14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” [Revelation 3:14-18]
11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves. 14 They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’” [Revelation 18:11-14]
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During Lent we remember Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness and the Israelite’s 40 years in the wilderness. The wilderness experience was a common experience for God’s people in the Old Testament, as was its corollary of exile. Exile, the experience of being sent or kept from one’s homeland, is something the early Christians experienced as well, something they anticipated from Jesus’ teaching and, later, from the Apostle Paul.
“You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” [John 15:18]
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. [Philippians 3:20]
Exile is a normal part of the Christian life. And how we engage with money in exile is incredibly important because, as we’ll see, money is a spiritual force that competes with God for our worship. Money, according to the Bible, is different than we tend to think of it, as a neutral object that we can use for good or ill. According to the French sociologist Jaques Ellul, money in the Bible is seen as “a power which tries to be like God, which makes itself our master and which has specific goals.”
The warped spiritual power of money is nowhere exhibited more strongly than within the context of empire and exile. If the Christian experience is one of regular exile in this life, then we need to pay special attention to the power that the empire’s money exerts over our desires and decisions. Otherwise we’ll think we are using money when we are being used by money.
Laodicea sat at the intersection of two major trade routes, had fertile grazing land, and became a center of banking and finance. It is of the church in this city of which God says, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Why? The Laodicean church had forgotten their exile and thought of themselves as being comfortably a part of the empire. They saw themselves as citizens of the Roman Empire rather than exiles of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let’s look more closely at why this provoked such a fierce response from God.
The letter to the church in Laodicea is found in Revelation, a letter from the Apostle John to churches throughout the Roman Empire. Revelation was written to people who knew the particular exilic experience of one of the most powerful empire’s the world has known. The Emperor Domitian called himself “Lord God,” demanded worship, and brutally persecuted Jews and Christians who refused to do so, taking their property and executing them.
It’s important to remember that John’s letter to Laodicea is contained within Revelation, a letter written as apocalyptic literature. This form of literature is foreign to us but it had important characteristics that help us understand why God threatened to spit the Laodicean Christians out of his mouth. First, apocalyptic literature revealed the spiritual realities behind physical events, like pulling back a veil between the natural and spiritual worlds. Second, apocalyptic literature described current events through the use of symbolism. By using dense symbolism and metaphors, John was able to warn the churches about life in exile without antagonizing the wrath of the empire. In this way is less like gazing into a crystal ball to see the future and more like the spirituals sung by enslaved women and men in the American South, their songs serving as coded and subversive instructions for the long and dangerous journey to freedom.
God’s harsh words to the church in Laodicea were written in this strange, apocalyptic style. But we need to jump ahead a few chapters to understand how God’s anger with these Christians was connected to their relationship to money.
The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore. [18:11]
Who is the woman over whom the merchants are weeping? Between the letter to the Laodicean church in chapter three and the weeping merchants in chapter eighteen, Revelation tells us about three layers of evil that are violently opposed to God’s people. The first is God’s enemy, Satan, who is described as “an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.” [12:3] The second is the beast, or monster, who is, as N.T. Wright puts it, “the dark power of pagan empire.” This monster derives its power from the dragon – Satan – and is the spirit of empire that violently chases God’s people into exile. The third layer of evil is the prostitute who is the particular expression of the monster, the spirit of empire expressed as the Roman Empire. Of his vision about the empire John writes:
3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. [17:3-4]
The image in Revelation of the prostitute is not of a person exploited or trafficked as we might think of prostitutes today. Rather, this is a person who derives power from the beast, from the spirit of empire, to lure people with glittering promises to their destruction.
As Wright notes, the prostitute, “in it of her own volition can dress up fine, can put on a great show, and (not least) can hold out a wonderful golden goblet as though she’s inviting you to a rich banquet. But the eye of faith, not merely of cynicism, recognizes that the goblet is full of urine, dung, and blood.” The language Wright uses is harsh, meant to offend our sensibilities and provoke our gag reflux. But it’s an accurate description of the wickedness inflicted upon God’s people by the empire: I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. [17:6]
This personification of the Roman Empire is who the merchants mourn in chapter eighteen. They grieve because John’s vision looks ahead to the day when the Roman Empire would finally collapse. And now we’re getting closer to seeing how money is a spiritual power that competes with God for our worship. Those who’ve made their money from the empire will grieve over their losses, but John wants the church to remember that this empire gained its power – as all empires do – from the monstrous spirit, a spirit who receives its potency from Satan himself.
