Revelation 2:12-17 – Stand for Something, or Fall for Anything
Last Sunday we celebrated Christian unity. In the morning our church switched preachers with another church in town, and in the evening most of the churches in our community came together for a shared worship service. It was great, and everyone loved it. Days like that really make me happy, because one of my pet peeves is the way that we cause division and are quick to mistrust other people and think the worst of them. Maybe part of why I like events like a Christian unity service is because of my ethnic heritage. The Dutch have always been a tolerant people (well, at least relatively tolerant). During the Middle Ages, Holland was a place where Jews could go to escape the ant-Semitic attacks that were so common elsewhere in Europe. During the Reformation, everyone from Mennonites to Calvinists could find refuge. Even the famous Pilgrims settled in Holland before they traveled to Massachusetts (the reason they left Holland wasn’t because they weren’t welcome, but because they were afraid that their children would lose their English identity). Overall, the Dutch will tolerate just about anything. At times, however, they’re tolerant to a fault. In the 60’s, Amsterdam became a favorite destination for the counter-culture movement, which pretty much took over the Netherlands’ version of the National Mall. There were no laws to prevent them from doing it, although my father loves to tell the story about some navy cadets who showed up and gave everyone a haircut! Dutch tolerance is probably responsible for giving the Netherlands the image that it has today: most people today associate the Netherlands with things like legalized marijuana use and legalized prostitution. If you accept or tolerate anything, sometimes you may go a bit too far.
Unity and tolerance are good. Our world needs more of it. But in our pursuit of respect and acceptance of others, we need to be sure that we don’t go too far in the other direction. There are some things which we need to stand up to oppose. And this was the message that Jesus told John to give to the people of Pergamum. They were in danger of being a bit too “Dutch,” by accepting some things that for Christians should be unacceptable. Jesus’ message was for them to be a bit more like the Ephesians and be discerning of error and sin. It’s a balancing act: the Ephesians were too quick to find fault and error and failed to act out of love. But the Pergamites (if that’s what you call someone from Pergamum) were too quick to condone actions and beliefs which are incompatible with Christ’s call for us.
Having said this, we shouldn’t be too hard on the Pergamites. It wasn’t easy to be a Christian in that city. Apparently at one point, the believers were ordered to renounce their faith, and they didn’t. One of them, a fellow named Antipas who may have been a leader in the church, was put to death for his courageous stand for his faith. So until we’ve been in a situation like that, we don’t have much room to criticize the Pergamites. There are times when we’re willing to back down from our faith for something a lot less severe than death: accepting off-color or racist jokes to fit in with other people, failing to speak up when a clerk gives us too much change in order to have some more change in our pocket, failing to tell a friend about the encouragement that our faith gives us because we don’t want to seem like a Jesus freak, or skipping our devotional time because we’re too tired or have too many “more important” things to do. These are examples of ways that we deny our faith every day, and our lives aren’t even at stake when we do.
Pergamum was a tough place to be a Christian. It was the capital of the Roman province in that region, so political and military authority was everywhere. Pergamum was the first city in the region to have a temple dedicated to the worship of the emperor. This, by the way, is probably what Jesus meant when he said that it was the city where Satan lives. Pergamum was also the center of worship for the god Alscepius, the god of healing. You might not think that you’re as familiar with this Greek god as you are with others like Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, but that’s not completely true. If you’ve ever seen the medical symbol a snake winding around a pole, then you’ve seen the symbol of Alscepius, the healing serpent-god. (If you have a medical card in your wallet or purse, then you’re probably carrying around an image of this god. I am.) The Bible’s depiction of Satan as a serpent in the garden of Eden is probably another reason why Jesus said that Satan lived in Pergamum. So if thousands of years later, we’re still unwittingly honoring this pagan god like this, then is certainly understandable that the Pergamites may have looked the other way or even gone along with Alscepius-worship.
