This Hallelujah Banquet

by Eugene H. Peterson

  One psalmist wrote, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in thee” (Psalm 56:3). I recall hearing a story once about a man who kept tabs on his fears. He discovered that a third of them never materialized. Another third were beyond his control; he couldn’t do a thing about them no matter how much he fretted. And the final third were worth worrying about because they were within his control. The false fears he could forget, and by taking thought, he could resolve some of the others and prepare himself to face the rest. The ratio seems about right to me.

  “For ten days you will have tribulation.” That sounds cryptic but is quite simple. “Ten days” was a common Greek expression for a brief time. Our counterpart is “a couple of days,” “three or four days,” or “a day or so.” Christ does not say we will not have tribulation and suffering. He does say that it will come to an end. It is limited; it is not interminable eternity.

  “Be faithful unto death.” Trusting in our Lord and worshipping him are what we are called upon to maintain. Suffering has an end because Christ suffered, died, and lives again. Our sufferings are made endurable because we have one who suffered for us and shares his life with us while we suffer. “Be faithful unto death” in that context is not an unreasonable call to stoicism or just to grit our teeth and carry on; it is a promise of a companion and a presence.

  * * *

  Finally, there is the urgent promise: “I will give you the crown of life….He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death” (verses 10–11). There are two words in the Greek language for “crown.” One is the crown that a king wears, while the other is the prize given to an athlete after winning a race or an honor bestowed on someone by the community for valorous service. This second word is used here. When we participate in sufferings, we are competing in a contest for faith. And when we finish the contest praising God, we are crowned with the prize of life.

  The second death referred to, the death that will not touch the conqueror, is the death that separates us from God. The first death that we all have to meet, as Saint Paul once wrote, cannot separate us from the love of Christ. And those who maintain their faith through suffering will never suffer the pangs of separation from God. We will suffer the pain of separation from health, from friends, from children, and from this beautiful world, but we will never be separated from God.

  There can be no question about it. The words of the first and the last, the one who died and who lives, who said, “I know your sufferings,” and who said, “Do not fear….Be faithful unto death….I will give you the crown of life….He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death”—those words gave strength and eternity to the lives of Polycarp and the suffering Christians of Smyrna. And they have the power to give strength and eternity to our lives too.

  Amen.

  Skip Notes

  *1 These are paraphrases of Luke 9:23 and Galatians 2:20.

  *2 See Massey Hamilton Shepherd Jr., trans. and ed., “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in Early Christian Fathers, ed. Cyril C. Richardson et al. (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 152–53.

  *3 Strong’s, s.v. “thlipsis” (G2347), Blue Letter Bible, www.blueletterbible.org/​lang/​lexicon/​lexicon.cfm?t=kjv&strongs=g2347.

  The Test of Our Truth

  We live in an odd time. The age we live in has word making as one of the biggest businesses going. Schools and computers, between them, account for most of what is going on today. Schools teach us how to recognize and put words together; computers store and process and retrieve words. Words. There was a time when words were what people used to pass an afternoon around a potbellied stove in the general store, to write a sonnet to a lady, or to request a second helping of potatoes and pork chops. Words were used, but they were not organized. Words were part of the human condition, but nobody made a business out of them. Now words are big business.

  With this great emphasis on words, you might think they are studied and valued and understood more than ever before. But that is where the odd thing appears. They are not. They are used badly, sloppily, carelessly. They are wasted away. It turns out that words themselves are not nearly as important as what they can do, and when they have done their work, they are tossed aside like Kleenex. Words are used in order to influence, to sell a car or a candidate, to seduce, to persuade, to win for propaganda or for advertisement. The skill of our times is not using words as words but using them as weapons, as tools.

  One of the large and persistent tasks of living the Christian life is learning to tell the truth.

  One of the large and persistent tasks of living the Christian life is learning to tell the truth. The opposite of telling the truth is telling lies. We lie a lot. Most of us lie a lot. We lie a lot more than we are aware of. We lie even when we think we are telling the truth. The reason we do so is quite clear: we want to be at the center of the action; we want to subordinate all reality, persons, things, and events to our willfulness. We want to control people’s responses and manipulate their perceptions. In order to do that, we arrange the data, filter the facts, and shape the information so that we can influence the way things will be heard and seen, so that the response will be congenial to us.

  Lies are not usually blatant falsehoods. In order to be successful, they have to be mostly truth.

  Lies are not usually blatant falsehoods. In order to be successful, they have to be mostly truth.

  Lying is a product not so much of maliciousness but of laziness. Most people tell lies with the best of intentions. They think that they are helping the cause of their country or company or their own fortunes and that this is the best way. Few people, at least at the outset, have bad motives or evil intent. They simply want something good or attractive or pleasing to take place, and the lie seems a shortcut to make it happen. Lying seems easier than the truth. Most people don’t have the patience to go into all the ramifications of the truth. So, they lie.

