“The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes invisible to those unfit for their positions or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” (Taken from Wikipedia)
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. 15I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17You 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. 18I 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 .19Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 21To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3: 14-22)
When Hans Christian Andersen wrote his short story, he meant it for satirical purposes. He aimed to hit at bourgeois vanity in his society. What was true in his day and society is true of us today. Particularly for Christians, religious faith seems to have devolved, in recent decades, to a kind of unwholesome spiritual scheme that focuses on material success and well-being. Being blessed by God materially is uppermost in our minds and desires as a key indicator of God’s pleasure and favour. We think of spiritual success in terms of huge physical proportions. XL is always preferable to M or S or XS.
Hans Christian Andersen (Public Domain)
We forget many other considerations in this bid to climb the spiritual ladder of success. The Revelation chapter on the worldly church at Laodicea is meant for such as us. John the Divine had probably had his fair share of worldly Christians and churches in his own day. Doubtless his gorge rose too at the sight of such an abuse and devaluation of the gospel of salvation into the gospel of health and wealth, of big and rich …
In Andersen’s tale, it took the simple common sense reasoning and innocence of a child to point out the obvious: “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” In contrast to the mincing courtiers and sycophants milling around the king, it was the unpretentious nature of the child that exposed the king’s vanity. It also put into clear perspective the hypocrisy and self-preservation of the simpering and fawning adults.
In John’s Revelation, it was the flaming eye of Christ that bore down on the Laodicean church in a stern rebuke: “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” (v. 17). There is none so blind as he who will not see. Laodicea was an extremely rich city in John’s day. It was well-known for its glossy black wool, a reputable medical school and a miraculous eye salve. It boasted of its own greatness and saw itself as self-sufficient and superior. Proud and confident of its riches, arrogant in its conception of itself, Laodicea thought itself a cut above.
But one thing that Laodicea did not have was an adequate water supply of its own. It imported water from the hot springs of neighbouring Hierapolis and the cool, clear streams of snow-capped Colosse. By the time the stone pipes or aqueducts delivered the water to Laodicea, however, it was lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. The lukewarm water was also bitter and full of sediment. Whatever else the Laodiceans claimed to have, they did not have this one thing: pure and living water. This made all the difference. Like their city, the church was just as lacking. Their perspective was skewed because they did not possess the life that living water promised. They had become lukewarm, self-satisfied and complacent. Clogged up with the sediment of their worldly perspectives, they had come to smugly feel that they were an exemplar of spiritual success to everyone else.
The pretensions and blindness of the successful Laodiceans were castigated by an uncompromising Christ: “I am about to spit you out” (v. 16). Boasting a miracle eye salve was no guarantee of spiritual sightedness. Having much material wealth was not the condition of favour with God. It must have stung the Laodiceans to have their spiritual inadequacies flung at them by none other than the Lord they claimed to worship. Yet there was no other way around the problem. Their self-deception and insensitivity to the true state of their souls had to be stripped off. Otherwise, their spiritual state was so intolerable to a holy God that he had to spit them out. The translation “to spit” for the Greek word emew is not strong enough. It should be more rightly translated “to vomit”, because that is the strength of Christ’s revulsion to the Laodiceans’ tepid and nauseating “spirituality”. In other words, Christ was saying, “You make me so sick I want to throw up!”
The tragedy of the Laodicean church was not that it was miserable, poor, beggarly, naked or blind, but that it was insensitive to its perilous state. Christ’s counsel was repentance: ”… 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 ” (v. 18). Repentance or metanoia simply means a 180 degree turnaround, or a turning back. What the Laodiceans needed was a turning back to the way of life that had first been preached to them, a sloughing off of the corruption that had grown around them like sediment.
If they did, then Christ would fellowship with them (v. 20). They would again be called his friends and brothers, sharing with him both his sufferings and glory. The opportunity for metanoia is not comfortable. It entails a recognition of shameful things done. It brings change at the cost of … everything. But like the emperor whose moment of wisdom came only when he saw the obvious truth of his own nakedness, we would each do well to heed the warning of Christ in a seasonable hour: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (v. 22). The opportunity might never come round again.