The monster of empire is drunk on the blood of God’s holy people. In fact, the entire system of empire is built upon the exploitation and destruction of human beings. The business people grieve over the long list of resources from which they will no longer be able to profit now that Rome has fallen – precious stones, fine linen, expensive spices – and at the end of the list of things they will no longer be able to profit from: human beings sold as slaves. The monster of empire – the demonic spirit which chases God’s people into exile – expresses itself by exploiting and destroying women and men.
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You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. [3:17]
It’s not just that the Laodicean church was depending on their wealth rather than on God, though they were. Their real problem was that they had built their security upon the exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, including other Christians whose blood cried out from the empire’s cup. Their financial security came from the very empire whose wicked power derived from the dragon, a power that fueled itself by treating image-bearing people as resources to extract, exploit, and eventually extinguish.
It’s not that they were intentionally profiting from the slave trade or had as part of their financial portfolio government bonds built on the bloody persecution of their fellow Christians. No, the problem was their tacit acceptance of the empire’s monetary regime of buying and selling everything, including people. The problem is how they embraced and benefited from a system of exploitation and death.
Do you know that thirty-five percent of mutual funds contain investments in a maker or retailer of guns and ammunition? Do you know that after the president’s election the stock price for two publicly traded for-profit prison and immigration detention corporations went through the roof? As one financial analyst said, The deportation crackdown is doing very good things for these companies. On a personal level, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, but I guess business is business.
Like Rome, our American expression of the beast of empire assumes that exploitation and death are the reasonable collateral damages of our wealth. Indiscriminately imprisoning black women and men, massacring children with military-style weapons, building economic bubbles on the backs of the poor… all are the cost of doing business with the beast. I guess business is business.
The particular expression of any empire is always built on the monstrous spirit of empire and so the way the empire engages with money will never be neutral. Money, in the empire, will always be wielded as a spiritually oppressive power. The option to wash our hands of responsibility simply does not exist for those who have been exiled within the pagan empire… whether that empire is Rome in the early 100’s or America in the early 2000’s.
Of the Laodicean Christians, theologian Brian K. Blount writes that they “comprised a wealthy, self-sufficient community of faith. They believed that their wealth was an indication that they were recipients of God’s favor. John believed that their wealth was an indication that God did not favor them. Because one could only gather wealth in that Greco-Roman context by blending into the very culture that denied God’s lordship, wealth was a sign of accommodation.”
God was angry with the Laodicean Christians because the money and wealth in which they had put their trust came from the monster’s ravenous appetite for human flesh. Their comfortable homes, secure borders, respectable jobs, and secure bank accounts were evidence not of God’s favor but of their collusion with the demonic forces of empire, the same forces that had exiled members of their own Christian family at the knife’s edge of persecution unto death.
How could the Laodicean church miss it? How could they mistake wealth that was built on the backs of enslaved and exploited people as God’s blessing? How could they ignore that the same empire that had made them wealthy was literally killing their Christian family? And what about us? We miss the same thing those early Christians missed, that money is a spiritual power that the evil one exploits for his destructive purposes, purposes that are heightened and hidden within the machinations of the empire.
Once we understand the satanic power behind empire we can better understand the Laodicean church’s captivity to money, and perhaps our own as well. The Bible tells us two important things about God’s enemy, the red dragon of Revelation who animates the beast of empire. First, his desire is to destroy. So of course the spirit of empire – whether the Roman empire of the past or the current expressions of empire that we experience today – of course empire will destroy human life. And not just as a matter of occasional policy, but as the fundamental rationale for its very existence. There is no way to profit from the empire without profiting from someone else’s exile; there is no way to take the empire’s money without being complicit with the empire’s bloodthirsty violence- human beings sold as slaves.
Second, Satan is a liar. The Laodiceans show us how the dragon who animates the monster of empire is a deceiver. Not only have they been blinded to how their wealth has been squeezed from the bodies of others, blood pooled in the prostitute’s cup; they’ve also become convinced that this wealth is a sign of God’s love for them, rather than proof of their complicity with the empire’s wicked agenda. Standing on the security of their money, the Laodicean church proclaims “we don’t need anything.” In fact, they are in danger of being spat from God’s mouth along with the other filth that has collected in the prostitute’s golden goblet.
Jesus warned his followers in similarly stark terms. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” [Matthew 6:24] We are tempted to think of money as an object to be used. But Jesus warns us, as does John in Revelation, that money is a spiritual power that competes with God for our worship. The empire’s money is a spiritual power opposed to the Kingdom of God. If we choose to play by the rules of the empire we will never simply use money; money will always use us, and we will get used for the enemy’s deception and destruction. Or to put it slightly differently, when we get used by the empire’s money, someone else is guaranteed to be abused.
