By the time we arrive at Sardis, something subtle has happened to us.
Ephesus taught us that love can cool without rebellion.
Smyrna taught us that faithfulness can be costly without being fragile.
Pergamum taught us that proximity to power can quietly rearrange loyalty.
Thyatira taught us that even growing love can be redirected by the wrong voice.
So when we come to Sardis, we feel seasoned.
Alert. Less naïve than when we began.
We think we know what danger looks like now.
And that confidence may be the first warning.
Sardis is not introduced as a church in crisis.
It is not described as persecuted, compromised, or confused.
Jesus does not say they are tolerating false teaching.
He does not accuse them of abandoning truth.
He does not mention pressure, threat, or temptation.
He says something far more unsettling:
“You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.”
Sardis is the first church where the problem is not what they are doing,
but what they assume about themselves.
They have a name. A reputation.
A story that still circulates.
Names are powerful things.
A name can carry weight long after substance has faded.
A name can open doors even when life has gone quiet behind it.
A name can survive on memory, momentum, and recognition.
And Jesus does not deny their name. He acknowledges it.
“You have a name…”
What He challenges is what the name is covering.
This is why Sardis requires a different kind of listening.
Not urgent. Not defensive. Not analytical.
Attentive.
This is the letter where Jesus speaks to people who are still standing, still functioning, still recognized—and yet no longer responsive.
This is where the imagery of Revelation becomes important.
Jesus is not distant.
He is not issuing memos from heaven.
He is walking among the lampstands.
He is present where worship is happening.
Where routines continue.
Where language still sounds right.
Where songs are sung and gatherings held.
And He sees something the name has hidden.
Sardis teaches us that it is possible to look alive to others—and even to ourselves—while something essential has gone quiet inside.
Which is why Jesus’ command here is not “repent” first.
It is: “Wake up.”
That word only makes sense if something still exists to be awakened.
This is not a funeral.
It is a bedside call.
Sleep and death language are deliberately close in Scripture.
Not because they are the same, but because they look similar from the outside.
Stillness. Silence.
Unresponsiveness.
Sardis forces a question we do not like to ask:
What if the danger is not losing faith—but assuming we have it?
What if the threat is not opposition—but familiarity?
What if the issue is not that Jesus is absent—but that we have stopped responding?
This is not a letter to those who walked away.
It is a letter to those who stayed.
Before Sardis can be explained, it must be heard.
Not as accusation.
Not as embarrassment.
But as mercy.
“He who has an ear, let him hear.”
Not later.
Not after analysis.
Now.
Sardis is the letter that asks whether life is still listening—or only remembered.
---000--- PART TWO: Walking the Letter
Jesus begins His words to Sardis without anger and without reassurance.
“I know your works.”
That sentence should feel familiar by now.
Jesus says it to every church.
But in Sardis, it lands differently.
What follows is not a list of sins.
Not a catalogue of compromise.
Not a warning about false teaching or external pressure.
Instead: “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.”
This is not moral failure language. It is diagnostic language.
Jesus is not saying Sardis has ceased to exist.
He is not saying belief has vanished.
He is not saying nothing remains.
He is saying something essential is no longer responsive.
Alive and dead are not being used here as opposites in the way we expect.
They are being used as appearances versus realities.
Sardis looks alive.
It functions. It gathers.
It carries memory. It has continuity.
Yet, when Jesus assesses the church—not by reputation, not by history, not by visibility—He sees unresponsiveness.
This is why the word name matters so much.
“You have a name…”
A name is what circulates when people talk about you.
A name is what remains when direct knowledge fades.
A name can outlive substance.
Scripture understands the power of names.
Names represent identity, reputation, authority, and memory.
To have a name is to be recognized.
We live in a world obsessed with names.
A name on a car. A name on a watch. A name on a shirt.
Sometimes the name costs more than the substance underneath it.
The label survives. The quality doesn’t.
Jesus says to Sardis, “You have a name that you are alive — but you are dead.”
The name survived. The life didn’t.
Sardis teaches us that reputation can outlast reality — and even begin to replace it.
Sardis is not ignored.
It is not marginal.
It is known.
Which is precisely the danger.
Recognition can substitute for reality.
Memory can replace attentiveness.
Reputation can carry weight long after dependence has weakened.
Jesus does not accuse Sardis of doing nothing.
He says: “I know your works.”
They are active.
What He says next explains the problem:
“I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.”
The issue is not absence of activity.
It is unfinishedness.
The works exist, but they are not reaching completion.
They are no longer connected to what gives them life.
This is what Scripture elsewhere calls dead works.
Dead works are not immoral acts.
They are religious actions disconnected from trust, listening, and dependence.
Motion without responsiveness.
Form without breath.
Hebrews speaks of repentance from dead works—not because works are evil, but because works without living faith become substitutes for relationship.
Sardis has not abandoned form.
It has lost vital connection.
This is why Jesus shifts immediately to the command:
“Wake up.”
Not repent first.
Not believe.
Not correct doctrine.
Wake up.
That command tells us what kind of death this is.
Not annihilation.
Not rejection.