  The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword….Some there who hold the teaching of Balaam. (Revelation 2:12, 14)

  When Saint John introduces the letter to the Christians in Pergamum by describing Christ as having a sharp sword proceeding from his mouth, we know that he is going to have something decisive to say. We are about to hear words that are going to make a difference.

  In the letter to the Hebrews, we are told,

  The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4:12–13)

  Because Christ is introduced this way, we assume that the Pergamene Christians had become sloppy with their words. Their way of talking about their faith had become fuzzy. Whatever else they were doing, their speech about their faith needed sharpening. This Christ, with the sword proceeding from his mouth, examined his Christians, and the first thing he said was highly commendatory: “I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives” (Revelation 2:13, nrsv).

  These people had lived through difficult times. Their city had seen a furious assault on all who had been brave enough to be Christians. Emperor worship, which was so fiercely intolerant of any who refused to participate in it, had victims from the Pergamene congregation. When the decree came to renounce Christ and worship Caesar, these Christians had shown their true colors and had been brave and stalwart.

  There was one famous martyr among them—Antipas was his name. He had died rather than renounce his faith in Christ. And apparently, from the way the commendation is worded, he hadn’t been alone. He had the support and allegiance of all the Christians there. This was a heroic church, and it had the bones of martyrs to prove it.


  To live in Pergamum was dangerous. Christ said he knew it was; he knew they lived in perhaps the most dangerous spot in the empire. There is a great truth here.

  When the New Testament speaks of the Christian dwelling anywhere in this world, it ordinarily uses the Greek word paroikein….the word which describes a temporary residence in contrast with a permanent residence….The word paroikein looks on the Christian as a stranger and a pilgrim….But the significant thing about this passage is that it is not the word paroikein which is used; it is katoikein; and katoikein is the word that is regularly used for residence in a permanent and settled place. What the Risen Christ is saying to the Christians in Pergamos is this: “You are living in a city where the influence and the power of Satan are rampant—and you have to go on living there….In Pergamos you are, and in Pergamos you must stay. Life has set you where Satan’s seat is. It is there you must live; and it is there you must show that you are a Christian.”…

  It is no part of the Christian duty to run away from a difficult and a dangerous situation. The Christian aim is not escape from a situation, but conquest of a situation.*1

  But despite their valor under the most extreme persecution, Christ had something more to say: “I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality” (verse 14).

  As we realize how vast the resources and energy of God are in our everyday lives, we find that we don’t have to carry the weight of the world’s sins on our shoulders, that our moral sweat isn’t going to make the critical difference in history, but that the difference has already been made by Christ’s blood.

  I’ve noticed that people who read the Bible tend to laugh a lot. There are comic passages in this book that double us up with laughter. But the laughter is more than entertainment. It teaches us, too. There are some insights we get only while laughing. The story of Balaam is one of these comic passages. Solemnity is not a mark of religious depth. It is not true, as many people seem to assume, that the more serious we get about God, the more serious we get. Often the opposite takes place: we get serious about God and get lighthearted about everything else.

  Maturing in our life of faith brings us to a sense of God’s grace. As we realize how vast the resources and energy of God are in our everyday lives, we find that we don’t have to carry the weight of the world’s sins on our shoulders, that our moral sweat isn’t going to make the critical difference in history, but that the difference has already been made by Christ’s blood.

  And so, not infrequently, we come to stories in Scripture that provide a kind of comic relief: we see the ridiculousness of pretention in human effort, how funny it is when people think they are doing the work of God or are trying to act like gods. It is like little kids dressing up in their parents’ clothes—they are deadly serious about it, pretending to be adults. But to us looking on, it is funny. They look so silly strutting around in shoes too big for them, in hats that fall down over their ears, and in coats and dresses that drag on the ground and trip them up as they walk. That is the kind of story we have with Balaam.

  * * *

  The Balaam story, found in Numbers 22–24, comes out of the time when Israel was in the midst of its forty-year wilderness pilgrimage between its salvation out of Egypt and its possession of Canaan. Those forty years were a time of testing and growth. The Israelites found out what it meant to trust in God, to be provided for by God, and to hear the word of God and live trusting it. When they were nearing the end of their pilgrimage and ready to enter the new land, they came to a final enemy: Balak, king of the Moabites. Balak was scared. He had heard the reports of this people, divinely preserved through the terrible wilderness, accompanied by a gracious and powerful God. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop them. Desperate for something to stop them, not at all sure that his weapons could do it, he sent for the famous Balaam, a sorcerer. He offered Balaam an enormous fee if he would come and put a curse on Israel.

