Canter Bridge

The letters to the churches that occupy the early chapters of the book of Revelation are a study in nuanced assessment. The Lord Jesus, who speaks in these letters embedded in an apocalyptic neighborhood, metes out both praise and rebuke in roughly equal measure. Not unusually, the reader is stunned by how severe and encouraging the dominical voice can be with regard to the same listening church.

Thyatira, for example:

Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come. To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’—just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

The italicized words come from the second psalm, which contains a message from YHWH to his human delegate on Zion that is routinely quoted by the New Testament and early Christian literature as an anticipatory description of Christ’s dominion over the nations.

Here in the second chapter of Revelation the same words are spoken as the church’s own destiny, legacy, and privilege. Or, more accurately, this ruler’s prerogative is held out to those who invest themselves in the hard and not infrequently sacrificial task of faithfulness now.

The church in our generation shifts its feet awkwardly under the weight of such rulerly commission. It is not easy for us to calculate how in the real world of our joys and groans such a commanding position is to be achieved let alone effected in space and time.

Yet it would impudent to leave this aspect of our story to one side simply because it sounds a bit arrogant in our post-colonial moment.

The apocalyptic literature in which this sentiment finds voice is all about what is given and what is taken away. Perhaps, then, our near discipline is that of learning to wait. Power—even its benign twin influence—is rarely grasped to anyone’s benefit. The learned skill of receiving power, however, as of exercising it in the interest of YHWH’s glory and people’s wellbeing, this is another matter.

It is so august a role and so potentially redemptive that one must not relegate it to the column of ancient illusions too naive for these modern times.

One does not know what might, in good time, be given. It would be a shame to be found in that moment, like Saul, hiding among the baggage.