This Hallelujah Banquet

by Eugene H. Peterson

  To the Christian who reaffirms his identity and listens to his Lord, there is a double promise. First, “he who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received power from my Father” (Revelation 2:26–27). This promise is appropriate for the person who has lived in the midst of a society that has threatened to break him into pieces, to shatter his convictions and remold him on its own principles. He has often felt as if he might be broken by this pressure and opposition. In fact, he maybe has been broken. But Christ tells him, The future is yours. You shall rule. Your convictions, your living, your uncompromised obedience to me shall prove the stronger will in the end. Not you, but they, shall be broken.

  Christ promises himself to us as the end of the night and the beginning of the day. Whatever difficulties we have had in belief and holy living, they are in the past. His presence will dominate the days ahead.

  This breaking, it must be noted, is not destructive. A society that has become successful in exploiting sin and greed and rebellion cannot be received into the kingdom of God; it must be broken and rebuilt. When this church was built, the first piece of equipment at the site was a bulldozer. It tore out the earth as it was. It realigned the contours of the ground. The earth was not destroyed here, but it was pretty violently rearranged. The bulldozer’s apparent destructiveness was necessary preparation for the construction of our church building. Society must finally be broken in this way. If we assimilate society and its principles into ourselves, we will also have to be broken like the ill-formed piece of pottery. If we maintain our convictions in holy living, we can be the agents who reform and rule society.

  The second part of the promise is “I will give him the morning star” (verse 28). The morning star is the sign of the dawn. The night has been long and there have been millions of stars shining in the sky, but they have been only pinpoint illuminations of what was basically black night. And then the morning star appears, and we know the dawn is not far off. A flood of brightness comes before the dawning sun.

  The morning star is Christ himself. He promises himself to us as the end of the night and the beginning of the day. Whatever difficulties we have had in belief and holy living, they are in the past. His presence will dominate the days ahead. He is here already. He speaks to us in love and judgment.

  Obey his voice and receive his love.

  Amen.

  Skip Notes

  *1 Scott Donaldson, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet’s Life (New York: Columbia University, 2007), 246.

  *2 Editor’s note: The term Jezebel has often been misapplied or used abusively to demean women. Eugene’s usage here, in keeping with Saint John’s, is focused on the intentional religious deception of the historical Jezebel as a wider spiritual symbol. It should not be read as flippant or intending to direct shame toward women, whom Eugene respected deeply and empowered for ministry throughout his life.

  *3 Editor’s note: Eugene did not reference this work explicitly, but more context on the name Jezebel can be found in Michael J. Wilson, What the Scriptures Say About Women (Summerville, SC: Holy Fire, 2007), 97.

  The Test of Our Reality

  A number of years ago, a young couple in our church had a child and gave him the shockingly un-Presbyterian name of Wesley. They brought him to worship at an early age, as is our custom here (the importance of children in the act of worship can hardly be overestimated). One Sunday when he was about two years old, Wesley slipped away from his parents while I was in the middle of my sermon, ran behind the pews, and made a dash down the center aisle, positioning himself in cheerful defiance between table and pulpit. His father stood at the back of the church and muttered what I think was a prayer.

  The scene is a parable. Some people come to church to pray, others to play. Most are here to exercise their faith, but some, usually the more recently baptized, are simply here to have fun. And I wonder in response, What was Wesley’s father praying that Sunday? Why was Wesley having so much fun? Was it a sin for me to enjoy it so much?

  Playing spills out when we are being ourselves. Praying spills out when we are being more than ourselves.

  The words playing and praying often sound alike. Their nature is also similar. Playing spills out when we are being ourselves. Praying spills out when we are being more than ourselves. Playing is delight in being in the image God made us. Praying is delight in the God who made us in his image. Wholly alive, we pray and play, seething with vitality outwardly and upwardly. Virginia Stem Owens wrote,

  Either the creator’s work is a sign of himself or it’s a sham. Where else can one draw the line between sacred and profane except around all the cosmos? For “profane” meant, originally, outside the temple, and all creation was, in the beginning, a temple for God’s “very good.” Whenever we eat, drink, breathe, see, take anything in by any means, we are commanded to remember the sacrifice….

  Still, we take the big black crayon in our hands and draw these little islands where we will let God live in the world….Little concentration camps for Christ.*1

  The Sardis church was one such “concentration camp.” Rather, a death camp. The Sardis church had a reputation for being alive, but it was dead. It was dead because it excluded the everyday world. It gave an impression of vigor—“the name of being alive” (Revelation 3:1)—but the sharp line it drew between everyday life and holy-day life cut the veins and arteries in which the holy blood of our Lord (“for the life…is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11) circulated the cleansing, forgiving, praying life of the Spirit through all play, work, politics, and culture. No children played in the Sardis church, and no adults prayed in the Sardis marketplace. Praying was for church; playing was for outside church.

