Naah I'm good

 This week's verses are Revelation 3:17-19:

 Because you say, “I am rich and have acquired great wealth, and need nothing,” but do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, take my advice and buy gold from me refined by fire so you can become rich! Buy from me white clothing so you can be clothed and your shameful nakedness will not be exposed, and buy eye salve to put on your eyes so you can see! All those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent! 

 These verses are part of God's message for the early Christian church in Laodicea. The Laodiceans were a wealthy people in what is now modern day Turkey. They were so wealthy that when they were hit with a big earthquake and Rome's equivalent of FEMA offered to pay to rebuild, they basically told them "Naah, we're good" and paid for the whole thing themselves.

As a church they probably suffered a bit from the sense all fortunate people get when they reflect on their wealth. When you are really blessed, it is easy to take it as some kind of attestation by God to your goodness. Rewards are given for good behavior, right? Your health is good, your bills are paid, you're popular, you have an upward career trajectory, and you have more money than you need. And you think to yourself, "I must be doing something right."

So that's where these guys found themselves. They had plenty of money, the finest products, the best urban infrastructure anywhere other than maybe Rome itself. And the church itself was flourishing too. It was one of the main Christian centers of the early church. So naturally the whole grace thing probably seemed superfluous.

So God calls them out and basically says "you may be physically rich, but you're spiritually poor, and that'll cause you some problems if you don't get some help." He tells them to get investment-grade gold, expensive clothing, and some medicine. He tells them to wake up and repent.

But God isn't talking about actual gold or actual clothes and medicine. Rich people already have plenty of gold, and fancy clothes, and access to the latest medical advancements. There is some symbolism here, and much like Jesus uses farm and fishing analogies for his country boy disciples, he uses rich city-folk imagery for Laodicea.

Gold often symbolizes wisdom. But sometimes it also represents our good deeds that survive to eternity. White clothing sometimes represents our good deeds, but it also represents purity and cleanliness. And blindness is often used to represent a lack of humility, so eye salve is maybe the humility that allows us to see ourselves and others as we are, not as we have wished or feared we might be.

So these comfortable well-off believers with disposable income and leisure time were being told to basically reprioritize and convert those excess resources to charity and religious fervor. It's exactly what we see when people convert to Christianity or re-convert during a revival. The fog clears from our perceptions and we see clearly the most important thing we could be doing. We sell everything to buy the pearl of great price.

People sell their houses and move to smaller apartments so they can give more away. They cash in their investments and retire to a cheaper place that lets them share their pension with those less fortunate. They switch to lower paying jobs that have more time off so they can help the needy and travel for missions. They quit consuming media and spend that time in prayer in study.

But most of us reading this are more like the church of Laodicea than we are like these charitable downsizers. We tell ourselves we're one of the good guys. We look at our relatively prosperous lives, our circle of friends, our fairly decent career, and we think to ourselves "I must be doing something right to have all of this." But in reality we are all poor, and hungry, and rejected, and sick, and when Jesus offers us money to rebuild we tell him "Naah I'm good."

What if we took the advice Jesus had for the church in Laodicea and cashed in some of our excess time and money to "buy" something better? Could we buy refined gold in changing the lives of others? Could we find ourselves changed for the better, clothed in white, and able for the first time in our lives to see the world clearly? It's worth a try.

Allow God to challenge your comfort this week. Reject that "not hot, not cold, just right" bowl of porridge your life has become and reconsider how you spend what you have. Maybe if you make some adjustments, you can afford to buy gold and fine white clothes and salve for your eyes.