But sleep-like unresponsiveness.
Sleep and death language overlap throughout Scripture because they can look similar from the outside.
Stillness.
Silence.
Lack of response.
Jesus is not declaring the end.
He is issuing an interruption.
And notice how He continues: “Strengthen what remains and is about to die.”
That sentence is full of mercy.
Something remains.
Not everything is gone.
Life has not vanished—it is fading.
This is why Sardis is not told to become something new.
It is told to remember.
“Remember, then, what you received and heard.”
Sardis does not need innovation.
It needs recollection with obedience.
Remembering in Scripture is not nostalgia. It is re-alignment.
To remember is to bring the past into the present through renewed listening.
It is to let what was received become active again.
Then Jesus says: “Keep it, and repent.”
Keep—hold, guard, attend to.
Not perform.
Not expand.
Attend.
Repent here does not mean moral collapse recovery.
It means turning from assumption back to dependence.
Because Sardis's danger is not rebellion.
It is self-maintaining faith.
Faith that continues on habit.
Faith that functions on memory.
Faith that assumes life because form remains.
That is why Jesus issues a warning:
“If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.”
This is not apocalyptic threat language first. It is relational surprise language.
A thief comes unnoticed.
Unexpected. Unacknowledged.
The danger is not destruction. It is being unaware of visitation.
Sardis risks missing Jesus while still doing church.
That is why this letter feels so severe and so restrained at the same time.
Jesus does not accuse them of hatred.
He does not accuse them of immorality.
He does not accuse them of false doctrine.
He accuses them of unresponsiveness.
And then, quietly, He adds this:
“Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments.”
Even here, mercy appears.
Not everyone is asleep.
Not everything is dead.
Life still exists in pockets.
Which tells us something important about Sardis:
This is not a church that needs to be replaced.
It is a church that needs to be awakened.
Jesus is walking among the lampstands—not to remove this one yet, but to speak before silence becomes final.
Sardis teaches us something the earlier letters only hinted at:
Faith does not die loudly.
It goes quiet.
Not through hostility.
Through assumption.
Not through rebellion.
Through routine.
Not through denial.
Through neglect of listening.
And that is why this letter does not begin with correction.
It begins with recognition.
“You have a name…”
And then it asks whether the name is still connected to life.
This is the weight Sardis carries.
And it is only after walking the letter this far that the exposure can happen—because until now, it still feels possible that Sardis is about someone else.
---000--- PART THREE: When Assumption Replaces Listening
Up to this point, Sardis can still be held at a safe distance.
We can talk about reputation.
We can talk about history.
We can talk about churches that once mattered more than they do now.
We can even agree that routine can dull attentiveness.
But Sardis does not allow us to remain observers for long.
Because the problem Jesus names is not external pressure.
It is not false teaching imposed from outside.
It is not persecution or compromise forced upon them.
It is internal assumption.
“You have a name that you are alive…”
Sardis assumes life because evidence surrounds it.
Structures remain.
Language continues.
Recognition persists.
And assumption is dangerous precisely because it feels safe.
Assumption tells us:
If things are still functioning, they must still be alive.
If the name still carries weight, substance must still be present.
If nothing is obviously broken, nothing urgent is required.
Sardis shows us that faith can become self-sustaining in appearance while slowly losing responsiveness.
This is where the language of dead works matters.
Dead works are not scandalous acts.
They are respectable ones.
They look like devotion.
They sound like obedience.
They often feel sincere.
But they are no longer being generated by listening.
Dead works continue because they have momentum.
Because they are familiar.
Because they are expected.
They no longer require attentiveness to Christ’s voice—only maintenance.
This is why Jesus does not accuse Sardis of abandoning truth.
He says their works are incomplete.
Incomplete because they no longer flow from present dependence.
Incomplete because they are no longer being received, moment by moment, from Him.
This is where churches quietly turn into museums.
The doors stay open.
The artifacts are preserved.
The stories are told.
The tours continue.
But nothing new is being born.
Mausoleums and museums look alive from the outside.
They are carefully maintained.
They are respected.
They even inspire awe.
They exist to remember, not to respond.
Sardis is in danger of mistaking preservation for life.
That is why Jesus does not say, “Start something new.”
Wake up is not a command to become something else.
It is a call to re-engage with what is already there but unattended.
Sardis is not told to leave and do a mass migration to Philadelphia.
Some people read Sardis and immediately start packing for Philadelphia.
But if you look closely, Philadelphia’s U-Haul parking lots are NOT full of trucks from Sardis.
Jesus does not tell Sardis to pack up and move.
He says, “Wake up.”
They read, “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead,” feel the discomfort, and assume the solution is relocation — spiritual or otherwise.
Awakening is not geographic. It is attentiveness restored.
The call is not escape to a fresher movement, or a greener reputation.
The call is to open your eyes where you are — because life does not return by changing addresses.
It returns by listening again.
The call is not escape. It is awakening where they are.
Life does not return by relocation. It returns by listening.
This is why the sleep imagery matters so much.
Sleep is deceptive because the body still exists.
The heart still beats. Breath still moves.
