REDEEMER BURLINGTON

Celebrating Christ, Serving the City

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” -Jeremiah 29:7

If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

In the 1920′s Pimlico was a broken-down and much reviled neighborhood in London; today it is a different place–Chesterton’s “faith against hope” gave way to sight, and modern Pimlico is now filled with public gardens and the sheen of gentrification. It is a whole place. Once upon a time, it was broken.

It’s worth asking what becomes of these “whole” places, once they’ve been filled in. Thoughtful urban renewal, a vibrant community and culture, a celebration rather than a fear of the economic, ethnic or cultural other–these are the things people talk about (though usually from the outside looking in) when they try to describe what “whole” places like Burlington have become. It’s clearly why people visit (besides the breathtaking natural beauty of course) and why people stay and raise their families here.

But if Chesterton’s theory is right, that Rome wasn’t loved because she was great, but “she was great because they had loved her,” then we must admit that our love for beloved Burlington is not so deep after all (though clearly many have loved her well). I’ll defend my hometown of Memphis against naysayers until the day I die, but I’ve realized that I would actually die there if I started loving it to win it glory. But that’s not what I do. I love it because it’s legendary, because it is gritty and real. Because it’s everything Nashville isn’t. I love Memphis because it’s great. But to love Memphis or Burlington or any other beautiful but broken place in order to make it great…well, that would require a new heart and some new motives.

If I’m hearing Chesterton right, we tend to think uncritically about how well we love our beloved places. We certainly know how to enjoy them and celebrate them (which is good because God commands us to rejoice more than he commands us to do anything else), but we don’t know how to love our beloved when it hurts. We stop when we hit brokenness. We cringe and get embarrassed when “wholeness” hits a pothole. And when our beloved places frustrate us (or when we use them up), we discard them and condemn them and convince ourselves we are holier for having expunged ourselves from these cesspools that were once ours. Motherless cities all. This kind of thing can and will and, let’s face it, is already happening in beautiful Burlington just as it’s happening in our work relationships, our families, and our careers. We burn others and we get burned. And so this “burning” question is one we have to direct at our own hearts and not just countries embroiled in forever wars–is anyone ever going to receive pain and give back love? Does anyone ever not keep a record of wrongs? Will anyone ever forgive when they have the ability to hold it over you? Does anyone ever make a genuine promise that they mean to keep? To me? To my family? To this city?

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the “without which” historical reality behind the existence of the Christian church and the undisputed “without which” behind Christianity’s answers to these burning questions. Think about it–this wasn’t something that happened in a dark corner of the world–a whole nation was in uproar over Jesus’ identity. If the resurrection didn’t happen, the Christian church would have ended as quickly as it started. Thousands went to their deaths in the 1st and 2nd centuries because they refused to simply recant their belief that Jesus was the resurrected Son of God. Over 500 people (most of whom had just celebrated his crucifixion) are described as eye-witnesses to the risen Christ, many of whom risked secure family relationships and social scorn in the community by volunteering their names to the gospel writers’ testimony. And this is the unsettling “without which” that changed their lives and caused them to do what they did: In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, they understood that God was defeating death with death’s own weapon–death itself. The message of Christianity is the message of Jesus’ resurrection: God makes promises and keeps them. God willingly receives pain and alienation and rejection himself–and gives back love. And because Christ’s obedience was for us, and so far beyond any righteousness we could scrape together and offer God ourselves, God looks at all our anxiety and fear and says, “Come unto me you weary, and I will give you rest.” As we receive it and struggle to believe it ourselves, it begins to become apparent: if God loves people like us and places like ours like THIS, then we can begin to share His heart for our neighbors and neighborhoods, loving them preemptively, as God loves us.

The Vermont Project is at its core a humble prayer: God, help us to love both beautiful and broken-down people and places for the same reason you love us so well–for no earthly reason.

-Joseph Pensak