God in the City

Finding God in the City

I spent Thursday in Seattle. My wife had a class at Swedish hospital for advanced certification in obstetrical nursing. I went along so we could drive in the car pool lane. After dropping her off I drove by Seattle University and parked myself in a coffee shop to work on my sermon. In the afternoon, I spent an hour walking along bluffs that overlook Puget Sound.

Walking on Magnolia Way it was easy to imagine God really enjoying city life. The people I encountered appeared fit, relaxed, successful, happy. Yards showed the investment of lots of care, creativity and money. Out on the Sound, under a partly cloudy sky, boats threw up white wakes. Gulls called. Who could imagine a better place to live?

I’ve gone to concerts in the city, spent hours in the art museums, done research in the University library. From our house we have easy access to the airport.

The city is where human creativity is most fully developed in education, art, music, medical specialization, business, technology and transportation. In the city humans act most like the Creator God, shaping every aspect of their world with artfulness and intellect. No wonder God delights in cities. It is easy to recognize the image of God in the grand creativity of humans displayed most fully in the city.

In the Bible, God’s pleasure in urban life is shown in the story of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, in the insistence that Jerusalem is the place where God chose “to put his name,” and in the final pictures of Revelation focused on the New Jerusalem.

There are "unbeautiful" elements of urban life where God’s involvement may not be obvious.

This week, I visited a couple of friends who live on McKinley Avenue in south Tacoma. The house they live in is pretty dilapidated. The few pieces of furniture are decrepit and dirty. Neither of the guys has steady employment. Henry and Jeff scrape by on odd jobs and veterans disability benefits. They have long histories with alcohol. The area is notorious for drugs and crime. There are store front churches and a couple of Buddhist temples serving immigrants (not sophisticated, urbane White Buddhists).

When I stopped by, they were watching TV. I sat down to watch with them. A woman was telling her story: Her daughter’s boyfriend had approached her sexually. It surprised her, but did not make her unhappy. Then the boyfriend was brought on stage. He protested it had been an unfortunate mistake. The mother said she loved him which caused him considerable consternation. About that time they brought out the daughter. She was furious. How could her mother have done this to her? She told her boyfriend she was through with him, then slapped him. The boyfriend said, “I deserved that.” About that time, mercifully, there was a commercial break.

Having never seen the show before I was astonished and mesmerized. My friends laughed at my naivete. “You’ll be coming over every day just so you can watch Jerry Springer!”

As I was leaving, one of the guys asked about a woman we know. When I said she had been at church recently he urged me to put in a good word for him with her. He made a light-hearted reference to past liaisons with her. I have no idea whether he was talking fact or fiction.

How do we find God in this part of the city?

My first reaction to the losers on Jerry Springer’s show was dismissive. Why did they let some producer sucker them into telling their miserable story to the world? But to God, the mother, daughter and boyfriend were not mere pawns in a crude reality TV show. They were his daughters and son. The chaos of their lives is not the bizarre action of incomprehensible strangers, it is the life of God’s children.

When I listen to friends talk about their children’s addictions, sexual and marital blunders, employment and educational failures, I hear all kinds of emotions. Anger, hurt, bewilderment, longing, hope, despair. What I don’t hear is detachment. It may be the thirty-fifth chapter of the same old story, but because it is being written in the life of their child, there is no detachment. Their child is not an alien, not a stranger.

When I first met Henry and Jeff, they seemed to me to be aliens, inhabitants of a different planet separated from my world by a profound, unbridgeable chasm. Now we are friends. Their block is part of my “neighborhood.” They are part of my parish. Their struggles and desires touch my heart. I suspect God is pleased with the friendship between his sons.

When we keep company with the city dwellers whose lives are the fodder of crime novels and reality TV shows we are keeping God company. When we touch their pain with some bit of solace we are touching and soothing the pain of God (Matthew 25). We encounter God by opening our hearts to people with broken, chaotic lives. God lives with them, too.

Often Christians have imagined the “good life” to be life in a rural setting far removed from the demands of complex society and the evident brokenness that can be found in parts of the city. But this is a defective imagination. The Bible’s picture of God’s presence places God especially among humans who hurt and sin and fail. For those with eyes to see and hearts that are fully aware, God will be encountered most intensely in the heart of the city, in the press and call of human need.

In the Book of Revelation, the final picture of divine-human life is not set in a garden or wilderness. It is the picture of a vibrant city full of light, work and harmonious relationships. God loves a city. It is our calling as Christians to seek the peace of the cities where we live (Jeremiah 29) and to prepare for an eternity of urban bliss with God (Revelation 22:1-5).