The City in Lent
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
March 4, 2007
Philippians
3:1-4:1/Luke 13:31-35
Allow me, please, two brief autobiographical references. Following
college I headed for seminary. I loaded up the 1974 pale green
Plymouth Satellite, which averaged, if I remember, about two
miles to the gallon. I drove across Ohio through Indiana and
over the Chicago Skyway into the city of Chicago. And right
about then I realized I had no idea where I was going, literally.
I didn’t have directions. I don’t even know if I
had the seminary’s address written down in all of the
papers I had brought with me. So I did what we men sometimes
do. I drove for several hours until I found it. [laughter]
I arrived at seminary, from a small town and a suburban experience.
And by the time I left there, a call and a focus had been ingrained
upon my spirit: ministry in the city, first in a small neighborhood
congregation on the north side, later in a large downtown congregation,
and then here, the Flower City (or the Flour City, depending
on your historical perspective). It is a commitment that has
been maintained and deepened, a call to ministry in the city
that I view in no way to be accidental.
A second remembrance. I have been privileged to travel in
the Middle East for two extended periods of time. The first
time was a full quarter as a college student. I resonate fully
with the writings of author Hugh Piper. “Jerusalem remains
a unique focus of hope in the beauty of human aspiration and
in despair, in the intransigence of human folly, a potential
flashpoint for war and yet the place to which all nations may
one day be drawn in peace.”
I experienced that full set of impressions in my time in the
city of Jerusalem. We had enough time to be there to engage
the more off-the-road tourist sites, including spending an hour
or so in the room where this morning’s gospel lesson was
reputed to have unfolded, Jesus’ lament over the city.
And like all the historic sites in Jerusalem, we don’t
know for certain precisely where anything happened. But I do
know that it did happen, Jesus lamenting over the city. It happened.
It would happen again. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he
cried out.
My hunch is somehow that lament would be quite similar in
this era. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Or perhaps Nairobi, Nairobi.
Or New Orleans, New Orleans. Or even Rochester, Rochester. Just
as Jesus lamented over the city, we are called to do the same.
Just as he did, we lament and despair.
But we lament in hope as well. We lament about a range of
issues. Every morning’s newspaper gives us a familiar
litany. We read about them, hear about them, experience them
each day. And whatever their specificity, all seem to me to
reflect some sense of human brokenness, our own spirit, or the
human communities, whether it’s crime, or poverty, or
education, or hunger, or homelessness, a list all too familiar
to us.
As this new millennium unfolds, we realize these are issues
not exclusive to the city. Suburban and rural life as well experience
all the things that we experience out of this place. In a sense
we are becoming as one grand city, if not a unified one.
In my parents’ experience living in central Ohio, the
home where they live now used to be in the country. It is not
any longer. Not that they’ve moved, but the city has moved
to them. It’s a reality we all experience.
The city moving toward us seems to be a fundamental biblical
movement. I believe it’s an important theme: Jesus coming
to the city. And it is an important theme for we who gather
in this place, we who are connected to the city.
I’m aware all the time how spread out this congregation
is, many communities, many ZIP codes, many life experiences.
Yet somehow the city draws us in and draws us together in worship,
and in ministry, and in service, regardless of where you live,
where you have lived, where you will live. You are here because
you are committed to this place’s commitments. And this
church would not be what it is if it were not for the context
in which God has placed us.
That is to say, Jesus came to the city, and we do as well.
That is also to say that the city for us is not something to
reject or to avoid, but rather to embrace and to engage.
It is deeply planted in our Presbyterian DNA. From the very
outset in John Calvin’s Geneva in the early 1500s, faith
and the life of the city went hand in hand, inextricably linked.
Calvin, in fact, believed that the church and the state had
the same goal --- the redemption of society. Calvin was one
who believed in a strong political authority, as long as it
didn’t venture into tyranny. He called for economic justice
to be at the heart of our faith from the very outset, and that
whatever abundance we all experienced in the life of the city
should be shared with those who had fewer resources.
The laundry list of the issues in which John Calvin was involved
is as fresh as this day: fair wages, a concern about high interest
rates, good hospitals, fairness to refugees who streamed into
the city day by day (an immigration issue, to be sure), public
education. Could we do any better this day than to craft such
a wonderful social justice agenda?
Church historian Ronald Wallace reminds us that Calvin believed
there was no distinction between the natural world, that is,
the world you and I live in and which we find ourselves moving
and living and breathing, and the supernatural sphere, the world
in which God lives. No distinction! And in fact, Calvin believed
that the church and the state were called to live in a kind
of mutual interdependence, on behalf of the commonwealth of
all people living under the word of God.
Again, that approach is as familiar as this morning’s
headlines, for us and the church God is calling us to be ---
the redemption of the society, the ways that we are interdependent,
one with another, whether we live in this place or halfway around
the world in Nairobi, a commonwealth under the vision and the
word of God.
