Transcript
From the Revelation to John: “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good Samaritan is laid out ad orientem, facing east. The altars are on the east end. The people face east. We are a city-facing church. We don’t turn our backs on the city. Neither does the God who rescued Israel from bondage in Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead.
In biblical literature (see Genesis, chapter 4), the city is the invention of the line of Cain. That’s not a lineage full of promise. The world’s first murderer invents the world’s first city.
Why did Cain invent a city? He thought it would be a refuge, having been cast into a world in which anyone can kill you. Why did Cain have such thoughts? Because he had taken his brother Abel out into the field where no one was watching, and killed him.
St Augustine in the fifth century was alert to this biblical theology of the city. He saw a parallel with respect to Rome, the ‘eternal city.’ And how about that Augustinian South Sider—as White Sox fans are called in Chicago—who stepped out onto a balcony the other day? The Villanova local boy made good? I get such a kick out of knowing that, just like you, the Bishop of Rome has held a door open for somebody at WaWa. As a Michigander and Chicagoan, I get a big kick out of knowing that we have a Pope who knows what it means to “Save Big Money at Menard’s!”
In Augustine’s time, Rome was the city which for 500 years had represented to people everywhere civilization, order, stability. He was living in Hippo, in North Africa, at the time of the fall of Rome in 410, and writing in the aftermath. A two-year siege reduced the citizenry of Rome to cannibalism. Then the Goths and Alaric the king came into the city, and for three days they murdered Rome’s inhabitants, terrorizing them, looting whatever treasures were left, burning the buildings and all the rest of it.
St Jerome in Jerusalem when he heard news of the fall of Rome cried out, “If Rome can perish, what can be safe?” Augustine responds to that anguish. He ministers to the refugees of Rome who had fled to North Africa. He writes The City of God. And echoing the story of the founding of the city by the world’s first fratricide, he tells the story of the spiritual nature of Rome.
He reminds his readers about the legend of Rome. How it had been founded by Romulus after he murdered his twin brother Remus. Romulus wanted to keep all the glory for himself, so he eliminated the competition of his twin brother. And Augustine sees this as a symbol for the savage thuggery that underlies not just Rome but every human civilization, the City of Man wherever it is to be found.
And starting from that debased beginning Augustine records for us all the other evidence that beneath the outward pomp and glory and architectural wonder of Rome lies a lethal swamp of decadence. And so Augustine concludes: though God’s ways are inscrutable, nevertheless if God allowed Rome to fall it was surely not an act of injustice that God had allowed this city to reap what it had sown. That’s a big example of what Whitney calls the Elephant on the Beach.
But Augustine knew: this is not the whole story of cities. It explained the fall of Rome. It explains the city of Enoch first founded by Cain, but it is not the whole story! Because, as Father Matthew told us last week, God is easily thwarted but doesn’t give up easily. God hunts us down.
The City of Man God chases down, and turns around, for his loving purposes.
The city is one of many cultural attainments attributed to the line of Cain. Urbanization. Nomadism. Animal husbandry. The invention of the original musical instruments. Metallurgy. Technology and the arts in all their variegated manifestations. All of these things come out of the line of Cain. When we put together that list, we get the point that God’s redemptive power turns things around for his glory, for what’s true, good, and beautiful. And thank God for that! Those musical instruments invented in the line of Cain will later be used by David to sing God’s praise.
God does not anathematize the city. Humans do that. God has a city for his people. Hebrews in the 11th chapter says of Abraham that, “by faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.” And what was God’s promise? “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder was God.” Everything men and women want in the earthly city, God provides for his people in the heavenly city.
And that city can be ours in some measure even in this mortal life. Deuteronomy 6, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your forefathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you — a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant — then when you eat and are satisfied be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
And when Israel in the Babylonian captivity was taken out of Jerusalem into exile? What do you do in Babylon, a city of man if there ever was one? Circle the wagons? Retreat into some kind of protected enclave? No. Jeremiah, chapter 29: “This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters . . . Increase in number there; do not decrease. And seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I’ve carried you into exile.’”
Please take the hymnal, and turn to hymn #479. That hymn, titled WEM IN LEIDENSTAGEN, begins, Glory be to Jesus, / Who in bitter pains / Poured for me the life-blood / From his sacred veins. // Grace and life eternal / In that blood I find; / Blest be his compassion, / Infinitely kind.
Our hymnal leaves out a stanza; I don’t know why. When the Bible was put together, when the hymnal was put together, nobody consulted me. So I see to it that, when we use this fine Eucharistic hymn, we sing a missing stanza. It goes like this: Abel’s blood for vengeance / Pleaded to the skies; / But the blood of Jesus / For our pardon cries.
So pray for Philadelphia. Pray for Rome. Pray for Jerusalem. Pray for the city to which God calls you.
Let us pray. O Blessed Lord Jesus, our choicest gift, our dearest guest, let not our souls be busy inns that have no room for you and yours, but quiet homes of prayer and praise where you may find the best company, where needful cares of life are wisely ordered and put away, and where wide, sweet spaces are kept for you. So when you come again, O Blessed One—the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God—may you find all things ready, and your servants waiting for no new master, but for one long loved and known. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.
