The City of God

Here is my sermon for this week-
My favorite response was a gentleman who informed me afterwards that he certainly hoped that the city was just a metaphor, because he has no interest in spending eternity in a city. I see his point.

http://saintlouissports.homestead.com/
John 14:23-31
Revelation 21:10-22:5

Gathering in the city:
Good morning everyone, it is good to be with you this Sunday.

We’ve been working through Easter stories in this time before Pentecost (the celebration of the Holy Spirit that occurs on May 23rd, for those who are curious), as well as some visions of Christ to come, like the one from the book of Revelation that we have today.

Reading through the lectionary texts, I was struck by this image of the city of God. This is a story told with a tremendous amount of care-the image is stunning in its detail. Because of its length, we cut out some of the ornateness of the description, but the new Jerusalem has twelve gates, twelve foundations, its fifteen hundred miles per side, made of gold and jasper and sapphire and emerald and topaz and I could go on-but I won’t.



When you think of a city, is this what you imagine? Come, what comes to mind when you think city?

(see what people say)
This is more what I imagine when I think of a city as well.

Which is why I think its interesting that the city is one of the metaphors for the promised reign of God on Earth, which can be added to the image of the mountain of God in Isaiah or Daniel, where all nations gather, and the lion lays down with the lamb, the kingdom of God that Jesus speaks of, the house of God were there are many rooms, the image of the returning to the Garden of Eden, or the more modern interpretation of puffy white clouds and pearly gates, all of which litter our imagination.

What then does the city add to our understanding of God’s reign? The use of the city as a primary metaphor in the book of Revelation makes some sense-Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish religion, and Revelation was probably written after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD. During the first years of Christianity, there was a massive revolt in Palestine, where the Jewish people tried to throw off Roman rule through force, and succeed for a couple of years, before the massive weight of the Roman army crushed them, and Jerusalem was burned to the ground. This meant that anyone connected to the Jewish faith was pinning for a time when the world was made whole again, when the city of Jerusalem was restored.

In a similar vein, Revelation is an urban book, because the early church was at its core an urban phenomenon. Paul went not to the countryside, but to the center of major cities-Rome, Athens, Corinth, Philippi, to places facing the usual urban concerns-people leaving their family farms, torn out of their communities, struggling to get by in the swarming capitalist system that was the Roman Empire, and John of Patmos writes to the seven churches in seven cities, and his vision of the bride of Christ, the church, is the new Jerusalem, coming out of the clouds, restored far beyond her previous glory.

This urban focus stands in contrast to the more agrarian metaphors that often serve to focus our worship together-the 23rd Psalm we studied two weeks ago, the image of sheep and shepherds, the image of Abraham, wandering with his flocks, the book of Judges, where the inhabitants of walled cities are constantly suspect, the small towns that were the heart of Jesus’ ministry, finding God in the wilderness, in nature, in quiet and peaceful waters, these are the most common images of the good life that we find in the Biblical text.

I think its interesting that this parallels the traditional American narrative about democracy. Being born in a log cabin was a key component of many nineteenth century presidential elections, with Abe Lincoln being only the most famous, Thomas Jefferson elevated the citizen farmer far above the urban dweller as the keeper of the flame of democracy, the urban realities of the East and West coast are dismissed as not ‘real’ America in contrast to the heartland like Missouri.

In the Bible, and in our modern times, cities are much more often symbols of all that is wrong with the world-they are corrupt, dirty, poor, crime-ridden, filled with pollution, artificial realities where human beings are not ‘meant to survive, and in today’s society we’ve added layers on these already damning associations, as we wrestle with racism, class divides, and broken educational systems.

Here in Saint Louis, we see all of these problems in spades. I was talking to Kimmie this week about her efforts to find a nicer place to live, and she talked about ‘the city’ in contrast to the South Side, or the Suburbs. The City is the part of town where cops aren’t called, where people commit crimes in broad daylight on busy streets, where your landlord is likely to be in almost as much financial trouble as you are. These are the realities of the city. I think it’s a natural part of a dense community-you get soaring sky scrapers, mansions along Lindel, and massive industry, but you also concentrated poverty, and swaths of territory where the services of government are poorly supplied. And these intractable problems, crime, poverty, poor schools, shape our vision of what it means to be city people.

But we have all chosen to be here, in the city. We all have other options, but have claimed this community. For me, I think this is where the work of God is most needed, this is where Social Workers can get jobs, this is where cultural and artistic activities can be a part of everyday life.

But it is also because I can envision this city as the city of God. There are ways I think, that Saint Louis is a place where healing flows to the nations-where there are streets of gold beneath our feet.

Whether that is in civic celebrations of community, or the everyday blessings of friends and neighbors creating redeeming structures, or in the hopes and prayers that surround us every day, there is a possibility in human community of truly remarkable relationships, and a transformed world. In the complicated interplay of wealth and power, all people can benefit from their interactions with one another-and that as we interact with the city as it is-the people begging on the street corners, the trash I pick out of the lawn every time I come to church and grumble in my heart against those with such distain for the streets, the traffic and long distances we drive, we feel the heart of the city as something good and beautiful and worth being a part of-a place where God is at work, designing systems of renewal.

Our gospel passage is part of Jesus’ long and convoluted final conversation with his disciples in John, just before the ascension, and before the coming of the Holy Spirit. In our passage this morning, there were two things that stuck out to me. First, the sense of being home where we are planted.

Jesus promises, where there are faithful people, working to do God’s will in the world, God and Jesus will make their home in that place. Here in this place, God is at home, as we struggle, as we delight, as we do together the commandment to love our neighbors. And if God is at home in the city, then hopefully we can be home as well.

And second, I notice the promise- ‘my peace I leave with you.’ It is passages like these, the repeated promise of Jesus that we have the Shalom of Jesus himself, that give me comfort when I get discombobulated, when I feel like the world is swirling around me. And it is at those times that I am most frustrated that I try to remember that God’s peace is not like the world’s peace-that even when I don’t feel any peace at all from the world, that there may still be the peace of Christ in there somewhere, that peace is at the core of reality. So as we look around us, I wonder, do we hear the promise that God’s peace rests on this city, that the Holy Spirit is here, and that within this mass of humanity, rests at its center a garden, with the water of life flowing for all?