Don’t Drink the Water
Psalm 35:1-8; Revelation 3:14-16
Rev. David Germer
Well, that’s one of the more troubling psalms, isn’t it? Asking God to draw spear and javelin against personal enemies, inviting their shame and dishonor and ruin… We’ll come back to this.
Our second text is from Revelation 3, just a few verses, but I’ll give you some context.
First. This is the last Sunday in our summer sermon series: “The Good Book,” through which we’ve encountered many of our ancestors in faith one story at a time. Today we are meeting, though just briefly, a community of faith.
The book of Revelation, which can also be called John’s Revelation, or the Apocalypse of John… is misunderstood, leading often to either gross misuse or neglect. (I once preached a 15-week series going through the entire book – I love Revelation, so I’m restraining myself from saying too much, this morning). “Revelation” and “Apocalypse” are words that mean unveiling, or revealing, and that’s what the book as a whole is: John of Patmos is writing a letter, unveiling something that had been revealed to him by God.
What had been revealed is NOT the literal future, understood best with timelines and charts… but how followers of Jesus can know and trust and follow Jesus faithfully in the midst of a corrupt, fallen human empire.
And so these are relevant words and warnings to us today; an invitation to see Jesus for who he truly is… which John gives us in one of the most beautiful and stunning images in the Bible just a few chapters later: the lion of Judah who is revealed to actually be the slain lamb, who will rule forever, nonviolently on God’s throne.
And one more specific contextual note. Revelation 2 and 3, as John is just getting warmed up, are a series of 7 short messages directed specifically to 7 congregations – a bit like some of Paul’s letters… but a little shorter, less pastoral, and harsher… but not without hope.
And so this passage kicks off the final warning, to the church in Laodicea, a largely well-off, cultured, sophisticated community.
Listen for God’s word:
“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Words of the Amen, the faithful; and true witness, the origin of God’s creation [talking about Jesus]: ‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
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(I’m going to speak more about myself today than is typical, and I feel a little self-conscious about that… but just naming it helps me relax into a little more. I’m hoping these personal stories don’t shine a spotlight on me so much as invite you in and help you relate to some of what I’ve experienced…
… but you might not relate to this first one)
- I was voted most laid-back in my class of about 350, my senior year of high school. Some of that perception probably could be sourced to my daily wardrobe choice of jeans and a t-shirt and moccasins, every day. I don’t know why I decided this was my look – but probably because it was comfortable… so yeah: “laid back” probably fit.
- I have a vivid memory of sitting in the first home Tracy and I lived in in Spokane, WA, the night before our wedding, surrounded by all of my closest friends from different stages of life, who prayed for me and our marriage and took turns saying incredibly nice things to and about me, and the thing I most clearly remember is most of those friends describing me – as a core-trait – as “even-keel.”
- Are you familiar with the enneagram? Most of you are. It’s a sort of personality assessment helping you know yourself and how you operate in the world. I’m an enneagram number 9 – a peacemaker who, at my best calmly adapts and sees many perspectives, seeks justice and yet can mediate and find common ground, agreeable and receptive… and at my worst can be lazy and undriven and complacent, who ignores or minimizes conflict.
I hope these little snapshots begin to add up and fit together.
You could say I’m laid back, easy-going, along for the ride, adaptable, flexible, even-keel.
You could also say I’m tepid, halfhearted, indifferent… lukewarm.
As a kid, and youth, and young adult really into reading the Bible and very committed to taking seriously the words of Scripture and allowing them to shape my life… I never quite knew what to do with this passage in Revelation 3.
It was clear to me that John was describing me, with these words to the church in Laodicea, and the only response I could come to was: well, I’ve got to try to be a little more passionate. I had friends who were what youth leaders of the 1990s would describe as “on fire for God”… and that was never me, and I always felt a little guilty about that, and tried to let kindle that fire within so that it would that it could burn in me like it did in others.
The truth is that the things those peers were fired up about – winning the culture wars against the Hollywood liberal agenda, the erosion of the nuclear family, preaching gospel to unreached people groups… didn’t do a lot for me. I don’t mean to equate all those things – they were just what “on fire” Christian youth in my 90s high school setting cared about… and those things just weren’t upsetting or stirring to me, and often I found myself unsure if I agreed with my “on fire” Christian peers, and unsure what to do about that.
When I began to be involved in ministry with unhoused or very low-income people, and hearing their stories… I began to feel a little more fire, a little less lukewarm… but I still wasn’t exactly the model of white-hot passion that I thought Revelation 3 was telling me I needed to be.
