THIRTEEN
To Bless the City for the Sake of the King

At the end of our journey, I pray you are filled with hope. I believe that the past shows us that when the church has been marginalized or persecuted, it has been at its best. Being God’s people now will require a more intentional faithfulness. With faithfulness will come the potential for the church in America to truly display the life-giving kingdom of God.

This is a time when the church has a great opportunity to be the people of God in a new way that will be a blessing to the world while ensuring that we don’t lose the distinct identity we have been given as God’s people, set apart. We may be aliens and strangers here on earth, but we are secure in Christ and already seated in heaven with him (Eph. 2:6).

Ours is an exile of hope, because our King has already conquered the greatest enemy, death, and overcome the world. As we wait for him to come in fullness and bring the fullness of his kingdom with him, we are not called to sit passively by. We are called to stand in faith, fight for faithfulness in prayer, and be ready to proclaim the hope that we have in Jesus. As we actively participate in the purposes of Christ, we are called to be bold in our faith, not shrinking back.

Practicing our faith through hearing and obeying the Word and Spirit, practicing generosity, vocation, hospitality, and Sabbath, we declare with our lives that another world exists, and we are experiencing the freedom it brings us, even now, through Jesus.

These practices may seem odd to our neighbors and friends, but I believe they will also be attractive to them. In a world like ours, people get tired and filled with stress—they are by nature hungry for hope. When we faithfully live for Jesus, more than likely we will be given opportunity to share with people why we live the way we do.

My prayer is that God’s people will live in such a way that we regain a voice in the public square. As we live faithfully to Christ, may we use that voice to offer the beauty and life-giving message of Jesus in word and deed. I believe that when we graciously and thoughtfully carry this sacred message of Jesus Christ, the hope of the world, we will find ourselves in places of influence in our culture rather than in the margins of our culture.

And when we find ourselves in those influential spaces, we have an opportunity to shape the culture at large. I pray that you will steward it well, whether it is in city hall or the PTA at your local school.

My hope is that the gospel will become public truth and that God’s people can become the type of citizens who live their faith winsomely in the public square. In a world of polarizing categories, followers of Jesus are the ones truly called by God to love and serve neighbors and enemies and to break through every barrier that seeks to separate us.

By living faithfully as the people of God, we are invited into an opportunity to work together with diverse groups of people for the common good of our communities, nation, and world.

There is no question that there are competing versions of reality among us, so how do people with these types of differences work together?

It has never seemed more apparent to me than it does today that we must move beyond the polarizing categories of winners and losers and the demonizing speech we use to speak about those we disagree with. If we care about working toward an alternative future, we will also need to find a way to go beyond simply agreeing to disagree, which becomes a way of suppressing our differences rather than embracing them as we embrace one another. The stakes are high right now. If we don’t find another way of relating to one another, the most vulnerable among us will continue to be ignored.

As the people of God, we have an opportunity to imagine and create a new way in which citizens take part in public dialogues and inhabit public spaces with other groups of people for the common good of everyone who calls our communities home. We are called to seek the welfare of our communities. In a society filled with hate speech and social media contempt; in which religion, race, gender, sexuality, and politics have become dividing lines of exclusion; in which the church is equally at fault if not a more culpable participant, we need to find a new way of being human together. This moment may just be the time for that to happen.

The move I am suggesting is what Miroslav Volf called a move from exclusion to embrace.1 What if we began to envision a nation in which we didn’t simply tolerate our differences but engaged one another around those deeply held convictions? What if we moved beyond polite disagreement to demanding safety for those with whom we disagree and defending the rights of those who hold convictions other than our own? What if we truly believed that each of us bears the image of God and has something to offer the other? What new types of civility might emerge among us? This new kind of relating could create new possibilities of understanding, out of which relationships could be born and change could become tangible.

What if the people of God led the way in helping our communities become thriving human families whose civility made room for the embrace of one another as well as our differences?

These changes might sound like a long shot, but God’s people living faithfully in exile can imagine and create a new way of living together in public space. With this kind of relational change, the most vulnerable among us have the best shot of finding security, hope, and opportunity.

We have a long way to go, and the road we travel is not an easy one. We face inequity, injustice lives among us, and too many voices have been unheard. Much needs to be acknowledged and made right. Living faithfully in exile won’t put an end to our disagreements or dissolve our convictions, but doing so can reshape how those disagreements take place, who gets invited to the table, and how the challenges we face are addressed.

None of this is easily accomplished. But if the people of God live faithful lives, the dream of a civil society, a society of embrace and not of exclusion, is not as wild as it sounds. Civility can actually become a reality. When God tells us in Jeremiah to seek the welfare of the city, doing so is for our benefit as well as for that of the city. I dream of a time that I hope is not far off when our voices as God’s people are turned to praise and not polarization and our energy and efforts are for building up, not tearing down. I dream that we will stand together when our moment has passed, and we will hear our King say, “Well done, my good and faithful one.”