Can You Hear Him Knocking? | Revelation 3: 14-22
Revelation 3:14-22
Can You Hear Him Knocking?
We all know the world can be a dangerous place. We don’t need a preacher to tell us that.
But sometimes we forget how dangerous our homes can be.
I have been injured at home more than once. I pulled a lawn mower over my toe. I’ve fallen off a pretty high ladder, and while admittedly, I am pretty clutsy and not the most graceful person in the world, some years back a professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii wrote a book about risk. One whole chapter in that book is devoted to dangerous objects in our homes and injuries that are caused from them.
Some, you would expect, like e.g. each year 460,000 people are injured by kitchen knives, which is another injury I could have mentioned. 100,000 people are injured by manual and power tools. No big surprise with either of those.
Some of the dangerous items are not as obvious. Like, did you know every year in America 20 people are strangled to death on drapery cords (according to that study from the University of Hawaii). Even more surprising, 4,000 people seriously injure themselves on pillows each year.
Don’t ask me how and I’m not giving up my pillow.
Let’s just stop and think about objects in our home that might be dangerous. Any come to mind? Ladders for sure, lawnmowers, yea. But let’s go into the living room.
It has been said that one of the most dangerous objects in our homes might be right there in the living room — not so much because of what it does, but because of the things it keeps us from doing. I am referring of course, to the easy chair.
Have you ever seen a really attractive easy chair or recliner? I haven’t. We can agree to disagree, but we don’t really buy those things for their beauty. We buy them for their comfort.
The name of one of the most popular easy chairs in all America is very telling.
Can you guess the name of the best- selling easy chair recliner in America? Hint: it’s not “Active boy” or “Adventure Girl”
It’s Lazy Boy.
Now….what do you suppose you find on the arm rest of just about every Lazy Boy or lazy boy type chair in America?
Some people call them remote controls. Some people call them ‘clickers.” But whatever you call them their one purpose is to enable us to be immersed even more deeply in the comfort of our easy chair.
While we are on the subject of the remote control, have you noticed nobody ever “loses” a remote control. I have never heard anyone say, “I have lost my remote control.” What you hear is someone say, “Someone has stolen my remote control.”
Well guess what? Turns out the remote control and the easy chair are kind of dangerous, not because of what they do, but because of the things they keep us from doing.
They are very comfortable, but if you don’t ever get up out your Lazy Boy, your health will really, really suffer, we all know that…
A lot of things in life are like that, right? It is the prayers we don’t pray, that might be causing us to not to experience the relationship with God we would really like to have. It’s those walks we don’t take that can keep us from enjoying better physical health. It’s the relationships we don’t deepen that can keep us from feeling lonely and disconnected
It is so often our desire to be comfortable that can keep us from experiencing the full life we would really like to live.
And that is why Fresh Starts are important which is the title of our current worship series.
In our text today from the Book of Revelation, Jesus is speaking to the Church of Laodecia.
Here is how one commentary describes the Church of Laodecia:
Laodecia was one of the wealthiest cites of that area during Roman times, widely known for its banks, a medical school with a famous eye salve and a textile industry famous for its famous glossy black wool used for making tunics and cloaks
According to Biblical commentaries I’ve looked at, the church appears to have been as wealthy as the town. They have it made. They are comfortable, which leads back to the words of Jesus in our text:
(I’ll just read the red letter parts from my Bible)
Verses 14-22
Notice those Laodecian’s haven’t done anything really terrible. They have just allowed their easy, comfortable Lazy Boy life style to keep them from doing much of anything for anybody.
And here is the big irony. As the old saying goes, “a person all wrapped up in themselves makes a very small package.” And not only is it a very small package it is not a very healthy package.
Sometimes you just really need to get out of your Lazy Boy chair.
I once heard about a study some biologists did with some amoebas. They placed a little amoeba in an “ideal” environment. The equivalent of me being in my Lazy Boy chair, wearing my slippers, with a delicious plate of fresh baked cookies within easy reach on my coffee table. Everything was perfect. Perfect temperature, perfect humidity, perfect amount of light, perfect amount of water and food. The little amoeba had no stress, no problems, no challenges. (no one asked them to serve on the church council or cook food for Room in the Inn—nothing like that)
You might think the little amoeba would just thrive, but they didn’t. They just died.
So here is my hypothesis based on that and similar studies and the words of Jesus from our text.
Too much comfort will kill you.
One of the things I most love about being part of the Methodist tradition that goes back to John and Charles Wesley and other early Methodists is their emphasis on the importance of keeping a balance between spiritual rest and spiritual activity as well as the balance between our private devotion to God and corporate worship.
It is important to have that balance that just went over the heads of the church described in our text.
They said, “We are comfortable and we are good with that. We are rich and we don’t need anything.”
They bought a really big comfortable spiritual easy chair, a high definition extra wide TV. And they weren’t interested in helping anybody else. The good Lord knows that is not good for you, whether you are a citizen of Laodecia or Williamson county.
The Lord knocks and knocks, hoping someone will open the door of their heart, get up out of that easy chair from time to time and discover what it means to really live.
The Lord longs for us to experience a fresh start, not just at the beginning of every year, but at the beginning of every day.