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Is there any hope for us? If exile is our experience until Christ’s return, is there any way we can stand against the monster of empire and its oppressive use of money? Each of us has been ensnared at some point by this monster. Many of us are like the complacent Laodiceans, mistaking our relative wealth and comfort for God’s favor when in fact we are reaping the rotten empire fruit of exploitation and dehumanization. Others of us today know genuine poverty. We’ve had money squeezed from our bodies in the form of payday loans; court and legal fees collected by justice system that privileges the wealthy and the white; Chicago water fees that are higher in black and brown neighborhoods; Chicago property taxes that are adjusted at higher rates in lower-income neighborhoods; and on and on it goes.
As much as we’d prefer to think of ourselves as the masters of our money, if we can stomach the truth than we must admit that the Biblical view of money as a spiritual power that demands our worship and brokers no rivals is a far more accurate description of reality.
Is there any hope for an exiled people?
18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. [3:18] God urges the Laodiceans to repent, to turn from the Mammon of the empire and worship the God who is the only source of true wealth. If there is hope for them, there must be hope for us too.
There is hope for us, even in a place of exile, even as our world groans under the oppressive regime of the monster and its dragon. There is hope because God did not abandon us to the empire.
The God of grace subjected himself to the monster’s regime of buying and selling, of exploitation and greed; the Son of God took on the flesh of our frail and vulnerable humanity and subjected himself to an empire where everything was commodified, including the very creatures created in his image.
The God whose character it is to give, to forgive and then to forgive again; the God who cancels debts and liberates captives; the God who makes covenant with his people and then agrees to uphold both ends of the promise; the God who came to proclaim good news to the poor; the God who came to to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for blind Laodicean and American eyes; the God who came to set the oppressed free… this God – the very definition of grace and gift – this God subjected himself to the greedy empire and this God – for us and our salvation – allowed himself to be sold for thirty pieces of silver.
There is hope for exiles like us whose minds have been colonized by a greedy empire because this God allowed the monster to crush him; allowed the beast to display his cheaply purchased body from Calvary’s tree.
There is hope for the exiles who have forgotten that we are exiles; who have acculturated ourselves to the pleasures and luxuries of the monstrous empire. And there is hope for the exiles who are this empire’s scorn, the ones whose blood and bodies have long sustained the crops of America’s ill-gotten cash. Despite the dragon’s power behind this ravenous monster, there is hope for the exiles because though he subjected himself to the empire’s marketplace, Jesus would not be bought. Though he allowed his body to be purchased, Jesus would not be owned. Though he subjected himself to the enslavers, Jesus would not be captured. Though he allowed the spirit of money to lay claim on his life, Jesus would not be commodified.
The Son of God was sold, but he could not be bought. And so in God’s divine reversal, the purchased Son of God gave himself away and with his death freely given he purchased our salvation.
There is hope for us because the One who subjected himself to our exile is now leading our exodus from the empire. The one who allowed the monster to crush him has defeated the dragon.
Money is a spiritual force that competes with God for our worship. This power is amplified within the empire, causing some of us to forget our exile and others of us to suffer greatly under its destructive power. But Jesus, by allowing himself to be purchased, has opened the way for our salvation; he has exposed the ultimate powerlessness of the empire’s money. In a nation that buys and sells everything and everyone, Jesus has made us free.
We are free to confess how we have suffered the monster’s lies: the shame we have been made to feel by our financial poverty; the false sense of blessing we have been made to feel by our wealth.
We are free to sell our stuff to provide for the poor.
We are free to give generously from whatever abundance God has provided.
We are free to admit our financial addictions without shame to those who will walk with us, holding us accountable, cutting up those unnecessary credit cards.
We are free to tell our community that we don’t have enough to pay the rent this month. And we are free to tell our community that we have too much money and that we need help giving it away.
We are free, in other words, to reject the false god of money, to scoff at its weak power, and to worship instead the God of Grace.
The Laodiceans thought they were wealthy, not realizing they were wretched; thought they were powerful, not realizing they were pitiful; they misunderstood their poverty for wealth, their blindness for sight, their nakedness for luxurious cloth. May it not be so for us. May we see through the destruction and deception of the monster and its dragon, so that we might know the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus, whose body and blood freely given forever purchased our freedom.
Photo credit: vonderauvisuals.
David W. Swanson 