The context is evolving. Calvin’s Geneva was a purely
Christian city. Ours is not. The current reality means that
we need to think about diversity in a creative and humble and
faithful way. A Sunday with our friends from B’rith Kodesh
and a Sunday following in the African-American tradition remind
us of how immense those challenges are. But how wonderful the
opportunities are to respond around the ways God is calling
us to be present in the city!
We are not living in the Christian context of Calvin’s
Geneva, but the call to redemption and the common good is nonetheless
precisely the same. It was Calvin’s call, but more so
it was Jesus’ call, the call to lament over the city,
and not to stop at the process of lamentation, but rather to
bring about the city’s redemption.
Those of you who are familiar with the Presbyterian story
in this country know that what used to be called urban ministry
has been one of our strengths. It is less so now. Denominational
resources are dwindling. The presence of Presbyterians in the
city is dwindling as well. In some ways, Third Church, this
congregation, is a bit of a Presbyterian anomaly. We are experiencing
a certain kind of growth and vitality. And other city churches,
whether in this one or elsewhere, are facing challenges. They
are no less faithful in their approach. There are many reasons
why churches do well and don’t do so well.
But whatever it is that is happening in this place, we cannot
be content. We need to keep pushing ourselves, pushing ourselves
on the issues of diversity, whether it’s economic diversity
or racial diversity, pushing ourselves on matters of advocacy
for the common good, on matters of justice.
One wonders what the occasion for this conversation might
be. Well, clearly it’s a scriptural mandate. As Jesus
looks over the city of Jerusalem and laments and weeps, he raises
the question for us. And surely on a day when we gather as an
annual meeting of the congregation, this is quite the Presbyterian
thing to do. It is certainly the opportunity to frame the agenda
again for our life together. What are we called to do? What
is God calling us to do? How is God calling us to respond in
the city and in this time and place? How is God calling us to
use our resources, the gifts that you and I have been given
together to redeem the city, to redeem the world? What’s
our challenge?
A primary challenge is for us, simply, to work to make connections,
and first of all to make connections with people. You will read
of a diversity of people trying to work their way back into
the city and into this region, including new generations. How
do we find ways to invite them to share in the ministry that
we share in this place? How do we discover what they are interested
in, whether it’s education or arts or music or outreach?
We know, because you and I experience the same thing, that what
we are doing is seeking meaning in a complex and conflicted
world, and that we have gifts to offer, and we need an outlet
for them. And so how can we in this place think about growth,
not simply numerical growth and growth for its own sake, but
growth that will support the vision that we have been given
as a gift?
I believe we are also called to heal the breach, to heal the
breach between people in the city and beyond, and to heal the
breach between people and their city, to find ways to agitate
and encourage the powers that be, whether at city hall or in
the school system, to allow for services and goods and opportunities
to reach out to all the people that God has called us to be
neighbors with.
I believe we are called to wipe away tears, to wipe away the
tears of our neighbors, to be sure, whether it’s those
who are coming for tutoring, or housing, or for a meal, or coming
simply for a place to rest, a sanctuary for a little while.
And I believe that as we do that, we are called to wipe away
each other’s tears as well, as we grieve and lament, whether
it’s in our personal lives or in the life of a community.
And might we, even, in the process, wipe away the tears that
Jesus sheds over the city.
To think about these things might call us back to some earlier
generations. I skimmed over again this week Harvey Cox’s
great book of the 1960s called The Secular City. It is very
relevant today. Cox writes about the human tendency to withdraw,
to retreat, to avoid, and reminds us that our call is not to
renounce the city, as some do, but to engage it fully, for the
sake of the God who gives us this great message. And somehow,
bubbling around in all this, we sense that’s why we are
here. We sense, with Augustine, whose fundamental work, The
City of God, written 400 years after the birth of Christ, declares
that God doesn’t flee from the city, but that God dwells
in it. And we share that call, that belief, and seek to abide
with God in this place.
The author John Gladwyn wrote, “Making a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem today can be one of the most sobering of all experiences.
Of course it’s possible to visit the city, see the sights,
contemplate the sacred places, and be almost totally blind to
the tragic dynamic of the city today. A pilgrim, however, who
learns to reflect on the meaning for the present of the religious
events to which the city bears witness, is confronted by all
the complex and baffling questions of faith. Is there a hope
for the future? Can faith be a partner of such hope? Or will
it be a hindrance?”
Those are his questions for Jerusalem. Perhaps they are ours
as well, whether we are focusing on that holy city, as we will
do next weekend (as we think about the Middle East), or this
city, pilgrims all of us, the city to which God has called us.
God is in the city business. Therefore, it’s our business.
And God is in the business of wiping away every tear. And so
we are called this day to transform our lamentations so that
the song of the city becomes a song of joy and hope. May it
be so. And may God be glorified in all that we say, and do,
and are.
AMEN.