  Balaam knew it was the wrong thing to do and initially refused. But then—his heart not really in his refusal—when his arm was twisted, he agreed. Now the funny part starts. Balaam was riding his donkey, and suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared and blocked the way with a drawn sword in his hand. The donkey swerved out of the road and bolted into the field. Balaam beat his donkey with his staff and got it back onto the road. Then they were in a vineyard along a narrow closed-in path, walled in, and the sword-wielding angel blocked the path again. The donkey tried to get around the angel and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall. Balaam, understandably angry with his donkey, banged on it again with his staff. A few miles down the road, they entered a very narrow passage, and the angel blocked the way a third time. Now there was simply no place to go. The donkey simply lay down.

  Now let me paraphrase, the rest of this tale, with only minor liberties. Balaam’s patience had run out quite a while back. He lost his temper completely and beat his donkey with his stick, black and blue. The poor donkey had had enough by this time and opened its mouth and said, “What have I done to you that you have beat me three times?” Balaam was so angry and beside himself by this time that he didn’t even notice anything unusual in his donkey talking, and he answered back, “Because you are making a donkey out of me, that’s why. If I had a sword, I’d kill you on the spot.”

  The donkey defended itself: “Haven’t I been a faithful donkey to you for these many long years? Have I ever made a donkey out of you before? Haven’t I always been a good donkey?” And Balaam, calming down a little by now, said, “Well, as a matter of fact, you’re right. You have been a good donkey, and you have never made a donkey out of me.” And then Balaam saw what the donkey saw—the angel blocking the way with the sharp two-edged sword in his hand—and he heard the angel speak: “Why have you beaten your donkey? It’s you I am trying to show that you are not going in the right way. The donkey was bright enough to see me blocking the way. Why weren’t you? I thought you were supposed to be a sorcerer, able to figure out the ways of God, and this dumb donkey knows more about God’s will than you do.”

  Balaam offered to go back, but the angel told him that since he was almost where he had set out for to go ahead and see what could be done there. Balak was glad to see him, of course. But Balaam, a bit shaken from his experience on the way, made no promises to him: he told him that he could say only what God gave him to say. But Balak figured that money talked louder than God, and he set things up for a great ritual of cursing.

  They climbed a hill from which they could see the people of Israel camped, ready to conquer, below them on the plain. They built seven altars, and on each one they sacrificed a ram and a bull; they burned the offerings, with the great retinue of princes in attendance. The suspense built. I can imagine Balaam concentrating, getting himself into a trance, and then everyone waiting in suspense to hear the great, powerful curses that would dissolve Israel on the plains beneath them. Balaam opened his mouth and began to speak. The people believed that Balak would be triumphant; it was going to work. But he couldn’t believe his ears when he heard a great blessing spoken. Balak was beside himself with anger. Balaam said, “I couldn’t help it—that is what came out. Let’s try again.”

  So they went to another mountain and did the whole thing over again. They built seven altars, killed a ram and a bull on each one, went through sacrifice rituals, watched Israel down below on the plains, waited as Balaam concentrated and prayed, and got ready for the mystical act of cursing. Balaam opened his mouth and muffed it again.

  So they gave it a third try on another mountain. Seven more altars, another seven rams and seven bulls. Again, the suspense built. The curse had to work this time. Balaam tried his best to curse, but all he could get out was a blessing: “Blessed be every one who blesses you, and cursed be every one who curses you”
(Numbers 24:9). Balak had had it with Balaam, his dumb donkey of a magician: three times he had tried to get him to go down a path of cursing, and three times he had balked and blessed.

  * * *

  But then there’s a twist to the story that isn’t funny at all. Balaam, having disappointed Balak in the matter of cursing, apparently suggested a way to thwart Israel after all. Instead of cursing Israel, he advised a party with festive food and dancing girls (Numbers 25:1–2; 31:16; Jude 1:11). It worked. The people of Israel, after forty years of austerity in the desert, were seduced by the smell of roasted rams and the smiles of perfumed girls. They had been true to God in matters of life and death but failed to be true in matters of eating and drinking. Opposition didn’t work. Cursing didn’t work. But clever lies did.

  And why bring up this convoluted ancient story? Because the same principle was about to work on one of John’s congregations. A hostile society had tried everything to get the Christians to fold, without avail. They were the bravest, most courageous, most steadfast people the world had ever seen. They were persecuted, but they didn’t budge an inch. At least one of their number, Antipas, lost his life, like Polycarp years later in the Smyrna church. But the danger was from an unexpected direction: some nice people who were suggesting that it is possible to be just a little too strict with ourselves. After all, what counts is what we believe and our courage in standing up for the right—saying the truth. But in everyday life, we have to get along in the world that we find ourselves in, and we can’t be making ourselves obnoxious all the time. If you are going to make people feel ill at ease with you all the time by being a bluenose, is that a very Christian thing to do?