WHAT DOES HE WANT? Broad Street Presbyterian Church

Revelation 3:14-20 Columbus, Ohio
September 15, 1974 John McCormick Buchanan

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens
the door I will come in to him." Every time I hear that my memory transports me
to childhood: to Bible School. We sang a pretty catchy song about that verse
but what I really liked was a flannel-graph, visual-aide that showed a large red
heart with a door on it and Jesus knocking. It appealed to my need to have
things graphically explained. We were made to understand very clearly that Jesus
wanted to come into our hearts, and although we were never exactly sure why, we
knew it had to do with getting to heaven.

That same idea is expressed in Holman Hunt's very popular painting that
portrays Jesus at night, lantern held in his hand, knocking gently on the door
of a rustic cottage. The favorite old hymn says the same thing;

"0 Jesus, thou art standing
Outside the fast-closed door,
In lonely patience waiting
To pass the threshold o'er,

O Jesus, thou art pleading
In accents meek and low."

It is a very attractive idea: a most winsome sentiment: the lonely Savior
seeking access to human hearts. Unfortunately, it has very little to do with

the New Testament. As is often the case, the images we attach to the words are
more the product of American pietism - or what we fondly call "old time religion"
than the result of honest Biblical study. The flannel graph heart; the popular
painting; the hymn; simply do not do full justice to the text from which they
received their original inspiration.

Let's look more carefully. The text in question - "Behold, I stand at the
door and knock" comes from the book of Revelation, easily the most perplexing
and difficult document in the Biblical canon. It was written by an exiled
political prisoner by the name of John. Because he was an articulate Christian,
the Roman political establishment banished him to exile on the lonely island of
Patmos, apparently a penal colony. They probably should have executed him
because from exile he wrote a frankly political polemic against his captors -
which we know as the Book of Revelation. In order to protect himself and the
early Christian communities he employed wild imagery and secret symbolism - the
Christians understood it: the Romans did not. Ever since, of course, Christians
have been trying to Squeeze their own political biases into John's symbolism.
At various times in my life I've been told that the seven-headed beast in the
13th chapter of Revelation was really Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Nikita Kruschev,
and Mao Tse Tung. It was even hinted in the 30's that the apocalyptic vision
was fulfilled in the person of F.D.R. and New Deal.

In any case, John of Patmos began his book by using the very dramatic
image of Christ himself dictating letters to the seven Christian churches loca-
ted in Asia Minor. In the prologue to the letters he describes his vision of
Christ: "a son of man, clothed with a long robe, a golden girdle round his
breast, his head and hair were white, his eyes were like a flame of fire, his
feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace...from his mouth
issued a sharp two~edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full
strength." (1:13-16)

ra

John adds the comment that when he saw this vision he fell at his fcat as
though dead. And reading the description we do not wonder why. The point is,
that this is not exactly the image that comes to my mind when I hear the familiar
verse about Jesus knocking at the door. My image is a little more serene. But
the Biblical text becomes even more upsetting.

Addressing the church at Laodicea, in Chapter 3, he says, "I know your
works: You are neither hot nor cold. Would that you were cold or hot. So
because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my
mouth...Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten."

And then ~ after all that - "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any-
one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him
and he with me." On second thought, it's no wonder that I didn't get the whole
picture in Bible school. That's pretty strong medicine.

But let's pursue it a bit by filling in a little more of the background.
The issue in the Laodicean church was the same issue that got John of Patmos in
hot water in the first place: namely Roman insistance that its subjects acknow-
ledge the divinity of the emperor - beginning with Augustus; a simple matter of
patriotism. The Christians could not do it and their refusal was regarded as
treasonous civil disobedience. It appears that the people of Laodicea were
trying to play it both ways; trying desperately to remain neutral. Their luke-
warmmess, which was so offensive to John of Patmos, was precisely in their
refusal to be what they claimed to be ~ followers of Jesus Christ: to take a
controversial stand regardless of the risk to security and well-being.

