One of the most interesting chapters so far in the book I've been reading, Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, has been the chapter on the role of the city in the Old Testament. In the previous post, I quoted a portion of Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz's discussion on the role religion played in the city, where they made the point that like anything else, the life of the city is either lived in service to or in rebellion to God.

In the Ancient Near East and in the Old Testament this was no different. Conn and Ortiz write, "The lifestyle of the city is religion made visible, faith reflected either toward God or against him" (93). Today, if you live in a city that does not honour the God of Scripture, you do not necessarily need to expect that life will be exceedingly difficult, but this was not the case in the cities of the Ancient Near East. Conn and Ortiz note that "in these ancient city-states with their autocratic territorial gods, the ruler or king interpreted the will of the gods. And the people served as slaves of the gods and of their earthly, royal regents" (94). When the ruler was convinced that he was an agent of the gods, then it was total obedience to his rule that became the highest virtue, naturally resulting in tyranny against the people he ruled over.

In this context that Israel was called to be radically different. Already before they took possession of the Promised Land, God instructed them regarding what type of king they should have to reign over them, giving them a portrait of a king that was the polar opposite of the kings of the Ancient Near East (Deut. 17:14-20). And further, it was not just Israel's kings that were to be different, but her entire society and culture. Her cities were to be places where justice and mercy reigned and life was to be found in abundance for all who lived in fidelity to the covenant Lord.

In dramatic contrast to all this, Yahweh called his people to a new model for urban life. Israel was to be the exhibition place for God's redemptive grace in the city and the empires that formed around God's people in history. At the heart of the model was a new theological vision, a covenant relationship between the suzerain God and his servant community. At the core of that vision was a concept of divine kingship new to the ancient world, and to demonstrate it, a new sociopolitical organization (95).

It is not insignificant that the Promised Land God gave to the Israelites was at the very heart of the Ancient Near Eastern world. He called Israel to be examples to the nations surrounding her of justice and righteouness. "Israel's social and political identity as a people of righteousness was to mirror the righteousness of God" (97). And what's more, their covenantal commitment to God meant that they would reject loyalty to the gods of the surrounding city-states, and would also reject how those societies were ordered. "Out of the covenant notion that Yahweh is king and Israel is Yahweh's kingdom (Is. 43:15) was to come a new social and political order of rule" (97).

Over against an urban world where justice and righteousness could mean oppression and disregard for the weak and the poor, hesed (compassionate, merciful) love forbade taking advantage of others in the name of law (Matt. 23:23). In God's new social order it was not simply justic that must be maintained; it was love and justice (Hos. 12:6). Yahweh's delight was 'kindness, justice and righteousness on earth' (Jer. 9:24; Is. 16:5)...Israel's identity was established by the doing of justice, righteousness and love to the cosmic God and to the Israelites' neighbors.

The Torah pointed to the social reflection of that calling. Israel was to be a benevolent and just society embodying the exclusive kingship of Yahweh, its benevolent and just Lord. As a people, Israel was to be the image of God, exhibiting the glory of God in love toward God and human beings. (98-99)

Living according to God's law would mean that Israel lived in a way that was diametrically opposed to the surrounding nations. In her cities she would show concern for the weak and the poor and would make no economic or class distinctions. Justice and compassion would transcend not just these barriers, but even the divisions of ethnicity. The alien and stranger would be invited into the community that worshiped Yahweh as the sovereign Lord. Under the covenant law, all were equal. Kings too were subject to keeping the law. The people did not serve the kings, but all of Israel served the high King of heaven. The majestic temple of her capital city, Jerusalem, would demonstrate this in a very real and tangible way.

The parallel with us as the new Israel is clear, I hope. Just as God placed his people in the middle of the world, as it were, so he places his church in the midst of the world as well. As his covenant people, called to live according to his rule, we are to demonstrate through our words and our actions that the Kingdom of God has arrived. We are to invite those around us, in our cities, towns and villages, into the beauty of this life lived in service to the sovereign Lord, for it is here that a new societal order is found. It is here that life is found in abundance, life that is richer and fuller than anything that the world can offer. It is a life of true freedom and blessing, where true justice and righteousness are found. And it is our task to work to bring this peace and this prosperity to our cities.

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Since I have a few posts in the pipeline about the city, building on yesterday's post, I found this to be quite interesting. Andy Crouch talks about a shift in how we identify ourselves—previous generations would define themselves by their work, but today's generation finds the identity of place much more important. I've observed myself that people will often ask where you are from before they ask what you do, although this may have to do with the fact that I live in a very transient place, one which very few people call 'home' in the sense of being born and raised here.

Watch the clip and let me know what you think.

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While I was away this week, I had some time to start reading Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City & the People of God, co-authored by Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz. It really is an excellent book, although I've discovered that just reading through it is not sufficient—I am going to have to go back to the beginning armed with my trusty pencil and ruler and take the time to pore over the material and mine the gold from this thick volume.