It may be understandable, but wasn’t acceptable. Jesus held the Pergamum Christians to account for the fact that they tolerated practices among their own members that they shouldn’t. They were a bit too “Dutch.” We don’t have many details about exactly what these unacceptable beliefs and activities were. The first reference is to Balaam, a pagan prophet hired by Balak, the king of the Moabites, to curse the Israelites as they wandered through his kingdom on their way to the Promised Land (you can read about this in Numbers 22-25). Things didn’t work out for Balak quite the way that he had expected: Balaam ended up blessing the Israelites instead of cursing them, because of God’s intervention. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Balaam teaching Balak and the Moabites about sexual immorality or eating food sacrificed to idols. This may have been a tradition which wasn’t included in the Bible but which the early Christians would have known about. Or, it may be that these were things going on in Pergamum, and Jesus compared what they were doing with someone trying to curse what God wanted to bless. The second reference is even more cryptic: the Pergamites accepted the teachings of the “Nicolaitans.” If you’ve never heard of these Nicolaitans, don’t worry: you’re not carrying their logo in your wallet like Alscepius’! In fact, no one really know anything about these Nicolaitans. This is the only reference to them anywhere in the Bible or any other ancient literature. But just because we don’t know anything about them hasn’t prevented people from thinking that they do. Some people think that it must have been an early heresy begun by Nicolaus, one of the first deacons of the church in Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 6:5. But there’s no evidence of this. Nicolaus wasn’t exactly an odd name, so the founder of Nicolaititanism could easily have been someone else. Other people think that the Nicolaitans were a variety of an early heresy called Gnosticism. But again, there’s no evidence for this. Still others have done some fancy guesswork based on the Greek words which they think the name is based on, and claim that it means “victorious over the people.” So a Nicolaitan is someone who abuses authority over people. That makes for a nice story, but the foundations for it are pretty shaky. The wisest choice for us to make is to say that we really don’t know anything about these Nicolaitans. They were a group that caused some headaches for the Christians in Pergamum, but they have long since lapsed into obscurity. Maybe they had something to do with the sexual immorality and idol worship that the Balaamites practiced, since they’re mentioned side by side. But not necessarily; preachers talk about the evils of pornography and drug abuse in the same breath, but they’re hardly the same thing either. The bottom line is simply that there were some people in the Pergamum church who were doing things or believing things that Christians shouldn’t.
And there are Christians who still do. It may be idolatry (although modern idols are different from the ones that they had in Pergamum), it may be sexual immorality (something that always seems to be a problem for Christians), the acceptance of any of a number of erroneous doctrines, or something completely different. Instead of getting caught in analyzing what was wrong about the Pergamite church, we ought instead to focus on the right that we should be living by. That’s a good point in general: when we focus on the wrong to avoid instead of the right to follow, we don’t generally get very far. For example, if you feel like the devil is throwing temptation or trial your way, the answer is not to concentrate on the devil; that will only make the problem worse. You can’t overcome it on your own, by the strength of your will. The answer is to focus more fully upon the Lord, and the guidance and care he offers.
Jesus’ instruction to the Pergamites to resist evil and error is a complicated one for us American Christians to follow, because we live in a land of religious diversity and freedom. We are not part of a society in which one religion has the right to set the standards for all of society. And that’s a good thing. That’s what life was like in Pergamum, and Antipas’ refusal to follow those standards cost him his life. That’s what life was like in Spain during the Inquisition, when people who didn’t follow exactly what the church taught were tortured and executed. That’s what life is like today in Islamic states where strict sharia law is enforced either by the government or by fanatical groups. If you don’t agree with their version of religion, it may be your neck. So while as Christians we are called to testify to the truth as we understand it, as Americans we have no right to expect that everyone else in our nation will agree with us. We can, nonetheless, discern the actions and beliefs of our fellow Christians and exhort each other to faithfulness. And we can witness to the society around us to the faith that we have. But it’s a fine line: to avoid the too-tolerant error of the Pergamites while at the same not losing sight of the love upon which our faith is based, as the Ephesians did.
Unity and tolerance are good. Our world needs more of it. But in our pursuit of respect and acceptance of others, we need to be sure that we don’t go too far in the other direction. There are some things which we need to stand up to oppose. And this was the message that Jesus told John to give to the people of Pergamum. They were in danger of being a bit too “Dutch,” by accepting some things that for Christians should be unacceptable. Jesus’ message was for them to be a bit more like the Ephesians and be discerning of error and sin. It’s a balancing act: the Ephesians were too quick to find fault and error and failed to act out of love. But the Pergamites (if that’s what you call someone from Pergamum) were too quick to condone actions and beliefs which are incompatible with Christ’s call for us.
Having said this, we shouldn’t be too hard on the Pergamites. It wasn’t easy to be a Christian in that city. Apparently at one point, the believers were ordered to renounce their faith, and they didn’t. One of them, a fellow named Antipas who may have been a leader in the church, was put to death for his courageous stand for his faith. So until we’ve been in a situation like that, we don’t have much room to criticize the Pergamites. There are times when we’re willing to back down from our faith for something a lot less severe than death: accepting off-color or racist jokes to fit in with other people, failing to speak up when a clerk gives us too much change in order to have some more change in our pocket, failing to tell a friend about the encouragement that our faith gives us because we don’t want to seem like a Jesus freak, or skipping our devotional time because we’re too tired or have too many “more important” things to do. These are examples of ways that we deny our faith every day, and our lives aren’t even at stake when we do.