Three preliminary conclusions may be drawn at this point. The words -
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock." are addressed to individuals - but
also to a church, a Christian community; second, it is not a mild plea to open
one's heart in order to be saved so much as an urgent demand to be honest about
one's commitment. Third, my impression of it all, if we must visualize it -
is not of a mild and gentle Jesus tapping on the door in the quiet of night,
"in accents meek and low", but of a potent, insistant Lord pounding on the door
in broad daylight.

That, I would suggest, is a little more consistent with what's happening
in the New Testament than the tepid image of artists and hymn writers. Jesus
Christ wants in - but he has something more in mind than a private sense of
salvation. He demands to be taken seriously in the world by those who call
him Lord.

We have come a long way from that understanding. There is today a tragic
and debilitating division across Christendom, within denominations and within
congregations between what may be called, for the sake of discussion, the pie-
tists and the social activists. Pietists are the people who see the purpose
of Christian Faith as the saving of souls. Jesus is regarded as the Savior who
seeks admission to human hearts through conversion. The desired result is a
personal sense of salvation. When it stops here, and too frequently it does,
the position if only half-true. Unfortunately, people who take this position
usually know more about the Bible than anyone else, and are able to overwhelm
the average skeptic with proof texts. They claim, and a lot of people agree,
that their position is Biblical Christianity ~ the real thing: that when
preaching, for instance, deals with anything other than how to get to heaven,
it is liberal - modernistic: and that when the church addresses itself to the
world, it has become dangerously politicized, unfaithful, and perhaps even
communistic.

«}e

The other side of the divide belongs to the Social Activists. The purpose
of Christian faith for these people is to bring about a utopia on earth - the
Kingdom of God ~ by remedying all the ills of mankind - hunger, poverty, pollu-
tion, oppression, racism, sexism. Jesus Christ becomes the revolutionary par
excellence; the church the breeding ground for social and political ferment.
"Relevance" is the "By-word" of the social activists: relevance in terms of
societal structures and institutions but not often in terms of the needs of the
human spirit.

Now, to be sure, this has been a caricature of the two positions. And yet
the division is a real one across the church. It is a conflict we feel in our
own hearts and one that many of us pray will be resolved. For the fact is that
both positions contain truth: both are able to quote the Bible to prove a point:
both can isolate words and acts of Jesus to support their stand. Each needs the
other, however, if the end product is to be called Biblical Christianity.

Pietists need to start being honest about the whole prophetic tradition in
the Old Testament and to pay a little attention to the very real Biblical con-
cern for peace and justice. Pietists need to look with integrity at the life
of Christ who did identify with the poor, the oppressed, the outcasts, who was
crucified not for preaching personal salvation but for upsetting the politicians.
And Social Activists need to stop ignoring the God of the 23rd Psalm: the
fatherly God who knows his children by name, who stoops low to share their suffer-
ing and bind up the wounds. Activists need to come to terms with the Christ of
the New Testament who did set men free from sin and fear,

And it all ought to be driving us back beyond the immediate debate in the
church: back to the fundamental question: “What does He Want?" If Christ
stands at the door and knocks - the door of our heart - our home - our church -
what is it He wants of us?

The Bible gives two answers - or rather one answer with two parts. He wants
us ~ he wants our trust, our faith - and he wants us to do his will in the world.
And the two are so close that in the eyes of God they become one.

Moses, for instance: "Go down Moses, to Egypt land ~ tell ole Pharoh -
let my people go!" God came to Moses, out in a pasture near Horeb. God knock-
ed on the door and gave Moses an experience with a burning bush that he'd never
forget. But the purpose was not to save his soul, although that happened in the
process. God, the account reads, saw the affliction of his people, heard their
cry for help, knew their suffering and decided to do something about it: to set
them free = to be precise: free in a very political and economic and social
sense. And Moses was the one who was called to do it. That sort of thing keeps
happening in the Bible, People are saved by God in order to serve. Salvation
in. the Bible is not confined to a private sense of security but a stance in life
that gets people involved with other people, more often than not in sticky and
controversial situations.

