Oh, what a beautiful city
oh, what a beautiful city
oh, what a beautiful city
there’s twelve gates to the city, Hallelujah
I learned about singing old-time gospel and mountain music from a woman named Ginny Hawker. She led a gospel sing in a beautiful, small wooden building, a former blacksmith shop, at a music camp I attended. People at this camp were mostly spiritual-but-not-religious agnostic types. Someone asked her whether she believed in everything we were singing, naming an anxiety felt by many of us. Ginny said, “Good question. I don’t agree with some of these words. They’re all important to me, though, because they were important to my grandmother. When I sing these songs I’m honoring her.” I think we were also asking that day: “Is it okay to enjoy this prayerful space we’ve just created by singing these songs together? Don’t we have to have checked our minds and checkbooks into a religious community to get this benefit?” Are we hypocrites if we sing and pray along with words we don’t understand, or don’t believe are true?
No; walk on in and you’ll be welcome in the city.
A friend of my familiy has a similar approach to saying the Creed in church (the list of “we believe’s that we’ll get to after I sit down): he says it’s okay to hum along with the parts you can’t say. Humming along doesn’t make you any less welcome. This question is central to our Anglican tradition; Elizabeth I, on inheriting a country full of people killing each other over whether or not to be Roman Catholic, said, “Enough!” She helped to create a church more grounded in common practice than in common belief. Keep praying together, especially when you disagree. There’s twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.
So what is this city with twelve gates? It is the kingdom of God on earth, an idea that to me means we’re evolving beyond a theology of insiders and outsiders. In the heavenly city, in what progressive theologians in this century have called the beloved community, there are no chosen people. Or, perhaps more accurately, there are no unchosen people.
The prophet Isaiah, in today’s first reading, says “You who remind the Lord, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth.” Maybe that’s a weird sentence to get excited about, but here’s why I got excited about it: Isaiah was among the first in the Hebrew tradition to push past the idea that God chose the Hebrews above all others. God’s love and acceptance can’t be limited to people who look like us, believe like us, or are in our family. So Isaiah isn’t recommending a military charge. Nor is the psalmist, even thought we just said, “a fire goes before him and burns up his enemies on every side.” Christ is the Lord who came to transform Empire, not to beat Caesar at his own game. Isaiah invites all the world to the heavenly city; no one will be brought there as a prisoner. The prophet is issuing a charge, a call to each of us to work at building that city. And more, a call to live as though it were already here, for in the deepest sense, it is.
This summer in the Catheral of Notre Dame in Chartres, France, I understood Isaiah. I also understood Mary. The cathedral was pretty dark inside, but when we turned a corner and could see the Mary chapel, it was all light. Hundreds of votive candles in red glass holders surrounded a 7th-century statue, the Black Mary. I sat in this chapel, more interested in feeling what this place was like than in walking around with my friends. I got out the Bible I had brought, my grandmother’s, and flipped through Luke. I was looking for the Christmas reading, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I noticed old women going up to the statue, which rested on a big pillar, and kissing the pillar in devotion. I learned that the common name Pilar means Mary, the pillar of the church, the family, the community. Mary held the Christ child in her heart and in her body, and responded to God’s call to her with unbelievable strenth.
Coming from the warmth and quiet of Mary’s sanctuary, I responded to the rest of what the cathedral had to offer me differently. Images of the heavenly city appeared everywhere, carved and in windows. I began to see in them Isaiah’s hope for unity, Mary’s hope for her son, his hope for the world. The hopes and fears of all the years, all met in me. Oh, what a beautiful city.
I can see from all this two different ways for us to live into the Christmas story.
Some will be prophets and evangelists, like the shepherds and like Isaiah. The prophets, like teenagers, are often not politically correct. You speak the truth, and call us to our best selves. You’re also excited; the shepherds went and told everyone they knew about this child, not stopping to think how they’d be received. You yearn for the world to be made new, for the cleansing fire to burn away all that keeps us apart.
Others will prefer to play Mary. Your role is to treasure and to cherish all the miracles you can find, past, present, and future. It’s kind of an Appreciative Inquiry model; Mary makes more of what is good in the world by nurturing the good we already have. She’s also reflective, in prayer and stillness she uncovers important insights and connections.
As in a family, and as in our church, we need both of these characters. And we need to be able to learn from each other. The great modern mystic Henri Nouwen said, “No mystic (read: Mary) can prevent herself from becoming a social critic, since in self-reflection she will uncover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, no revolutionary (read: prophet) can avoid facing his own human condition, since in the midst of his struggle for a new world he will find that he is also fighting his own reactionary fears and false ambitions.” There’s twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.
salon.com recently featured an interview with theologian John Haight. The interviewer asked him if he believes God answers prayer. He warned against focusing too narrowly on ourselves, saying:
Yes, but I have to…ask, what if God answered everybody's prayers? What kind of world would we have? I also have to think of what Jesus said when his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. What he told them, in effect, was to pray for something really big. He called it "the kingdom of God." What that means is praying for the ultimate fulfillment of all being, of all the universe. So when we pray, we're asking that the world might have a future.May God’s will be done, and kingdom come, the heavenly city.
And may your hearts burn within you with joy.
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