February 24: Message to Sardis
♫ Music:
Day 11 - Saturday, February 24
Title: Message to Sardis
Scripture: Revelation 3:1-6
“To the angel of the church in Sardis write: He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Poetry: Homewards
By Tomas Tranströmer
A telephone call ran out in the night
and glittered over the countryside and in the
suburbs.
Afterwards I slept uneasily in the hotel bed.
I was like the needle in a compass carried
through the forest by an orienteer with a
thumping heart.
MESSAGE TO SARDIS
A few years ago I went on a biblical study tour to Turkey where we visited the sites of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the Seven Churches of Revelation. Clearly the number 7 (representing the hope of perfection and completion) is prominent here, as the epistle to Sardis also includes the seven Spirits and the seven stars. All of the sites were striking, but Sardis (from whence we get the word “Sephardic”) was especially memorable. Its main features were the Jewish synagogue—largest in the ancient world—and a massive gymnasium. At first glance, it was an encouraging sign that Jews were allowed to worship here, because typically Imperial Rome suppressed them with the cult of the emperor. But upon closer inspection, inside were statues of lions, and a huge eagle carved on the altar. As Judaism is firmly iconoclastic (based on the first two of the Ten Commandments), it was shocking to see such animal imagery, evoking the idolatry of the Golden Calf. Those were symbols of Rome which shows how much Sardis had compromised: bowing to the eagle in order to keep its status and privilege. Also, in the ancient Greco-Roman world, athletics and obsession with physical perfection were highly valued, as were the gymnasium bath complexes which were a luxury of the rich, so the gymnasium being right next to the synagogue was an eyebrow-raising juxtaposition. Worship of politics and worship of entertainment/pleasure had overtaken the believers at Sardis.
However, another thing that I noticed at Sardis was a symbol scrawled on the ground which represents the word ΙΧΘΥΣ (the Greek word for “fish”). If you take those five letters and overlay them on top of one another into a single icon, you get an eight-spoked wheel. ICHTHUS was the ancient secret code word for faithful Christians being present there, as it is the acronym for Iesous Christos Theos Huius Soter (Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior). The eight-spoked wheel was synonymous with the Christian fish symbol that is so prevalent today.
The seven churches in Revelation 2-3 are arranged in a chiasm: #1 (Ephesus) and #7 (Laodicea) are in the worst shape; #2 (Smyrna) and #6 (Philadelphia) are commended for doing great; and #3-5 (Pergamum, Thyatira, and Sardis) are somewhere in the middle—they have much to improve upon but they are not completely lost or without hope of recovery.
Looking at the lions/eagle and gymnasium (compromise), and then at the ICHTHUS symbol (fidelity), showed the tension that was felt in Sardis. Jesus essentially was issuing an urgent prophetic warning in Rev. 3: do not slip further lest you be lost forever! Or as today’s music repeatedly urges us: Stay awake! The temptations to compromise with the world are still just as heavily felt today. As with Sardis, now is the time to repent. And if we do, we will wear white garments as suggested by the painting: unsoiled and pure, finally attaining the perfection of the Seven spirits, stars, and churches. As the poem alludes, let us orient our compass rightly toward our true home.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you for this epistle to the church at Sardis which still is so relevant two millennia later. The human condition is often in such a state of tension, as the ragamuffin poet Rich Mullins reminds us: “We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made / Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage / And with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart / We must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.” And so, we confess we need you. Without you, we would surely fall into despair and sin. With you, we have hope and salvation. Help us to choose the good and to choose you, Lord.
Amen
Dr. Allen Yeh
Associate Professor of Missiology
Cook School of Intercultural Studies
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Albertine Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as a Bride
August Theodor Kaselowsky
Oil on canvas
113 x 81.5 cm
Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany
In this painting the subject, Albertine Heine, appears at first to be a Christian Madonna in an Annunciation scene. With her gaze modestly lowered, she holds a wedding ring near her heart and wears a white dress and a bridal wreath of myrtle in her hair. Although the frame resembles an altarpiece, alluding to traditional portrayals of Mary's Annunciation, this bride is not the Madonna but represents a private celebration of the bride. Albertine‘s hair is adorned with lily-of-the-valley flowers, a traditional symbol of love. The painter August Theodor Kaselowsky was a student of Albertine's brother-in-law, the artist Wilhelm Hensel. The painting was made on the occasion of Albertine's marriage to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
About the Artist:
Painter August Theodor Kaselowsky (1810–1891) was a German artist. He studied at the Berlin Academy and was a favorite student of the court painter and Academy professor Wilhelm Hensel (1794–1861). In 1836, he received the Academy of Arts Award that granted him a scholarship which allowed him to travel to Dusseldorf, Belgium, and Paris, where he worked for three years in the studio of French portrait painter Léon Cogniet. From 1839 to 1850 he lived in Rome, where he painted copies of Raphael and historical pictures of his own composition. In the 1850s, he painted six mural paintings in the Niobium Room in the Neues Museum and toured England, Spain, and Greece.
About the Music:
“Stay Awake” from the album Stay Awake
Lyrics:
Stay awake
Stay awake
Stay awake
I know it's hard, it's harder
Harder than we knew
I know you've been waiting
Longer than you thought you would
Stay awake
Stay awake|
Stay awake
Tell the night it's dark
Tell your eyes they're tired
Tell the air it's cold
I can't say anymore if we'll
get what we hope for
Stay awake
Stay awake
Stay awake
About the Composers/Performers:
Joseph is an American folk band from Portland, Oregon, consisting of three sisters: Natalie Closner Schepman, and Allison and Meegan Closner. Joseph was formed when Natalie, who had been pursuing a solo singer-songwriter career, recruited her younger twin sisters Meegan and Allison to join her on vocals for a new project. They chose their band name as a tribute to the town of Joseph, Oregon, and their grandfather Jo. Joseph officially launched during an a cappella covers contest. The band made their television debut performing "White Flag" on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, followed by other TV appearances. Joseph has performed both as an acoustic trio and a full band at music festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Festival, Sasquatch Festival, Glastonbury, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Pilgrimage Music Festival, and many more.
About the Poet:
Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) was one of Sweden’s leading poets of his generation. He studied poetry and psychology at the University of Stockholm. Tranströmer’s poetry, building on Modernism, Expressionism, and Surrealism, contains powerful imagery concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. Poet-critic Katie Peterson in The Boston Review notes that “He has perfected a particular kind of epiphanic lyric, often in quatrains, in which nature is the active, energizing subject, and the self (if the self is present at all) is the object,” In addition to the Nobel Prize, his honors include the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarch Prize in Germany, the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum, and the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.
About the Devotional Writer:
Dr. Allen Yeh is Associate Professor of Missiology at the Cook School of Intercultural Studies at Biola University. Yeh earned his BA from Yale, MDiv from Gordon-Conwell, MTh from Edinburgh, and DPhil from Oxford University. Despite this alphabet soup, he believes that experience is the greatest teacher of all (besides the Bible). As such, Allen has been to over 60 countries on every continent, to study, do missions work, and experience the culture. He is the author of Polycentric Missiology: 21st- Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (IVP Academic, 2016).