Pergamum was a tough place to be a Christian. It was the capital of the Roman province in that region, so political and military authority was everywhere. Pergamum was the first city in the region to have a temple dedicated to the worship of the emperor. This, by the way, is probably what Jesus meant when he said that it was the city where Satan lives. Pergamum was also the center of worship for the god Alscepius, the god of healing. You might not think that you’re as familiar with this Greek god as you are with others like Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, but that’s not completely true. If you’ve ever seen the medical symbol a snake winding around a pole, then you’ve seen the symbol of Alscepius, the healing serpent-god. (If you have a medical card in your wallet or purse, then you’re probably carrying around an image of this god. I am.) The Bible’s depiction of Satan as a serpent in the garden of Eden is probably another reason why Jesus said that Satan lived in Pergamum. So if thousands of years later, we’re still unwittingly honoring this pagan god like this, then is certainly understandable that the Pergamites may have looked the other way or even gone along with Alscepius-worship.
It may be understandable, but wasn’t acceptable. Jesus held the Pergamum Christians to account for the fact that they tolerated practices among their own members that they shouldn’t. They were a bit too “Dutch.” We don’t have many details about exactly what these unacceptable beliefs and activities were. The first reference is to Balaam, a pagan prophet hired by Balak, the king of the Moabites, to curse the Israelites as they wandered through his kingdom on their way to the Promised Land (you can read about this in Numbers 22-25). Things didn’t work out for Balak quite the way that he had expected: Balaam ended up blessing the Israelites instead of cursing them, because of God’s intervention. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Balaam teaching Balak and the Moabites about sexual immorality or eating food sacrificed to idols. This may have been a tradition which wasn’t included in the Bible but which the early Christians would have known about. Or, it may be that these were things going on in Pergamum, and Jesus compared what they were doing with someone trying to curse what God wanted to bless. The second reference is even more cryptic: the Pergamites accepted the teachings of the “Nicolaitans.” If you’ve never heard of these Nicolaitans, don’t worry: you’re not carrying their logo in your wallet like Alscepius’! In fact, no one really know anything about these Nicolaitans. This is the only reference to them anywhere in the Bible or any other ancient literature. But just because we don’t know anything about them hasn’t prevented people from thinking that they do. Some people think that it must have been an early heresy begun by Nicolaus, one of the first deacons of the church in Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 6:5. But there’s no evidence of this. Nicolaus wasn’t exactly an odd name, so the founder of Nicolaititanism could easily have been someone else. Other people think that the Nicolaitans were a variety of an early heresy called Gnosticism. But again, there’s no evidence for this. Still others have done some fancy guesswork based on the Greek words which they think the name is based on, and claim that it means “victorious over the people.” So a Nicolaitan is someone who abuses authority over people. That makes for a nice story, but the foundations for it are pretty shaky. The wisest choice for us to make is to say that we really don’t know anything about these Nicolaitans. They were a group that caused some headaches for the Christians in Pergamum, but they have long since lapsed into obscurity. Maybe they had something to do with the sexual immorality and idol worship that the Balaamites practiced, since they’re mentioned side by side. But not necessarily; preachers talk about the evils of pornography and drug abuse in the same breath, but they’re hardly the same thing either. The bottom line is simply that there were some people in the Pergamum church who were doing things or believing things that Christians shouldn’t.
And there are Christians who still do. It may be idolatry (although modern idols are different from the ones that they had in Pergamum), it may be sexual immorality (something that always seems to be a problem for Christians), the acceptance of any of a number of erroneous doctrines, or something completely different. Instead of getting caught in analyzing what was wrong about the Pergamite church, we ought instead to focus on the right that we should be living by. That’s a good point in general: when we focus on the wrong to avoid instead of the right to follow, we don’t generally get very far. For example, if you feel like the devil is throwing temptation or trial your way, the answer is not to concentrate on the devil; that will only make the problem worse. You can’t overcome it on your own, by the strength of your will. The answer is to focus more fully upon the Lord, and the guidance and care he offers.
Jesus’ instruction to the Pergamites to resist evil and error is a complicated one for us American Christians to follow, because we live in a land of religious diversity and freedom. We are not part of a society in which one religion has the right to set the standards for all of society. And that’s a good thing. That’s what life was like in Pergamum, and Antipas’ refusal to follow those standards cost him his life. That’s what life was like in Spain during the Inquisition, when people who didn’t follow exactly what the church taught were tortured and executed. That’s what life is like today in Islamic states where strict sharia law is enforced either by the government or by fanatical groups. If you don’t agree with their version of religion, it may be your neck. So while as Christians we are called to testify to the truth as we understand it, as Americans we have no right to expect that everyone else in our nation will agree with us. We can, nonetheless, discern the actions and beliefs of our fellow Christians and exhort each other to faithfulness. And we can witness to the society around us to the faith that we have. But it’s a fine line: to avoid the too-tolerant error of the Pergamites while at the same not losing sight of the love upon which our faith is based, as the Ephesians did.
posted by Rev. Peter de Vries, Old Union Presbyterian Church @ 2:37 PM
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