This Hallelujah Banquet

by Eugene H. Peterson

  But that is Satan’s lie. To separate what we say from the way we live. To make a division between our confession in worship and our conduct at work. Truth is lived truth. Truth is not simply what we say but what we live.

  Truth is not simply what we say but what we live.

  John, pastor to the Pergamene Christians, used Balaam’s story to give his parish the truth test: “I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam” (Revelation 2:14). Like the Israelites, they were true to their Lord when the going was tough; they passed the martyr test with flying colors. They didn’t give an inch when it was demanded that they curse Christ or die. But when the pressure was off and they entered normal routines of work and play, some suggested they relax just a little. Surely they had proved beyond a shadow of doubt that they were true to Christ. Now it was time to enjoy themselves a little and get along with their neighbors. If they were uptight prudes and puritans, they would not be able to give a very attractive witness to Christ, would they?

  Sometimes it is easier to die for the truth in a crisis than to live the truth through a dull week at work. The truth test comes, though, not on the heights to which we rise under pressure but through those ordinary hours when we don’t know we are being examined at all. Truth is not just right answers but a right life. Christ is our comprehensive, personal truth to be expressed in gestures, actions, and conversations when no one is watching. It is only the teaching of Balaam that says differently, and we dismissed him with laughter ages ago.

  * * *

  The teaching of Balaam is the kind of teaching that tries to make things easier and clearer than they really are, adds on to the gospel, and elaborates on real truth, God’s truth. Gospel truth is always personal, direct, obedient—a way to live in love and courage and adoration. The Greek word for “truth” is interesting: aletheia*2—unhiddenness, evident, manifest, open, present. We find the truth in the everyday, the things evident and manifest that we encounter there in the light that Christ throws on our being, on our lives. The truth test bares our being before Christ’s being. We are seen in the concrete, not the abstract—as livers of this life, of my life as it is. Who we really are is revealed in the light of his life. It is seen in the clarity of his life as it is revealed to us in the Cross and Resurrection. And those great events illuminate the depth and meaning of the things we call “the everyday.”

  The truth test asks not What do you think? but Who are you? Not What is your opinion? but What is your decision? God is not nearly as interested with what we say about him to others as he is with what we say to him. When there is truth so that relationship and things are seen as they really are, then is the time to speak of him to others.

  The Pergamene Christians lived, their pastor said, where Satan dwells. That provides a clue to their situation. Satan is the Father of Lies. They lived in the place where there was a web of lies—propaganda, deceit, distortion—a city where words were not used to keep people in touch with reality but to manipulate them and confuse them into unreality. Most words are used that way today. Things have not improved, and Christ examines us in the same way.

  An urgent promise is given to the Pergamene church, and to us, on the basis of an affirmative response to this sharp two-edged sword of Christ. It is this: “To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it” (verse 17).

  The hidden manna is the food that God gives to his people, the nourishment that keeps them going. The stone with the new name written on it is the identification that Christ gives us as his people. He will sustain us, and he will identify us as his own. A most appropriate reward for being victorious in the struggle! The battle is not between good and evil but between truth and error. To fight it well means to throw one’s life on the side of truth, to discern between what is right and what is spurious.

  God will sustain his truth and confirm its identification. The truth will be energized with the nutriments of the new manna, and it will be validated with the identifying stone.

  What we believe makes a difference because what God believes makes a difference. For he is God, and his Word is as sharp and quick as a two-edged sword.

  Amen.

  Skip Notes

  *1 William Barclay, Letters to the Seven Churches (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 35–36.

  *2 Thayer and Smith, “Greek Lexicon Entry for Aletheia,” The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, 1999, www.biblestudytools.com/​lexicons/​greek/​nas/​aletheia.html.

  The Test of Our Holiness

  April Fools’ Day is an unofficial holiday in the church. Children have a special fondness for it. I know I did. It was marked in my childhood by an outrageous joke played out in my father’s butcher shop. Every year, he collaborated with Hank the baker, whose shop was next to ours. They made chocolates that were filled with garlic and set them out on their display counter on a platter. No one was invited to take one. People took them anyway.

  Some would react noisily with exclamations. Others, realizing they hadn’t been invited to take the candy, pretended nothing was wrong. In these cases, the rule of the store was that we also pretended nothing was wrong. That, to me, left out the best part. I would follow them out of the store, and while they were at the curb getting rid of the gift, I—unable to contain myself—would say, “April Fool!”

  In Thyatira, Christians, who were admirable in almost every way, were being made fools of by reaching for attractive-appearing religion that in fact was inwardly foul. We are told, in the Christian way, that we are to be fools for Christ, but that is not quite the same thing as being made a fool of.

  Being a fool for Christ means pursuing the reality of God even when the appearance isn’t congenial.

  Being a fool for Christ means pursuing the reality of God even when the appearance isn’t congenial. Being made a fool of means chasing the appearance of religion when inward reality has nothing to do with God.

