#3 HOPE FOR THE CITY

Every Good Friday, thousands of Melburnians gather in the streets of the city for a pilgrimage. Retracing the final steps of Jesus to his crucifixion, the crowd moves together from church to church, reading, praying and bearing witness to their faith. There are many of us at Collins Street who join them.

We begin outside St Francis Catholic Church, the city’s oldest, on Elizabeth. From there we nod to the Welsh Church on Latrobe before heading east to the Church of Christ on Swanston. Navigating around the QV, we continue up to the Wesley Church on Lonsdale and, from there, into the garden of St Peters Anglican on the rise of Eastern Hill. Across the road we pause twice in the grounds of the grand St Patrick’s Cathedral and then re-group outside the smaller Trinity Lutheran that sits snugly in the cathedral’s shadow. Heading down Collins we stop at St Michael’s Uniting Church. We then cross the Russell Street intersection to Scots Presbyterian before gathering beside our own white pillars. From there it’s on to the steps of St Paul’s, and then for the truly dedicated, we regather at dawn on Easter Sunday at St Johns Southgate across the river.

Like every city of its age and size, Melbourne has its share of grand ecclesial buildings, each one beautiful in its own way. But for every admirer of these churches, there are critics. And not just unbelieving ones. There are those within the Christian community who want to call us to account for our use of these buildings. In fact, I have a file of letters from them. I can’t simply dismiss their criticisms because, in fact, I agree: there is much for a city church to wrestle with. In some cases, old city churches house dwindling congregations struggling to keep their buildings up and open. There’s the never ending costs of maintenance, insurance and the sheer monetary value of the real estate. One critic from whom I received a call late last year — a fellow Baptist pastor — suggested strongly that selling up this “relic of the past” would free up an extraordinary amount of money for more strategic acts of mission.

We would be foolish to close our ears to these critics. As stewards of this fine building, we do have an obligation to ensure our stewardship of both property and resources is wise and always in response to God’s leading. Having said that, I have often wondered what the city would be like if all of these church buildings were gone. If the bulldozers moved in and razed these structures to the ground, what would be lost? Under the sheer force of economics they would be replaced, no doubt, with more towers of glass and steal that pay homage to the gods of commerce and profit. In the process, something of the city’s soul would be gone.

Whatever else church buildings like ours do, by their sheer presence they remind the city of an alternative set of values, of possibilities beyond the cold logic of the marketplace. At their best, their dramatic spires point not to the glory of human industry, but to something beyond it.

Churches like ours are often referred to as sacred places; places set apart, holy, dedicated to God and faith. As we continue this morning to think about the role of the church in the city, it’s this idea of sacred place that I want to explore. It’s not so much the sacredness of this building that I’m interested in. Rather, it’s the impact the community that meets in this building can have in nurturing the sacredness of the entire city.

The respected proponent of public spirituality, Philip Sheldrake, argues that the urban environment has a profound impact upon the human spirit. Cities shape the soul. It’s why the city’s development should be important to people of faith. City making, Sheldrake says, is about the functional, the ethical and the spiritual — what works, what is right and what is good. Good cities—cities that nurture the soul—are those that (i) enable their inhabitants to flourish through the stages of life; (ii) nurture belonging and connection; (iii) facilitate relationship with nature; and (iv) offer access to life as sacred. It is this idea of the church as facilitator of the sacred in the city that might just provide us a renewed sense of our place and purpose.

The text

We have read today from Revelation, one of the most confounding books in the New Testament. It’s an ancient form of writing we call apocalyptic literature. It takes a particular form in the Jewish tradition to reveal what God is up through time. It borrows heavily and idiosyncratically from multiple periods of history, ancient mythology and poetic imagery, painting pictures that often leave readers wide-eyed and bemused.

Revelation is sent as a letter to seven small churches in the Roman province of Asia. Each one of these communities lived under the influence and might of the Roman Empire. Rome was the centre of the universe and its Emperor a god. In Revelation it’s called Babylon and every one of these seven communities orbited around it, politically, socially and economically. Their daily lives were shaped by it, its influence pervasive, its power seductive. In order to know the Empire’s blessing, one had to surrender to its truth—the truth of the Emperor as God; the truth of Rome as the arbiter of social and economic blessing; and the rejection of all other truth.