Leslie Newbigin, a Bishop in the Church of South India, put it in very
concise terms: "Peter and Andrew and James and John are not portrayed as mystics
seeking the true religion and finding it in the teaching of Jesus. They are
rather shown as men picked by a commander for an expedition, a task force rather
than a study group or a holy club." Then, addressing us, he says: "The Church
has constantly forgotten this. It has listened to the words "Come Unto Me.'
but not listened to the words 'Go - I will be with you.' It has interpreted
conversion as if it was simply a turning toward God for purposes of one's own

anil

private inner religious life, instead of seeing conversion as it is in the Bible,
a turning toward God for the doing of his will in the secular world." (Honest
Religion for Secular Man, pp. 100-101)

Jesus is knocking at the door. He wants us to love him enough, trust him
enough, have faith enough in him to do his will in the world. In Laodicea, when
John envisioned him knocking at the door he wanted his people to believe in him
by taking a stand on an issue that appeared to be purely political. In Moses'
case he wanted Moses faith - but also his body.

He wants us to be saved. He calls us to realize and grasp our salvation by
serving other people. St. Paul saw that when people in the early Corinthian
Church were arguing about who was really saved. He wrote to them: “If I have
prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have
all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." And a
verse from the First Letter of John - "We know that we have passed from death
to life when we love the brethren."

The means to our salvation - other people's need? God calling us through
the cry for help from a brother? It's an intriguing thought - a devastating
thought in light of what is happening to the mission of the United Presbyterian
Church. Ordinarily we do our Christian service as a kind of after thought to
our churchmanship: we reluctantly pay the price and then we are inclined to
feel that it falls into the category of self-sacrifice. But the Bible keeps
insisting that the reward of salvation is given as we love - "For we pass from
death to life when we love the brethren."

The sad part about it is that young, alive and very perceptive people are
rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ because they have seen that much of what
goes under the name of Christianity stops with the individual. They've watched
the church back away from the life and death issues of our age and they've con-
cluded that this faith is irrelevant. And they're right. More to the point -
faith that stops with me isn't Christian faith at all. For the Gospel is the
call of Jesus Christ to receive the gift of salvation - and then to live it by
serving others in the world.

When that happens there ‘is nothing lukewarm about it. Christian Faith
lived in the world is hot, enthusiastic, joyful, urgent. And yet, one has to
acknowledge that the 1970's have given birth to an insipid lukewarmness in our
culture. So much has happened to us in a decade ~ assassinations - civil rights -
Vietnam ~ the Great Society - Watergate - that a lot of Americans seem to have
lost the capacity to care and to feel. People today, in the words of William
Sloane Coffin, are scrambling to become Charter members in "The Association of
Life's Bystanders". Right now we'd settle for a little peace and quiet, a
better price on beef and a bit of stability on Wall Street.

In a piercing commentary on life in the 70's, Langdon Gilkey observes,
",..when there is nothing significant in our lives, existence becomes a tread-
mill leading nowhere, a mere succession of rote acts: commuting in the subway,
opening letters, making out orders, sweeping a floor...and then at the end of
the day eating another meal and brushing your teeth..."

(Naming the Whirlwind, p. 347)

mon

We combat the lukewarmness of life, Gilkey suggests, by way of the new Holy
Trinity - sex, alcohol and success. But it doesn't work. Life remains empty.
Sex becomes a desperate performance, booze a poor crutch and success - in this
context there is no success that is successful enough.

Your salvation - your peace - your self-fulfillment - is out there in the
form of someone who needs you: someone who needs your love and attention and
strength. The world needs that: the world needs the corporate mission of the
United Presbyterian Church: this community needs the love of Broad Street
Presbyterian Church: and someone needs you.

But most of all we need the salvation that is promised when we love the
brethren. You see, in the final analysis, Jesus Christ knocks on the door of
our lives and calls us ~ not really to self-denial; not really to self-sacrifice
but to self-fulfillment: to fullness of life, wholeness, completeness. In
giving we do receive: in loving we do become the crown of creation: in serving
others - on a grand scale, through the world-wide mission agencies of our church -
or simply - personally - intimately one to one - we do taste a little of God's
eternal kingdom.

That's what he wants. That is the call and the promise. There's a banquet
waiting for those who love.

"Behold, 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..."

Amen.

Father, give us ears to hear your call as it comes through the cries of those in
need. Give us grace to live and love, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.