During our City Vision Group meeting today, Cory focused on the city. He entitled it “An Urban Journey from the Broken City to the New City.” Since these meetings are mostly geared towards people who live outside of Richmond city limits, I was interested to see how this discussion was going to go. By starting the study with the idea of the broken city, we looked at the very first city; Enoch was started by Cain, a murderer. The second city Babel tried to build a tower so high that they could reach heaven to make a name for itself. As one woman pointed out, as she was growing up, these were the passages used to support the idea that Christians should not be in the cities. They were places of sin and immorality.
However, the Bible also paints a glorious picture of the redeemed city. Numbers 35 describes the cities as a place of justice where a fair trial can occur. Psalm 107 reminds us that as the people cried out to the Lord when they were hungry, thirsty, and tired that the Lord “delivered them in their distress…[and] He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.” Other passages in Numbers explain how the cities were the cultural and commercial centers. And most importantly, Psalm 122, a song of ascent, shows how Jerusalem is a place of worship and faith.
Psalms 122: I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!" 2 Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! 3 Jerusalem, built as a city which is bound firmly together, 4 to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD. 5 There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David. 6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! "May they prosper who love you! 7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers!" 8 For my brethren and companions' sake I will say, "Peace be within you!" 9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
Here, a new picture of what cities are like is painted for Christians. The city is the place of refuge, a place of culture, a place of commercialism, and a place of worship. It is where the temple was located. Great city walls were built as a protection around the city. To be inside those city walls was an assurance of peace, protection, and hope for prosperity. Having been to Israel, a clear idea of the power of those city walls is vivid in my mind. Riding up to the city of Jerusalem, reading the songs of ascent, and feeling the awesome power of the city on the hill was and still is overwhelming. There was power there. There was hope there. And having had the opportunity to walk to the city walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, I can see why people wanted to be within those walls.
But just like Jerusalem could never be the city that God intended it to be, cities today cannot seem to illustrate the redeemed cities God described throughout scripture. It is always hard when my grandmother comes to visit me in Richmond. She remembers coming here as young women with her husband and going out to the theater on Broad, shopping at Miller & Rhodes, and spending the night at the John Marshall Hotel. The city of Richmond was thriving with activity in the city. Now though, when she sees those dilapidated buildings, the harsh reality of the changing city is even more apparent to her. It saddens her to see such a change happen to what she describes “a vibrant, fun city.”
What happens over the years? How do these buildings become abandoned? How do the theaters, shops, and hotels move out into the suburbs? A lot of it has to do with economics, housing, and finances. Where the money lives, there the businesses go as well. With the white flight into the suburbs, the changing economy to be strongly service based, and the largest amounts of wealth residing outside of the city, little investment is being made inside the city walls. This is exactly the opposite of what is painted in the Bible as the redeemed city. The city now leaves people without refuge, without justice, without cultural and commercial development, and without places of worship that actually serve the community around it.
So what do we do? What is our responsibility as Christians to make the cities around the country resemble the cities of the Bible God used to honor him? We invest. Let me clarify because investment means more than spending money. We invest in people, we invest in businesses in the city, we invest in the criminal justice system, we invest in the school board. We invest in the churches serving the inner cities, we invest in historic restoration projects, and we invest in making this world look like heaven. Revelation 11: 15 explains that at the end of time “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign for ever and ever.” I think it is time we started making the kingdom of this world more resembling of the kingdom of our Lord quickly.
I use the word quickly with hesitation though. While there is urgency to spread the gospel, heal the broken hearted, tend to the widowed, we must not, as Christians, ever been looking for a quick fix for our friends, our family, our schools, and especially our cities. I find it an easy trap to enter when people from the outside, myself included, enter the city claiming to have all the answers. I call those people the suburban superheroes. They are the people who grew up jaded by the declining inner city and moved the newly constructed suburbs nearly 50 years ago. This suburban super hero though is not in the mix of a changing culture where my generation is focusing on enacting the justice to the cities that has been lost for years. So what is the suburban superhero’s place in this justice movement? For them, they see their middle to upper middle class professionalism as the answer the city’s hopes. Put some money here, create a program there, and pray for “those people” to come to know Jesus and bam, problem solved. Wrong. No matter what color the suburban superhero makes his or her cape, they cannot be Richmond’s savior. Batman, Superman, Spiderman – they were all created. They are not real. Superheroes do not exist. There is one savior, one person who can save us and one person who can make us into a new creation. That person is Jesus and if we ever lose sight of that, we will only be strange fat white people wearing capes.
So plead with God to help you learn how to invest correctly. It might mean giving of your time, your energy, or your money. If we are to be truly effective in creating a city that resembles God’s idea of a redeemed city, it will most likely mean investing our lives. It will mean taking in a teenager who is pregnant and has no where to live. It will mean “adopting” recently released inmate and helping them start a new life. It will mean intentionally forming relationships with people who are not like you. It will mean walking out the gospel every day. And even then, we do not receive capes or a superhero status. We do however receive a welcoming into the family of God.
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