this church's works are complete in the eyes of God - but theirs will be.
2. And their names
will not be blotted out of the Book of Life.
The thought goes back to the Old Testament, to a time when a
register was made in Jerusalem of those who feared the Lord and
thought on His Name. "They shall be mine," said the Lord, "my special
possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as a man
spares his son who serves him." It is the roll-call of the redeemed,
whose names are precious in the eyes of God.
A quote from C. S.
Lewis will sum it up better than any words of mine.
"I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is
how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not. How God thinks of us
is not only more important, but infinitely more important ... It is
written that we shall stand before Him, shall appear, shall be
inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible,
and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of
us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall
find approval, shall please God. To please GOD ... to be a real
ingredient in the divine happiness ... to be loved by God - not
merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work, or
a father in his son ... it seems a weight, a burden of glory which
our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."
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