But I was beginning to connect forceful emotions and a drive to do something about them, with what I understood the Biblical authors, and Jesus… to care a lot about: injustice, poverty; apathy to those things.
Still… I’m a 9… an even-keel, laid-back guy. That’s who I am, right?
I want to give you some examples of people who do not strike me as lukewarm, in any way – and these are stories from the recent trip 18 of us from FPCA took to Guatemala, to visit and form and deep friendships with our sister congregation – Eben Ezer in La Blanca.
- When we got to La Blanca on Friday afternoon,, we were greeted and welcomed right into a mini-worship service. It was clear instantly that what was valued in this congregation was laying one’s heart bare in worship of God – authenticity over organization, expression and volume over rhythm and tone – musically; obedience to perceived movement of the spirit over adherence to personal boundaries or avoidance of awkwardness. You could come up with a thousand adjectives to describe Pastor Enrique and the elders, before ‘lukewarm’ would occur to you.
- On Sunday morning, I had one of the most sacred, memorable experiences of my life in ministry. I was invited to preach (which I knew about ahead of time), and to co-administer both sacraments, which I partially learned about the night before. Pastor Enrique told me they’d planned a baptism, and that he’d love me to participate, and that I might get a little wet. You may have seen a picture or two. When we moved, halfway through the service, over to a pool, and pastor Enrique removed his shoes and belt and advised me to do the same, I understood completely, and the honor of being allowed to share this moment with him – to walk down into this water with these two Guatemalan men, in their community, to share some words about baptism and God’s love and our identity as God’s beloved, and to be entrusted by brother Mincho, who I’d just met, to be a part of this sacred moment for him… it’s hard to put into words how humbling this gift was.
Mincho was emotional, as Pastor Enrique and I spoke, and that, in turn made the congregation emotional and me emotional, and when I looked up, I saw that everyone felt the weight of the moment, one way or another – joy, the beauty of cross-cultural community, the boundary-breaking love of Jesus. Nothing about that moment was lukewarm. The water (somehow- I don’t know how they could do this in Guatemala), was frigid… our hearts were burning.
We didn’t need to know this, at that moment, but I later learned that Mincho had had heart surgery a couple months ago, and made a promise to God, that if he turned out well, he would serve him, with love. He was overwhelmed with gratitude, and knew he was entering a new way of life. (which pastor Enrique told me he’d already been living, in loving service to God, through the church).
- Before arriving in La Blanca, we spent a couple days in Guatemala City, learning a lot about Guatemalan culture and history. On Friday we spent time in a museum – small and unassuming, but packed with devastating accounts of what the Guatemalan people have gone through, as a culture, and country. (The cover of the bulletin is several members of our group listening and responding to some of these accounts.)
Before that, we met with Hector Casteneda, a Guatemalan professor and pastor who walked us through five key dates to give us a brief overview of some events that have defined Guatemala.
You may know that after centuries of indigenous oppression that bears some similarities to the United States, in 1944 one woman, and then 5 teachers, and then hundreds and eventually 10s of thousands of citizens protested low wages and began a revolution that toppled a military dictatorship and began a movement that led, two years later, to the first free elections in the country. Over the course of the next decade, more schools were built in Guatemala than the country had seen in its history, there were more jobs created than ever before, social security was established, freedom of speech and press and religion were established – women were granted voting rights, and then indigenous people; historic land reform laws were passed, beginning to undo the completely unbalanced power of the government and land owners and white Spanish immigrant elites.
You may also know that it all came crashing down in 1954, when a coup d’etat was staged to depose the democratically elected President Arbenz, largely to protect American economic interests under President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, orchestrated, at least according to Hector, by Nixon and CIA Director Allen Dulles. Hector then said something that I’d never heard a pastor say before: “When I die, I want to go to hell, just to see those guys burning.”
(And when he said that it hit me the way I can tell it just hit you)
Now if I said that about someone… I hope you’d say, at the very least: “Excuse me!?” I hope you’d question my theology, and my heart, and frankly, check in on me and my family to make sure I wasn’t really going through something. Hector could say something, with faith and integrity, that I could not, and probably most of us cannot. Because my brother was not hunted down and murdered by the Guatemalan government, as Hector’s was, for fighting for what Guatemala might have been, if not for that 1954 coup. I’ve never had to look around and see the country I know and love, and all the people I know and love, struggle and grasp at survival, with very little evidence or promise that things might improve. I’ve never seen so clearly the greedy self-interest of a handful of individuals so directly dismantle and destroy the well-being and futures of millions of other people.
