Lenten Reflection: Like a Thief

The following is the sixth in a series of reflections on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation.

For more reflections on these letters, check out the hub page for the series.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

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Like a Thief

A Reflection on the Letter to the Church in Sardis

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars:

I know your works; you have a name of being alive, but you are dead.  Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God.  Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent.  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.  Yet you have still a few persons in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes; they will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.  If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Revelation 3:1-6 (NRSV)

A court is in session

A verdict is in

No appeal on the docket today

Just my own sin

From "My Own Prison" by Creed

Christ tells the Christians in Sardis that, though they have a reputation for vitality, they are actually spiritually dead.  Their works, in God's eyes, leave something to be desired.  He points out that a few worthy souls in Sardis "have not soiled their clothes," suggesting that the rest have become so lazy and complacent, it is as if they won't even bother to change and wash their clothes, in a spiritual sense.¹  Apparently, the Christians in Sardis have been resting on their laurels for a while.  Christ orders them to wake up and to strengthen what has nearly wasted away within them.

As I started studying this letter, pondering what I might write about it, the letter started to hit a little close to home for me.  I suspect that a lot of people think that I'm more spiritual than I really am.  Some people claim that they are "spiritual but not religious," but I think that I am often more religious than spiritual.  Sometimes I feel utterly unworthy of doing the things I do in the Church.  I know that there are a number of things in my life that are not as they should be.  For example, more than once I have completely lost my religion over printer problems just hours before leading Sunday school.  In my own defense, I have to point out that printers are of the devil.

Last year, I started experiencing a sense of dread shortly before preaching.  One Saturday night, when I had a preaching gig the next day, I began to think that maybe I hadn't been as prayerful as I should have been, and I wondered if God had been involved in my sermon preparation at all.  Maybe I had been relying too much on my knowledge of Scripture and my writing ability and not opening myself enough to the leading of God.  Whether I was right or wrong, my dread was a wake-up call.

Christ warns the church in Sardis, "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."  Paul uses a very similar analogy in one of his letters to the Thessalonians.  He writes that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night."²  I do not think that Christ wants to intentionally catch anyone off guard.  The thief analogy is really less about Christ's intentions and more about our attentiveness. 

Paul continues, "But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness."³  The day is a time of awareness and alertness, and the night is a time of obliviousness and obscurity.  A thief is only a problem if the homeowner is asleep when the thief decides to visit; however, if the homeowner remains vigilant, then she can stop the thief from robbing her blind.

Generally speaking, we are caught off guard when we simply aren't paying attention, and life has a lot of ways of catching us off guard.

Maybe the Christians in Sardis didn't even realize how spiritually dead they were.  Perhaps part of "waking up" is becoming more self-aware and paying closer attention to what is going on within us.  I don't think we always know what we are capable of doing until we have already done it.  On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, churches around the world read the fifty-first Psalm, a prayer of confession by a supposedly godly individual who, I suspect, was shocked by his own actions.

One night, as King David sat on his rooftop, he spotted a woman bathing.  He lusted after her, sent his men to bring her to him, and then had his way with her.  When he learned that he had impregnated her, he had her husband killed in order to cover his tracks.  His friend Nathan, a prophet of God, forced him to confront what he had done.⁴  In Scripture, David is described as a man after God's own heart.⁵  He wrote poem after poem about his unyielding devotion to God.  I do not think he ever expected to someday find himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in a moment of weakness, with a lot of power to abuse.  Perhaps it could be said that David's sinfulness struck like a proverbial "thief in the night."

Christ says that those "who have not soiled their clothes" will walk with Him, as if they were in a victory parade.⁶  Those who conquer their laziness and complacency - thereby washing their clothes, spiritually speaking - will be invited to walk with them.

One ancient prophet writes, "Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near."⁷  If we want to know what God expects of us, we need to be regularly seeking God's guidance.  Otherwise, we might someday discover that, like the church in Sardis, we are further from God's will than we realize.  This season of repentance and introspection we call Lent is a good time for us to look at what is going on within ourselves and grow in self-awareness.

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Questions for reflection:

• Has life ever caught you off guard when you weren't paying attention?
• How can we grow in self-awareness?

Notes:

1. N.T. Wright.  Revelation for Everyone.  2011, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 30
2. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 (NRSV)
3. 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 (NRSV)
4. 2 Samuel 11:1-12:14
5. 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22
6. Wright, p. 31
7. Isaiah 55:6 (NRSV)

My "shadow selfie" was taken by me in 2014.