The call of Revelation is a call to come out of Empire. It’s a call to these seven churches to live distinctively as God’s chosen people and according to the values of God’s kingdom. To illustrate the difference between the Empire of Rome and the Kingdom of God, the author of Revelation paints a picture of two cities, Babylon and New Jerusalem. These are not literal cities. They are apocalyptic, two contrasting realities, two different ways to live. Babylon represents a reality in which God is displaced and where the sacredness of life is decimated in favour of the Emperor’s power and dominion. New Jerusalem, on the other hand, is found wherever the community rejects the lies and violence of the Empire and places God at the centre of its life.

Importantly, this is not a call for these seven churches to leave Babylon and move to Jerusalem. It’s a call for them to live Jerusalem into existence where they are. It’s a call to hope the city of God into being. It’s this that makes the text from Revelation 21 and 22 such a challenging text for us. This is our role: to hope the city of God into existence right here.

The challenge

Our reading today paints a magnificent picture of this New Jerusalem and of the river of life flowing from the throne of God down the middle of the great street of the city. Can you see it? A torrent of grace and life and hope surging down Collins Street with the trees of healing and nourishment sprouting up from its sidewalks. It’s beautiful, poetic, inspiring. But as with all apocalyptic poetry, it leaves you none the wiser with how to actually live it. How does a church like ours live and minister in such a way that the river of life flows around us? How do we live and worship in a way that our entire city becomes sacred space?

In the few minutes we have left, let me identify some characteristics of this city of God that have application to the way we function here in Melbourne.

First, this New Jerusalem is a city of history and our role is to embody that history.

Chapter 21.12 says: “It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and … on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites … And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

This New Jerusalem is a city of hope because it is built on a continuing story of faith; it is built on the foundations of faith, obedience and sacrifice laid generations before. By the fact that this church community has been here for more than 180 years, we bear testimony every day to the continuing certainty of God’s presence at Melbourne’s heart. This does not make us a museum of faith long past, but a living community witness to the story of God today amidst the story of Melbourne. As we keep telling that story of God, so we remind the city of the sacredness of its own story.

Second, this New Jerusalem is a city of prophetic courage and our role is to embody that courage.

Chapter 21.22 says: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light.”

Amidst a culture of oppressive power and exclusion, the city of God is a beacon of light by which the nations will know truth and justice. Our call as the church is to be a beacon of light in Babylon. It is our vocation to stand on the side of righteousness and redemption. To do so requires courage, for we will need to speak when the powers of this city work to exclude and marginalize. We will need to speak God’s radical hospitality and inclusion while other voices in the church shout us down. When others prioritise the voices of those with resources and influence, we will stand up for those who are silenced and ignored. And in so doing, we will ensure the humanity of this city is maintained and the New Jerusalem realised.

Third, this New Jerusalem is a city of open doors and our role is to keep them open.

Chapter 21.25 says: “Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.”

An ancient city was marked by its high walls and gates securely guarded and locked. But in this New Jerusalem the gates will be forever open and all will be welcome. The movement between the city of Babylon and the New Jerusalem is fluid. They are not two different cities, but two different ways of being the city. When we choose to be a church of open doors, embodying what it means to be a hospitable community of welcome in the neighbourhood, we live the city of God, we nurture the New Jerusalem at Babylon’s heart.

I’ve called this series City of Dreams. We people of faith are the dreamers. We refuse to believe that Babylon is all there is. We dream of New Jerusalem. But we are more then dreamers. We are activists. Our calling is to live that dream into reality. If a city church like ours is nothing more than a grand religious trench to hide in while we await our eternal transport to some other place, then our critics are right. We are guilty as charged, guilty of wasting our resources and we should be held to account. But here at Collins Street that is not the case. Our vocation is to live the New Jerusalem right here, right now. As long as we remain committed to that task, then the questions of our stewardship can be answered with integrity. I pray that will always be the case.

Amen.