To begin with, I am not a city person. I’ve lived in the city, studied in the city, worked in the city, found the love of my life in the city, have many friends in the city … but I don’t like cities. Cities are too noisy, too busy, too impersonal and anonymous; cities are hard concrete, towers stabbing skywards, gutters leeching downwards. Whether New York or London, Delhi or Johannesburg, Sydney or Sao Paulo - cities are man-made idols whose bright lights obliterate the stars and vast God-made galaxies with suffocating urban nightmares and intoxicating dreams of self-importance.
But
cities are a scriptural metaphor. More than eight hundred times, the
Scriptures refer to Jerusalem as the “City of our God.” I’ve been to
Jerusalem several times and I really cannot say that I like it any better than
any other city I have visited anywhere in the world. And to tell the truth
– I don’t know what God sees in Jerusalem that would compel him to be
identified with it. It is as non-God-like a city as Rome or Moscow or
Beijing or even Washington DC – chaotic, confusing, congested, and crime
prone.As a child I was taught that heaven was a different kind of city - clean and calm – the New Jerusalem, where the streets are paved with gold and where people neither work nor mourn and where there is no day or night. It sounded terribly boring to me as a person who thoroughly enjoys storms, hearing the wind cascading through the trees, feeling the stinging salt spray of crashing ocean waves, listening to the eerie howl of coyotes in the hills, and watching the sunset for the shimmer of green flash just when the sun slips beneath the horizon. These are not the things of city life, no matter how historic or grand the city. I’ve often wondered why God would spoil all the majesty of nature which he created only to imprison a gazillion faithful human beings behind pearly gates and to walk on streets of gold – forever!
Yet much of my life has been spent in cities and in institutions that are part of the urban reality – prisons. I am always relieved to get out of the city. During a visit to Lima, Peru when all of the prison visits and meetings were over I was looking forward to some down time of being alone, escaping from noise and people. Instead, my colleague Javier insisted on taking me to “Ciudad de Dios” the City of God. The last thing I thought I needed was another city, no matter what its name was. However, I consented and it wasn’t long before I found myself in that city. It was terrible, smelly and ugly and looking like anything but the “City of God.” To me it seemed insulting to the holy.
The entire place was a physical disaster, a vast helter-skelter mountainside squatter settlement comprised of thousands of makeshift shacks and shanties in various states of “construction.” The roads and lanes between the rows of shanties were so rock and rubble strewn that it was difficult to navigate, and trenches overflowing with sewage and waste-water made navigation sloppy and treacherous. Yet the lanes were crowded with people, thousands of desperately poor people who had no jobs and no money in what seemed to be a hopeless situation.
It was 1983 and I had never seen such gripping poverty. But as we made our way into the city all I saw and heard was joy and laughter, a jarring contrast to the appearance of the city and the emotions I was experiencing. In the centre of the city a church was being constructed out of brick and stone. In comparison to the decrepit shacks all around, it was magnificent and almost completed. My first response was critical – why the church and not the houses, God doesn’t need a house!
But as I looked around I saw that the church was a hub of activity. Scores of poor women from the city were busily preparing a communal meal as they did every day. Pooling their potatoes and vegetables and whatever they had on hand they were preparing a meal for everyone to enjoy. I realized that where the rich would tend to preserve their food for a time of need, these poor women were putting everything they had into a common pot. The result was that all who were hungry, and there were many, could share the meal. The joy and celebration in the courtyard of that church spilled into the streets as ragged children and adults streamed down through the rocky roads for what, for many of them would be their only meal that day. And this happened day after day after day.
As I watched the scene unfolding around me I realized that contrary to all appearances this was more like the City of God than any city I’d ever been in – even the wealthiest most modern cities in the world. It was defined not by gleaming commerce, complex infrastructure, citadels of entertainment or architectural wonders, or even a proper city plan but by human love and generosity shared among people who had nothing to lose except each other. It struck me then as never before that the City of God, the New Jerusalem, is not a physical place as it is a spiritual space characterized not by streets of gold but by relationships that are defined by the love of God and not by human aspiration, ingenuity or success.
This is a city I look forward to and would actually enjoy!