But responsiveness is gone.
Someone asleep is not hostile.
They are simply unavailable.
And Jesus speaks to Sardis as One standing in their midst, calling out—not because He has left, but because they have stopped responding.
This is where the warning sharpens.
If they do not wake up, His coming will feel like a thief—not because He is absent, but because they are inattentive.
Sardis risks being surprised by Jesus while still speaking His name.
That is the exposure.
Not hypocrisy. Not rebellion.
But unexamined familiarity.
Faith that no longer trembles.
Prayer that no longer listens.
Obedience that no longer depends.
Sardis teaches us that the greatest threat to spiritual life is not opposition.
It is assumption. And assumption thrives where reputation replaces responsiveness.
This is the moment in the sermon where the room should feel uncomfortable—not accused, but recognized.
Sardis is not a church we love to hate.
Sardis isn’t the church we warn others about.
It’s the church we quietly recognize.
Because it is possible to be busy, respected, doctrinally sound — slowly drifting from attentiveness.
Not through rebellion. Not through compromise.
Through assumption.
---000--- PART FOUR: Letter to Me
This is where Sardis stops being a category and becomes a reflection.
I don’t hear this letter as someone who walked away.
I hear it as someone who stayed.
I didn’t reject Jesus.
I didn’t abandon belief.
I didn’t stop caring.
I kept showing up.
I kept speaking the language.
I kept doing the things that were expected.
That is what makes Sardis so uncomfortable.
Jesus does not accuse me of disbelief.
He does not accuse me of hatred. He does not accuse me of immorality.
He says I have a name.
A reputation.
A story that still circulates.
A version of myself that still sounds alive.
I realize how easy it is to live off that name.
How easy it is to assume life because the structures remain.
How easy it is to assume faith because the vocabulary still works.
How easy it is to assume intimacy because the habits continue.
I know what it is to rely on familiarity.
To pray without listening.
To serve without dependence.
To speak about Jesus more than I speak with Him.
I know what it is to substitute memory for attentiveness.
I remember seasons when faith felt urgent.
When listening felt necessary.
When obedience was not assumed, but received.
I also know how quickly that urgency can soften into routine.
Not rebellion.
Not refusal.
Just quiet assumption.
I realize how often I evaluate my spiritual life by output instead of responsiveness.
By activity instead of attentiveness.
By whether things are still functioning rather than whether I am still listening.
Sardis exposes that instinct.
Because Jesus does not say, “You have stopped doing.”
He says, “You are no longer awake.”
Sleep is not defiance.
Sleep is unawareness.
The city was famous for being unconquerable. Built high on a steep acropolis, its walls were considered impenetrable. Sardis trusted its position.
Twice in its history, the city fell — not because the walls were weak, but because the guards fell asleep.
Enemies watched. They waited. They climbed where no one was watching.
Sardis did not lose its strength.
It lost its vigilance.
When Jesus says, “Wake up,” He is not borrowing a random metaphor.
He is speaking into a memory Sardis already carried — a history of strength undone by sleep.
It is possible to be near Jesus and not notice when He speaks.
It is possible to carry His name and miss His voice.
It is possible to remain in the community and slowly become unavailable.
What sobers me most is that Jesus does not shout.
He walks.
He watches.
He speaks.
And He calls me to wake up—not because everything is lost, but because something remains.
“Strengthen what remains.”
That phrase tells me this is not about starting over.
It is about paying attention again.
Not reinventing faith.
Re-engaging it.
Not proving devotion.
Restoring responsiveness.
Sardis does not call me to find a better church.
It calls me to become awake where I am.
To stop assuming life because the name still fits.
To stop confusing recognition with reality.
To stop trusting that yesterday’s faithfulness guarantees today’s listening.
This letter does not shame me.
It unsettles me.
And that is mercy.
Because Jesus is still speaking.
Still walking among the lampstands.
Still calling out to those who stayed.
And the question Sardis leaves me with is not whether I believe.
It is whether I am still listening.
---000--- PART FIVE: Promise to the One Who Wakes
Jesus does not end this letter by dismissing Sardis.
He does not say, “Leave.”
He does not say, “Start over somewhere else.”
He does not say, “You missed your chance.”
He speaks to those who wake.
“Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.”
Notice what He restores first.
Not reputation.
Not influence.
Not visibility.
Presence.
“They will walk with me.”
Life is not proved by activity.
It is revealed by proximity.
And then the promise widens:
“The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.”
Sardis lived on a name.
Jesus offers a name that cannot fade.
Not one sustained by memory.
Not one carried by recognition.
But one held by Him.
“I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.”
What Sardis assumed, Jesus secures.
What reputation tried to preserve, Jesus gives as gift.
And the command that frames the letter remains:
“Wake up.”
Not to frighten.
To restore.
Because the call is not to escape Sardis.
It is to awaken within it.
Life has not vanished.
Something remains.
And Jesus is still walking among His churches.
Still calling.
Still speaking.
Still near enough to be heard.
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
And then the letter ends.
No applause.
No resolution music.
Just the quiet mercy of being called awake—
while there is still time to listen.
