The Sermons to the Seven Churches: The Church of Vomit and Vanity (3)

Psalm 133              Revelation 3:14-22                John 10:22-30

The Sermons to the Seven Churches: The Church of Vomit and Vanity (3)

Picture this: three respectable Yorkshire couples, all set to celebrate their shared wedding anniversary of 25 years. The dining room is filled with the smug satisfaction of people who believe they’ve mastered the art of marriage. 

The husbands are all prominent elders of Lane End chapel, and after the celebrations in the dining room, they gather in the sitting room, replete with port and cigars, to confront the chapel organist, Gerald Forbes, whom they intend to sack, because he has been seen walking out with young women, and worse, is a southerner. Gerald however turns the tables by revealing that on holiday he met a church minister, the Rev Francis Beech, who confided that 25 years ago, as a young minister at Lane End, he conducted four marriages, three of them on the same day, under the impression that he was qualified to do so, but, he later discovered, he lacked the requisite licence for it.

In other words, their marriage services, conducted by Beech, were invalid. 

And, as luck and farce would have it, their conversation is overheard by the family maid, Mrs Northrop, and worse, a reporter and photographer from the regional paper, are on the premises, having come to report on the silver anniversary and take pictures of the three couples. The three husbands agree that Mrs Northrop must be bribed to secrecy, and the newspaper men bluffed and kept in ignorance. However, Mrs Northrop tells the story to the three wives.

Cue pandemonium. Husbands who’ve spent decades perfecting the art of benign neglect are suddenly transformed into nervous Romeos, desperately wooing their wives as if auditioning for a second chance at love, or at least a second, or in this case, a first wedding. The wives, meanwhile, are weighing their options, wondering if this is their golden ticket to trade up, while thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of their husbands’ newfound devotion. J. B. Priestly’s play, “When We Are Married”, is a comedy of errors, misunderstandings, and matrimonial mayhem.

Now, the sermon to the Laodiceans was concerned with very much the same sort of unwelcome revelation. Although the members believed themselves to be a church in good standing, Jesus revealed that they were everything but a church…the Lord himself was not in the church but standing outside knocking on their closed door. “Behold,” he said, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

In his message to this self-satisfied and self-deceived church, Jesus made it clear that he was not present with them, and his knocking at their door was a wake-up call to those who were able to discern the serious nature of his warning. 

Now, imagine yourself one of the spouses in Priestly’s play. Imagine, if you will, the emotional conflict as the realisation that all you ever believed to be true was in fact false engulfed you like a tsunami. Well, such was the revelation Jesus brought to this church. “You claim to be my bride,” he might have said, “but I am not your husband.” 

Christianity is based on a relationship. The essence of eternal life is knowing God. In John 10: 25-30 Jesus said to the unbelieving Pharisees, “The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” In this passage, Jesus revealed that God was not inside the religious institutions of the day.  Indeed, he was calling his sheep to come out from among them and to follow him.

But one cannot ignore the loving concern Jesus had for this church in Laodicea. The Lord knew the truth about them and yet he still chose to discipline them because he loved them. He stood at the door and knocked because he wanted to go in and dine with them. It is important to note that the object of his knocking was an invitation to a meal. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

If you ever wanted to show someone that you dislike them, you would simply exclude them from your table. For example, the Pharisees objected to Jesus receiving and dining with those whom they considered outsiders; tax-collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. 

Peter had to defend himself before the church in Jerusalem for having shared a meal with the uncircumcised Cornelius and his family and friends. 

Sharing a meal with someone has always been an image of friendship, love, and close fellowship. And yet there was a deeper meaning to this invitation of Jesus to the church in Laodicea. In Luke 22:15, Jesus told his disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” And then he proceeded to institute what we call Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper was never the simple sharing of a meal because in it the Lord mysteriously shares himself with us in a way that foreshadows the sharing of ourselves with others.

“This is my body,” he said to them, “which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Now, of course, the bread and the wine are symbols of a greater reality, nevertheless the act itself reveals the intimate connection that is ours with God through Jesus. Indeed, I believe that when Jesus says, “My Blood” and “My Body” he is not talking about the bread and the wine…he is talking about us…we are his flesh and his blood on earth and the Eucharist reminds us that we are what we are because we are united in him through his sacrifice.

And yet, the mere ritual does not necessarily indicate the Lord’s presence at the Table any more than it indicates that we are living in harmony one with another. In the case of the Laodicean church, Jesus was very absent from their gatherings.

Ritual without reality can never be anything but dead. It is like a marriage without a spouse. 

But this revelation…this realisation that their relationship was null and void…was mean to lead them to an evaluation of their relationship with him, a repentance for their benign neglect in cultivating and nurturing that relationship, and a reconciliation leading to a renewed relationship with the one they had for so long taken for granted.

Those who did not heed his warning would by their non action reveal their inability to hear the voice of the Shepherd and therefore their inability to respond to him appropriately. 

The invitation to dine with him is a rich one as the Lord continued to say in verse 21: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Although covenantal grace is extended to all who name themselves by the name of Jesus, it is those who, by God’s sovereign choice and infinite mercy, actually persevere to the end who receive the promises reserved for the elect. It is those who overcome their lukewarmness…it is those who repent…it is those who return…it is those who are reconciled who are granted leave to be seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. 

It is important for us to note then that the overcoming of the believer is likened to the overcoming of Jesus. The enthronement of Jesus was a result of his overcoming the very real temptation to indulge the flesh and to seek an alternative to obedience to God’s express command. 

In the same way, the Church gains access to the throne-room of God through obedience to his revealed will. Christians can only experience true victory insofar as they remain true to that which God has shown us in his Word. Once we discard his Word…whether through intellectual abdication to the spirit of the age, or whether it is through negligence or ignorance by not reading it, studying it, and applying it…once we discard his Word, we are estranged from our Bridegroom.

As in Priestly’s play, it seems that this sermon suddenly brought home the fact that they had deluded themselves into thinking that they were in a relationship with the one they claimed to love…indeed, they were quite spouseless.

However, as they say, all’s well that ends well, and Priestly’s play ends on a positive note. Another unrelated character had previously investigated her own marriage for different reasons and had established that the weddings conducted by the minister in question were legally valid because in those days nonconformist weddings had to be certified by a registrar, and this had been duly done. Finding they were married after all, the three couples took a pledge to be more devoted to each other in the future.

In the case of the church in Laodicea, the fact that a general church council met there in the fourth century, allows us to safely assume that the door had been opened and the feast of spiritual union was resumed. 

Dearest beloved brethren, as we gather before the Table of Jesus this afternoon, let us seriously consider these words of Jesus to his Church. Are we partaking of a reality that is ours, or is Jesus actually no longer present in our lives? Do we perhaps need to “renew our marriage vows” to Jesus so that we may come in to him and eat with him, and he with us? He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2026.