Philadelphia--The Church Triumphant: Psalm 27: 1-5; Rev. 3: 7-13
Have you ever just had one of those weeks where you just want to crawl into a hole and hide from the entire world? Whether it’s a long day, bad week, deep sadness, or just an overwhelming sense of tired, I’m sure we’ve all had those moments. Or maybe it’s lasted even longer than moments. It’s a familiar, yet unsettled place to be in life. Writer Walker Percy in The Moviegoer gives a good description in the title character. It feels like just as you’re about to go into a deep, peaceful sleep, being jolted right out of it by a litany of “what if’s?” Those “crawl into a hole” days can leave us feeling depressed and defeated. I’ll be a bit vulnerable for a minute with you. In my lines of work I deal in the church with death, heartache, decline, disappointments, counseling people at dark moments in their lives. And I deal with horrific cases of abuse, suffering, neglect and the misery of financial ruin of elders and adults who are profoundly disabled. Then I come on Sunday mornings and summon some kind of last vestiges of the Holy Spirit I’ve got to give you something positive in what can be a hard, cruel world.
As we know, people make up our churches, and often all of our personal struggles can spill over into our church lives. It’s normal. It’s expected. We come here as we are with baggage, pain, regrets, whatever feelings that sometimes we can and sometimes we cannot hide. A friend of mine said that sometimes as the people of God and as the body of Christ we live in a place of opposition against us and torment within us. The churches in Revelation lived with these struggles, whether false prophets, their own sin, the spiritual blahs, oppression and opposition, all of the faced some kind of trouble, and that trouble threatened them to their core. Except for one…this church at Philadelphia somehow held firm.
What was different here? It’s the only church to get a good report with no criticism or warning, only commendations were given. First and foremost, they had faithful endurance. John’s repot says in verse 10, “Because you have obeyed my command to persevere, I will protect you,” and in verse 11, “Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown.” It’s often hard (and somewhat disheartening) to say to someone in the midst of their struggle, “Just hold on and get yourself through it.” Nobody wants to hear that the fix for their troubles and heartaches is “to just suck it up and deal with it.”
But the more I ponder on those words, there are two things which softened the impact: first, we often don’t have much choice about what we face. In this world we will trouble, is the painful promise offered in the Gospel of John. Philadelphia was not spared all the world’s trouble, for Revelation says, “You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.” They also had to persevere at some point in their existence, so the church was not completely spared all the trouble of the world. The old saying is that there are two guarantees—death and taxes, but I submit to you there’s a third one that at some point we will face trials which shake us deeply in our spirit and soul. And the hard truth is, we will have to endure through it.
But the easier truth, the second realization I have found, is that endurance and perseverance do not have to be struggled with alone. God says to the church at Philadelphia, “I will protect you from the great time of testing.” God adds that all who are victorious will become pillars in the Holy Temple and will be citizens of God’s kingdom, a kingdom of peace and love with no end. That is a promise given to us in holy covenant from God, that with faith, there is a mighty presence of one who loves us, leads us, guides us, and walks with us when the darkest of days descend upon us.
The Psalm for today is one that speaks to this powerful presence of God in difficult places of life. It’s one I often go to when my own mood is a bit sour and unpleasant. It says to us that God is our light and salvation, and because of that there is no reason to be afraid. God is strong in our weakness like a fortress protecting us from danger. God will keep us from being devoured and ruined by the evil around us, through love, through a community that joyfully embraces us, and through helpers who stand beside us. Even if all the powers of evil and hell attack us when our spirits are most fragile, we can be confident. Why is this so? We can sum up the words of verses four and five to say, because God’s presence never leaves us.
There are two promises within this that can also speak to us. Romans 8:28 (often quoted in such times) says “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to [God’s] purpose for them.” But a less quoted, and I think more powerful promise is found in Hebrews 6:10, “For God is not unjust. [God] will not forget how hard you have worked…and how you have shown your love…by caring for other believers, as you still do.”
God remembers. All of that pain, struggle, and difficulty of life, God remembers and is present with us. A lady I worked with for a number of years talked about how hard winter could be. Her office did not have a window at the time. She would roll her eyes and say that for five whole days a week she arrived at the office while it was still dark, and when she left the office, it was still dark. After a few days it almost felt like there was no sunlight at all. She said it always caused a bad case of seasonal affect disorder which is similar to depression. And, of course, cold weather only made it worse. For a whole week there was this horrendous dark and depressive state that she lived and worked in.
But on Saturday morning, she got up just before sun-up, and wrapped up in a big blanket in the all-window sunroom. She had her book and a good, hot cup of coffee, and she waited. In just a few minutes the darkness was pierced by these brilliant rays of sunlight, and for an entire morning she was bathed in the bright, golden rays which cast out the darkness, the struggle, and the suffering of the week.
Maybe that’s a bit how the church at Philadelphia felt. Through whatever they had persevered and held on to overcome by faith, they could see this bright dawn just breaking before them. It was a dawn of hope, of peace, coming from the protection of the very God in whom they’d kept their faith without wavering. Philadelphia was an earthquake-prone area, so I imagine that just after that light of hope broke forth in their lives, they set about rebuilding brick by brick, stone by stone until the church was strong again.
We know that in life we may face death, taxes, and probably some kind of personal suffering or struggle. In fact it’s almost a guarantee. And it’s true there’s often no way around it causing us to have to bear through life’s pain and struggle. But even as we know this will come, God’s protection and ever-present help will be with us. God’s promised presence was known in the words of the Psalmist. God’s promised presence was known in the letter to the church at Philadelphia, and God’s word gives us that same hope: yes, indeed, there is victory in Jesus.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/903284717019554