One of the themes Conn and Ortiz develop in the book is that the city is a fundamentally religious place, a theme I will be looking at in the next few posts as I continue to work through the book. In ancient history, the religious character of the city was much more overt, but the more subliminal religiosity of today's cities does not obscure the fact that it still remains a fundamentally religious place. Conn and Ortiz write that in the city we find

urban mazes searching through the city for meaning and order to existence—quests that never escape their religious origins. With organized systems that structure religion around the supernatural, building temple and mosque. With unorganized common or folk religions that focus hopes for safe air travel in the 'spirit of the air' embodied in a straw idol and then discard it at the Kimpo airport in Seoul as the plane is boarded. With the surrogate religion of the great England bowler Harold Larwood, who claimed, 'Cricket was my reason for living.' With the unorganized invisible religion that finds its answer to the yearning of the heart in sex or ideology, work or family (191).

Of course, this is just a testament to the reality that human beings are themselves, at the core, religious beings. Conn and Ortiz cite John Calvin in the first book of his Institutes of the Christian Religion:

God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. Ever renewing its memory, he repeatedly sheds fresh drops...[All men] continue to retain some seed of religion. So deeply does the common conception occupy the minds of all, so tenaciously does it inhere in the hearts of all! Therefore, since from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all (I.iii.1).

With that in view, Conn and Ortiz ask a pressing question: "Who waits in the urban shadows of these dead-end mazeways distorted by sin, these blurred human paths along which we stumble through the city, blindly searching for links to the cosmos and its norm, to the riddle of our existence?" (191). Whoever these people are, let it be the church that shines light into those shadows, being the presence of Jesus and his Kingdom in the city. We are called as the people of God to "seek the peace and prosperity of the city" and to "pray to the Lord for it" (Jeremiah 29:7). The best thing for any city are churches that actively seek to love and serve their cities.

In a place where a plethora of idols compete for its citizens hearts, in a place where meaning and purpose is distored or even lost, in a place where people's identities can be reduced to nothing, let us proclaim the message of the gospel that crushes all idols, provides total meaning and purpose, and gives people their ultimate identity as citizens of the Kindgom and children of the King.

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Church planting groups like Redeemer City to City have for some time now been stressing the need for churches to be planted in major cities, and for this reason have targeted some of the biggest and most important cities in the world in their work. Tim Keller, in a recent post on Redeemer CTC's blog, wrote that the church's focus on cities is so critical "because of the sheer masses of people who live there and because of how influential cities are on their respective societies and cultures."

It would be hard to deny the importance of the cities and their powerful influence on culture. There is a reason so many people around the world leave rural towns and villages in droves and flock to the cities, even if it means they need to live in conditions of squalor in the slums and shanty-towns bordering those cities. There is an anticipation, a hope of something better, an expectation that the city will provide something they do not have. The city, in some sense, becomes synonymous with life.

Why has the city come be what it is? Graham Ward, professor of contextual theology and ethics at the University of Manchester, offers some rather intriguing insights into this question in his book, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens, one of the books in The Church and Postmodern Culture series that Jamie Smith is editing. Ward writes,

Cities are the greatest and most complex of human arts forms. They are aesthetic installations of juggernaut proportions, and they are shot through with transcendental aspirations. Lewis Mumford raises an important questions. What, he asks, drew people from the comfortable security of villages into the towers, walls and precincts of early cities? Cities were not created simply out of large numbers of people coming together; something attracted them into an orbit that fed not their bodies but their desires and imaginations. Mumford pinpoints the catalyst: the figure of the local chieftain merged with the priest and created the king. With the institution of sacral kingship, a new symbolic world order emerged—the city. Only for the gods would human beings exert themselves in the building of citadels and the construction of walls too thick simply to keep out other human and animal invaders. The king become a symbol, a metonymic figure of dazzling ambiguity, incarnating the corporate personality of the community. It is not that the sacred was invented with kingship, for the shrine had always been a focal point for congregating and, before city dwelling for the living, there were always necropoli, cities of the dead. But with the institution of sacral kingship came an urban explosion, for around him grew the scribes, the lawyers, the military, who fostered an intellectual and cultural life. The city thus came to represent 'the cosmos, a means of bringing heaven down to earth, the city [as] a symbol of the possible. Utopia was an integral part of its original constitution, and precisely because it took form as an ideal projection, it brought into existence realities that might have remained latent for an indefinite time in more soberly governed small communities.' The city, then, has always been shot through with references to the transcendent, while simultaneously being the site for the massive extension of what it is to be human, for in cities human capabilities are extended by the aggregate of human beings dwelling there; there is an accumulation of wealth, power, and intellectual ingenuity. Besides being the sites for the sacred, they are the sites for Promethean aspirations, sites for self-assertion. Here lie the origins over the struggle for the soul of the city (207-208).

And it is precisely because of this ongoing struggle for the soul of the city that we need the church in the city.

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I love these folks. They are doing great things.

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