  John called his Sardis congregation to wake up. To be consciously alive to the presence of God at both earth and altar. A few were alive; he described them as those “who have not soiled their garments” (Revelation 3:4); that is, they had not polluted or desecrated what God made holy through creation and redemption. Those few experienced the wholeness/holiness of God equally while playing and praying.

  I’ve heard that the words hail, holy, hello, and whole are all related. Is it possible for us to sing “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” in the same spirit we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy”?

  That is the holiness test: discovering the presence of the holy Christ and the movements of the Holy Spirit in these everyday faces we encounter.

  That is the holiness test: discovering the presence of the holy Christ and the movements of the Holy Spirit in these everyday faces we encounter in and out of church, playing and praying together through the whole life that Christ gives us so abundantly.

  * * *

  Christ confronted the church in Sardis as the one who “has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars” (Revelation 3:1). The “seven spirits of God” is the usual symbolic expression in Revelation for what we more usually call the Holy Spirit. This might confuse some of us—we are used to hearing that God is spirit. Of course that is true. But this somewhat poetic affirmation from John that God “has” spirit (seven, to be exact, a symbol of perfection) is one of the most important statements that the church makes. When we say that God has spirit, we mean that he has life. The word spirit in both Hebrew and Greek (the two biblical languages) means basically “wind” or “breath.”*2 There is something active, energetic, and moving in God. He can be the same, but he is not stuck. He is not static. Don’t let the imagery confuse you. It is saying that in God is perfect, moving life.

  You see how deeply this affects our understanding of God. If God has spirit, then God is not simply an idea or an abstraction. It is popular to say that God is the idea of beauty or of love or of truth. Whatever is beautiful or lovely or truthful is God. That is a nice sentiment but poor theology. God is personal
and deeply alive.

  If God has spirit, he cannot be dealt with only as an element in the past. He is present. Active. Most people find some satisfaction in thinking that God started all the evolutionary and geological processes that have preceded our present state of existence. God is the creator of the universe. Unfortunately, having put God at the beginning of all things, many of us leave him there. But he will not be left there. He has spirit! He is living and active now with the results of his present being.

  If God has spirit, he cannot be dealt with as an object. He must be confronted as a person. A living, personal being demands relationship. I can arrange books, rooms, clothing, and even work, but I must live with persons. They resist being put in their place. They refuse to be arranged and manipulated. They must be talked to. There must be an exchange of feelings with them. I have heard the phrase “We must leave a place for God in our lives.” This is a nice idea if it would work, but it won’t, because God has spirit. He will not be confined to a place. He is a living being with whom we must live. This is part of what it means to say that God has spirit. It means fundamentally that we have the perfection of a living God in our midst.

  This living God, this God who has “has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars,” examined the Christians in Sardis and said, “I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are dead” (verse 1). It is the harshest word we have heard spoken to the churches. From the examining Christ, every one of the other churches heard first a word that was commendatory and encouraging. Only after that did some of them hear the word of judgment. Can it be that in Sardis there was nothing at all to compliment? Was there nothing good at all in the congregation there? They probably were not that bad, but the nature of their failures permitted no other course than to drive to the central situation as quickly as possible.

  Sainte-Beuve once commented that in France, people continue to be Catholics long after they cease to be Christians.*3 That is what happened in Sardis. They were calling themselves church members long after they had ceased being animated by the spirit of Christ.

  “You have the name of being alive, and you are dead.”

  * * *

  The world is one single whole. It’s holy.

  We divide it into areas marked out for God and areas marked out for ourselves. We call churches sacred and playgrounds secular. We have places where we pray and others where we play. But our compartments desecrate the way things are supposed to be; the earth is the Lord’s. All of it.

  The world is one single whole. It’s holy. We divide it into areas marked out for God and areas marked out for ourselves. We call churches sacred and playgrounds secular. We have places where we pray and others where we play. But our compartments desecrate the way things are supposed to be; the earth is the Lord’s.

  This whole place is his temple, in which angel hosts are crying out, “Holy, holy, holy” (Revelation 4:8). If we treat any of it—its air, its land, its work, its money—as if it were anything other than holy, we pollute it. We leech the life out of it, and the life we take from it is God’s life.

  Amen.

  Skip Notes

  *1 Virginia Stem Owens, And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1983), 142.

  *2 M. G. Easton, s.v. “Spirit,” Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1897), www.biblestudytools.com/​dictionary/​spirit.

  *3 Editor’s note: It’s unclear what specific resource Eugene drew upon for this anecdote. But some context on the statement can be found in Suzanne Berger, “Religious Transformation and the Future of Politics,” European Sociological Review 1, no. 1 (May 1985): 23–45.