  * * *

  The Christian always lives life out in conscious opposition to the world. The conflict—between what the Christian believes and therefore does and what the world assumes and therefore does—produces in every age a sharp division.

  While many believers seem to want to retreat from society, there is no way to be a Christian except in the world. Attempts to escape from our environment have never been successful. Monastic retreats and hermit solitudes have mostly resulted in a distortion of our witness. But though the world is inevitable for the Christian life, it certainly is not helpful to it. Often it is seductive to Christ’s purposes. And it always contrasts with them. John’s letter to the congregation at Thyatira gives us an example of what one group of Christians had to contend with in relation to their society.

  Thyatira was a commercial city, strong in trade unionism. In order to work, one had to be a member of one of the guilds. These guilds, which the Christian had no choice but to be a part of, dominated life, but the Christian lived a life that Christ sought to dominate. There was bound to be a conflict of interest.

  We look at the Christians in Thyatira and listen to the message to find out what they did in the conflict. Our society is radically different from theirs, but it is of no more help to us. Society has not grown friendlier to the Christian through the ages. With the insight gained by the Thyatira congregation, we will be fortified in our own vision and obedience to our Lord.

  Christ is introduced to the Thyatira congregation as “the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze” (Revelation 2:18). The eyes like a flame of fire burn as they penetrate. This is no casual survey. The Son of God does not use his eyes as a person who is window-shopping, butterfly hopping from one object to another without giving any real attention to any object, without any seriousness in his gaze. His exa
mination burns into those who meet his gaze. He really sees. The feet like burnished bronze are solid and strong. They will not crumble under opposition. They will not retreat when meeting adversity. He has a base of bronze to reinforce his examination.

  The solidity of the bronze feet was achieved by the use of fire—bronze is an alloy made of mixing copper and tin under heat. The combination not only is stronger after the smelting but also has a new melting point. The bronze feet, then, are the necessary foundation for the burning eyes, which will look into opposing and unfriendly situations. Christ is presented to them as the one with penetrating eyes of fire and supported by strong bronze feet tempered with fire and shining in their strength. He sees through all facades, evasions, masks, and fogginess—sees into contradiction, opposition, hostility, and indifference. And his scrutiny is backed up by bronze strength.

  Our first response to the prospect of such an examination would be to run for cover. Yet we need not. There is mercy and generosity in the honest, unflinching gaze of our Lord. If his look burns, it is the fire of love, and it burns so that it may warm us.

  There is mercy and generosity in the honest, unflinching gaze of our Lord. If his look burns, it is the fire of love, and it burns so that it may warm us.

  Proof of his generosity comes on the first returns of the examination: “I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first” (verse 19). The Thyatiran Christians at least were not resting on past achievements. There was no sitting back and telling stories about how vigorous and exciting it had been in the early days of the church. They had not fallen into the habit (which Christians seem prone to) of lamenting the present evil generation and nostalgically looking back to a better time. They were not like Miniver Cheevy, who

  Sighed for what was not,

  And dreamed, and rested from his labors;

  He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

  And Priam’s neighbors.*1

  Unlike the congregation at Ephesus, which had lost its first love, the Thyatiran Christians’ latter works exceeded their first. They were becoming skilled in and increasingly committed to love, faith, service, and patient endurance.

  * * *

  But the Lord’s blazing eyes saw a disturbing element among the virtues. He continued, “I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice fornication and to eat food sacrificed to idols” (verse 20, nrsv).

  There was a person in the congregation who was teaching and leading people astray. By being called a Jezebel, she was characterized in a word.*2 Jezebel was the most notorious evil woman in Hebrew history. She was the wife of Ahab, one of the weakest kings of Israel. She had imported into Israel an alien cult. Her father, Ethbaal by name, was a priest of Astarte who had succeeded to the throne of Sidon by murdering his predecessor. Astarte was the Phoenician equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. Her beastly system had engineered such a complete divorce of morality from religion that it even encouraged gross sexual immorality under the cloak of piety. According to one etymology, Jezebel (like our English Agnes) means “pure” or “chaste,” but Jezebel contradicted her name by her character and her behavior.*3

  When she married King Ahab, she became active in the diffusion of her revolting doctrines in Israel. She may even have been a priestess of Astarte herself. She persuaded the king to build a temple and altar to Astarte in his capital, Samaria. She supported 850 prophets of her immoral cult and killed off all the prophets of righteous Jehovah on whom she could lay her hands. She became well known for what Jehu later called “the many whoredoms and sorceries of…Jezebel” (2 Kings 9:22, nrsv). She sought to contaminate Israel, as Balaam had done before her, and Ahab did not possess the moral conviction or stamina to withstand her.

