Making the City Visible

The image of the church that Jesus imagines is a City on a Hill. In Jesus' day a city was a place of culture, life, and protection. It was a refuge for people who were adrift and who needed all the things that make for human thriving. The image is startling, breathtaking actually. Jesus is saying his people—collectively, in their common life of holiness, care, community, and love are a beacon of hope for world weary people. One of the big things about the Sermon on the Mount which we are discussing on Sundays is that the assumption is that salvation is never just “me and Jesus,” rather collectively the people of God are the social strategy that will make the God we can’t see, taste, touch, or hold—real and visible. As one writer puts it, “The most creative social strategy we have to offer [the culture around us] is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers." (Unverified quote)This Sunday we are talking about how this is possible. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is talking to religious people for the most part and yet he has to correct the teaching of the religious community he was born into and was a part of. Under the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and all the added list of things to do and rules they came up with—it was impossible for the people of God to even interact with the society of “sinners” around them, much less welcome them into a community of life, love, and thriving.So, on this Sunday we will talk about it and what St. Patrick has been trying, by God’s grace, to do for the past twenty years—not to have a great church, so much as to be a blessing to our town and neighbors. Jesus gave a grand vision for his people, that though persecuted, marginalized, or just generally ignored, his people would, by their life and love, make the city of God visible to the world around them. Jesus is saying that we are to be to the world around us what Jesus was to us when we were his enemies—a life giving and welcoming presence. Only the gospel can help us to that.Blessings,Jim