After hearing Hector’s history lesson, each of us in the room understood his statement about wanting to see others burning in hell, though none of us would express that ourselves. Hector was not lukewarm. The psalmist who wrote, “Let them be put to shame and dishonor, let them be like chaff before the wind”… was not lukewarm. I don’t need to pray that way – that is not my psalm – Hector’s desire is not mine… but it is authentically his, because he’s allowed himself to feel the pain of his people.
The Guatemalan poet and activist Julia Esquivel articulated this well, in the words on the front of the bulletin. When we allow God’s pain and heart to become our own… we burn inside.
Our burning may be different from the psalmist’s and Hector’s… but our hearts burn about some things, don’t they? What angers and stirs you to act? What keeps you up at night? Whose pain do you hear? What brings that fire out of you?
That may be what John was talking about, in his words to Laodicea.
But I want to suggest another meaning, as well.
Laodicea, as I mentioned, was sophisticated, cultured, wealthy… but they also had a serious water problem… not unlike Guatemala. But while we could rely on bottled water to brush our teeth or various small scale filtration systems, Laodicea’s solution had to be much more systemic: they built Aqueducts to bring in water from other towns.1
Hot mountain springs through one set of pipes, cold mountain springs through another… but by the time it got to Laodicea, it was calcified, chalky, gross and gag-worthy… and the first, immediate tell for whether or not the water would be potable, was its temperature.1
The word lukewarm would conjure such specific feelings for the Laodiceans. It would have been their least favorite adjective.
In this warning letter, they hear John saying: your lives and your actions are corroding the gospel. Your wealth, your privilege, your allegiance to an empire that competes for your allegiance to Jesus Christ… these are the things that turn the crystal-clear purity of the good news into chalky filth that even God doesn’t want to rinse or gargle with, let alone swallow.
These words to the Laodiceans in Revelation 3 are not telling me, not telling us, that we need to change our personalities to become fiery street-preachers or self-proclaimed prophets. Laid-back and even-keel… (sometimes, often) – is fine. It’s telling us we need to change our actions.
One last quick Guatemala story. After Hector spoke to us and we had a break to digest the information he shared, a woman from the same organization2 spoke with and shared her heart with us. Her name is Pamela, and unlike the others I described, Pamela probably could be described, in that traditional sense of simply demeanor, as “lukewarm.” She was not fiery… but she shared, with such conviction and clarity, that she understood that the gospel they were presenting in Guatemala could not be the pure, untainted gospel as long as it was heard and grasped through the lens of patriarchal gender roles that elevated men and suppressed women. Pamela is giving her life to educating women and girls about their own value and worth. So in that more biblically accurate understanding of the word, there is nothing lukewarm about Pamela and her life.
John is inviting us to ask: where have we missed the mark, collectively? Where have we, as a community, allowed the gospel to become tainted? Where have we refused to allow the suffering to speak?
Here are a few ideas.
- Is it in our allegiance to empire, which, in case you need the reminder (as I know I sometimes do), in our country is capable of systemic evil no matter which political party is in control of the white house or congress?
- Are we lukewarm and corroded in the way that we fail to speak out and advocate on behalf of our neighbors without homes?
- Do our actions, or our lack of action, enable or facilitate or deny injustice – historic injustice with devastating consequences in places like Cuba and in Guatemala? Present injustice in school bombings of precious children in Gaza?
- Do we give a pass to organized greed and corruption in our leaders, because it’s simply the way the game is played and has to be played, to compete?
Friends, what is most at risk of tainting the purity of the gospel, leaving a chalky aftertaste that would make others – our neighbors, other Christians in other parts of the world, the Lord Jesus – the Lamb on the throne, choke or cough or gag, and spit us out?
We don’t have to live in fear of that. It’s a gift that John gives these communities, and that Scripture and the Spirit give us, to wrestle with this question, honestly, in community, knowing that if we do, the Spirit will burn plenty hot within us, as we proclaim the gospel with our words and our lives – truly good news to those who most need it.
1 This is Amy Carter Florence’s research and insight, found in her book “A is for Alabaster: 52 Reflections on the Stories of Scripture,” which we’ve been using for inspiration throughout this summer series
2 The Protestant Center for Pastoral Studies in Central America (CEDEPCA) is an educational institution that contributes to the transformation of lives and contexts by providing training and accompaniment, and by offering spaces for reflection to women and men from diverse Christian traditions, communities and contexts. https://cedepca.org/en/