  This first Jezebel had been dead nearly a thousand years. She met a horrible end. But her evil spirit had, as it were, become reincarnated in a prophetess of the first century AD. Her religion, too, had little connection with morality. Laying claim to divine inspiration, she was succeeding in beguiling the servants of Christ to indulge in immoral practices. She was encouraging the Christians of Thyatira to attend the ceremonies and feasts of the local trade guilds, which were dedicated to some pagan deity and too often ended in unbridled licentiousness. This new Jezebel and her followers prided themselves on their mature experience of life. They were delving into secret mysteries, of which they boasted a private revelation that had been denied to the rest of the Christians. They were a spiritual aristocracy, a favored elite. The rank and file could not compete with them.

  They bragged that they plumbed the deep things. Perhaps they even borrowed this phrase from Saint Paul, who spoke several times in his epistles of the deep things of God—the deeps of his wisdom and love, which people cannot know but which the Holy Spirit searches out and explores. With Jezebel’s diabolical theory that, since matter is evil, the sins of the flesh can be indulged without damage to the spirit, the Christians of Thyatira plunged without restraint into what they called the deep things (of Satan, Christ ironically adds, not of God).

  Jezebel’s answer to the Christian’s conflict with the world was to eliminate the conflict by assimilating the differences. Instead of refusing to participate in what was evil, she taught that the Christian must assimilate all the evil and thereby redeem it. Any examination that we undergo must include an examination of our relation to society. And in particular here, business society. We cannot exclude such a major part of our lives from the probing, searching gaze of Christ. Our tendency is to assimilate, to take on the coloration of those with whom we work—our employers, our companies, our associates. But Christ’s command is that we should differentiate.

  We live in contrast to them. Clearly we cannot do it by being holier than thou—acting or seeming to be superior. But neither can we do it by acting as if there is no difference, by continually accommodating ourselves to the ethics and the standards of society. For us, I don’t think it is a question of unethical business practices. There is, of course, a Christian decision to be made from time to time. But, on the whole, there is a high standard of morality and ethical behavior in contemporary business. Nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be very much Christian self-consciousness in it. There doesn’t seem to be the frank affirmation of the Christian to himself, This is God’s work, not the devil’s. There doesn’t seem to be the readiness to devote the business day to the glory of God.

  Jezebel was the symbolic nickname for the lying teacher who tricked Christians into foolishness. Centuries earlier, the historical Jezebel had introduced a religion into Israel that was glamorous and entertaining. It was all appearance and no substance. It appealed to self-interest, greed, lust. It nearly put Israel under. Jezebel keeps showing up century after century in congregation after congregation. She showed up in Thyatira, and John warned the church. The appeal of the Jezebel lie doesn’t fade. In fact, right now we are under a media blitz of Jezebel teaching. It is April Fools’ religion and promises two things: to make you feel good and to get you what you want. And what chance does “Deny yourself and take up your cross daily” have against that?

  Our every religious appeal and teaching must be put to the test of our holiness. Appearance is no test. Attractiveness is no test. Miracle promises are no test. But sincerity is. And integrity. Are we what we say we are? What is inside? Chocolate? Or garlic?

  Good questions are rarely easy. But they protect us from being made fools of.

  Christ, “who searches mind and heart” (Revelation 2:23), sees past religious glamour, a moral front, dazzling entertainment, and God-jargon. He finds that place deep within us where the seed of faith can be planted.

  Ask these simple questions to help evaluate your sincerity: Does this teaching return you to the God revealed in Christ—his words, his acts—or does it exc
ite you with what you’ll get, acquire, feel? Does this teaching return you to yourself—who you are, where you are—or does it incite ambition, discontent, a desire to be someone else, somewhere else?

  The root of the word humility is humus—“earth.” Humility is down-to-earthness. Christ, “who searches mind and heart” (Revelation 2:23), sees past religious glamour, a moral front, dazzling entertainment, and God-jargon. He finds that place deep within us where the seed of faith can be planted and cultivated and where foolish-appearing things, like prayer and love and fidelity, strike deep roots in the field of life and become the realities that rule the world.

  * * *

  When our Lord subjects us to an examination, I can hear him using words in the spirit of those to Thyatira:

  I know your works. They are greater than those at first. You work hard—harder every year, far harder than your parents. Your attitude is great—enthusiasm, love, service, patient endurance. You do your work exceedingly well. There is not a lazy person among you. You are energetic and successful, and for that I commend you. But I have this against you: You tolerate Jezebel. You tolerate the assumption that commerce has prior claim on your talents. You unthinkingly take for granted that Christ is not interested in your work. You act as if our Lord never worked as a carpenter in a business world and has no feeling for what you do. You make a religion out of your work, and, however moral and successful it is, it is not the same religion you profess as a Christian.

  Jezebel is the symbol for religion separated from God and devoted to success at all costs. Jezebel doesn’t persecute the church; she asks only to be tolerated by it. She worships in the church and listens to its sermons. But then she sets herself up as a prophetess and declares her own wisdom to be the standard in the world of work. She takes over. Jezebel must be cast out.