  The Test of Our Witness

  Spike was the big kid who lived in the corner house. He knew everything about everything. I admired him extravagantly and always felt honored when he paid attention to me. He was already a veteran in exploring the wide world, having nearly completed the first grade. I was four years old. One day he announced that we were going to find some Indians who had set up their tepee in the woods.*1 He warned that it was dangerous. Scalpings, he said, were not unheard of. Was I up to it? I didn’t hesitate. The parental command not to leave the street didn’t stand a chance against the lure of the wild. Keeping rules was for wimps. I, inspired by Spike’s bravado, was bursting with courage.

  A few hours later when we were caught (not by Indians but by our parents), we found that it was easier to be brave with imagined Indians than with actual parents.

  What is there in us that stretches beyond the security of home and impels us to danger? The desire for more is very strong in us.

  Unfortunately, the desire can be manipulated by cowards and seducers who themselves risk nothing. And sadly, our expansive spirits can be curbed by a lazy hankering after security. Christ promises security: “You will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). He also calls us beyond security to hazard: “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves” (10:16). He gives us the best he has. He also gets the best out of us. He saves us. He also sends us. He cares for us, but he also challenges us. He appeals to the same thing in us that my erstwhile friend Spike appealed to, but he does it differently. Christ accompanies us, courageous to the end.

  Jesus could have continued his Galilean ministry indefinitely, healing and helping and teaching to applause. But there was more. There was Jerusalem. One day he left the security of Galilee success and entered the danger of Jerusalem testing. He was met with enthusiasm. I wonder how many of those palm-waving children had ventured from the security of their courtyards, sensing Jesus’s brave courage and wanting to be in on it.

  Sixty years later, through John, Jesus wrote to the church at Philadelphia, “I have set before you an open door” (Revelation 3:8). You thought you were snug in the arms of Jesus, secure from now to eternity? Surprise. There is more—a trial and a cross.

  Will you go through the open door? Or will you huddle in the comfort of religion?

  There are sacrifices to be made, enemies to love, friends to serve, the poor to help, prisoners to visit, ignorance to confront, cruelty to oppose, hypocrisy to unmask. An open door to the people who need us, to the world where others are waiting for a credible witness and a committed friend. Will you go through the open door? Or will you huddle in the comfort of religion? That is the bravery test, the test of our witness. John detected a tendency in his Philadelphia congregation toward taking it easy. They had been through persecution and martyrdom and were now settling down to enjoy the comfort of their shepherd Lord. But it wasn’t retirement time yet.

  A fear of the unknown must not set boundaries for our lives. An overweening desire for comfort must not inhibit our appetites for danger. The life of Christ is not complete in us when we have received it but only when we risk it against lies and indifference and evil. The same open door that Christ went through on Palm Sunday is still open.

  * * *

  Missions is not quite the right word. It has been spoiled by Michener and Maugham.*2 All the missionaries I have known have been exciting, courageous persons, while all the missionaries I read about in novels are dogmatic, narrow, opinionated rascals. So missions as a word has got to go.

  But how about missiles? This word comes from the same Latin root referring to something thrown or sent.*3 For me it has all the original aura of excitement, skill, and the latest in contemporary thinking. It is possible to think of ourselves (imaginatively) as missiles—projectile persons—capable of being sent to a destination at the direction of Christ.

  Philadelphia (not the city in Pennsylvania but the one in Turkey) was set on the ancient frontier as a missile city. It was established at the edge of a barbarian wilderness to serve as a launching point for Greek culture to the hinterland. Those who originally settled in Philadelphia were there to be sent into the inland country with the purpose of spreadin
g Greek culture. It was a city with an open door.

  The church in Philadelphia found itself also on a frontier. The message to their church capitalizes on the history of their city and applies the same purpose to the broader Christian church. The Christian does not find himself, after being accepted by God, in a comfortable luxury hotel, smoking big cigars and reading the newspapers. He is a missile—a man destined to be sent through the open door into the society of the world to share the meaning of love and grace.

  We remember Palm Sunday when we think of “sentness.” That day, Jesus went through an open door into Jerusalem. Jesus for three years had engaged in a ministry that could be done outside Jerusalem. He healed sick people in the villages, he comforted people in the homes of their bereavement, and he taught crowds on pastoral hillsides. All these activities that we often think of as the characteristic acts of Jesus could be carried on outside Jerusalem. He helped, he healed, he taught, and he represented God to us. But there was one major act left to do. And it could take place only in Jerusalem.

  Jesus needed to proclaim his rule to the people. This act needed Jerusalem for its location because Jerusalem was the center of the area, in some ways the center of the world. What good would it do to rule from a provincial Galilee or from some washed-out village on the Jordan? If he was to represent the rule of God over all, he would have to show that symbolically by ruling from Jerusalem.