{"id":51491,"date":"2017-03-25T02:39:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T02:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/?p=51491"},"modified":"2018-09-14T19:52:08","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T19:52:08","slug":"repairers-of-the-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/2017\/03\/25\/repairers-of-the-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"Repairers of the Breach"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
The spectacular view of the City of Minneapolis from an Augsburg dorm room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is a homily I preached in our chapel this month…<\/p>\n

Scripture: <\/strong>Psalm 122<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cJerusalem\u2014built as a city that is bound firmly together\u2026For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA city that is bound firmly together\u2026\u201d\u00a0 I wonder if any of us can imagine what such a place, such a city, such a country or world would look like today?\u00a0 The breach is wide.\u00a0 We hurl words at each other without any intent to unite.\u00a0 We claim our own facts.\u00a0 We have lost all sense of the true meaning of \u201cconversation,\u201d whose Latin root means both to talk with each other and to live with each other.\u00a0 Bound firmly together seems a far-fetched dream.<\/p>\n

Our colleague, Harry Boyte and his partner Marie-Louise Strom, have recently challenged all us \u2013 citizens, people of faith, people who believe in education for democracy \u2013 in the words of the prophet Isaiah: \u201cYou will rebuild the ancient ruins\u2026You will be called the repairer of the breach\u201d (Isaiah 58:12). To rebuild the ruins, to repair the breach, they argue, we must seek to navigate the Manichaean divide that polarizes and paralyzes our common lives.\u00a0 We must seek to find the words and actions that, while recognizing our differences, allow us to negotiate a way forward together.<\/p>\n

I am a long-time student of a sociologist named Robert Bellah, who, with a group of colleagues, published an influential book back in the early 1980s titled Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life<\/em>.\u00a0 It is a compelling book for those of us who care about the social fabric of our country and who, at the same time, believe that we are called by God to be of service in the world.<\/p>\n

Bellah\u2019s most significant point in the book is that contemporary Americans have a first language that is very much focused on our individual lives and especially our economic well-being.\u00a0 When we talk about what we do and why we do it, we tend to talk about how it helps me rather than how it helps the wider community.\u00a0 Even our best work \u2013 our most faithful service \u2013 tends to be described in language that is individualistic.\u00a0 Bellah argues that this first language is impoverished \u2013 it leads to the breach.\u00a0 He then points out that we also have second languages \u2013 many of which are religious and theological \u2013 that have shaped our country and our experience, and that we need to recover these second languages in order to more meaningfully describe our lives together \u2013 we might say, to repair the breach.\u00a0 Examples of this second language include words and concepts like covenant and stewardship and vocation \u2013 sound familiar?!<\/p>\n

As I read our Psalm for this morning, I began to think about how Bellah\u2019s challenge to recover second languages can be linked to the Biblical narrative.\u00a0 As people of faith, perhaps our primary task as repairers of the breach is to return to sacred texts that define a way of being and living that is life-giving and justice-focused \u2013 that leads us to watch for God\u2019s work in the world and how we are called to be co-creators of God\u2019s reign on earth.\u00a0 So here is my case study of recovering a language perhaps more adequate and faithful to our times \u2013 an old language, perhaps, but also a language that brings insight and clarity to our daily lives here at Augsburg.<\/p>\n

If you pay attention to such things, you will know that the narrative of our Christian worship is very much linked to and based in the city of Jerusalem \u2013 the focus of Psalm 122.\u00a0 From the time that Jesus turns his ministry on the path to Jerusalem – to the grand entrance into the city with palms waving his way – to the tragic events of Holy Week, Jesus\u2019 last meal with his disciples, his arrest and appearances before the religious and secular leaders, culminating in his crucifixion on a hill just outside the city \u2013 to the experience of the empty tomb on Easter morning \u2013 to the appearances of the risen Christ to the faithful in upper rooms \u2013 to Christ\u2019s ascension \u2013 to the remarkable sending forth of the disciples to carry on ministry in Jesus\u2019 name on Pentecost \u2013 the city of Jerusalem is the backdrop and the context for this remarkable drama that we know as the heart of the gospel.<\/p>\n

And it is striking to consider the dynamic that plays out in the sacred city.\u00a0 The city that calls strangers in.\u00a0 The city that welcomes with great pageantry.\u00a0 The city that is home to civic and religious leaders whose efforts often intersect and sometimes conflict.\u00a0 The city where feet are washed and bread is broken together.\u00a0 The city where disciples betray and deny their master.\u00a0 The city that crucifies its prophets.\u00a0 The city where redemption is glimpsed even when all seems lost.\u00a0 The city where friends huddle in fear, seeking evidence that their work is not in vain.\u00a0 The city that is the setting for remarkable diversity of language and culture.\u00a0 The city that sends its citizens forth to follow their calls of ministry and service in the world.<\/p>\n

The city that is the place where both the worst and the best of human experience occur side by side. The city of paradox.\u00a0 The city that conspires and betrays and denies and crucifies \u2013 and the city that welcomes and aspires and redeems.\u00a0 The city \u2013 where God is present in the midst of all the paradox and messiness.\u00a0 \u201cFor the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Jerusalem, a city with abiding relevance to our lives of faith \u2013 a city of ancient and contemporary significance \u2013 and a city characterized by often messy intersections and tensions that illustrate for us the themes that play themselves each and every day right here in Cedar-Riverside and Minneapolis, in our city where we seek to be God\u2019s faithful people, where we are called to be repairers of the breach.<\/p>\n

So what lessons might we take from Jerusalem that are of importance to our own lives at Augsburg here in Minneapolis?\u00a0 What is it about cities that we must understand as we seek to be God\u2019s faithful people in this place?<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Professor Joel Torstenson developed a framework for Augsburg\u2019s role in the city.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My first answer to that question is summed up in a familiar verse from the prophet Jeremiah: But 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 will you find your welfare.\u00a0 <\/em>(Jeremiah 29:7, RSV)\u00a0 The first thing we must do is embrace our responsibility, our common calling to care for the city, to love the city and seek its welfare<\/em>.\u00a0 This is such an interesting challenge in the history of Augsburg.\u00a0 A few years back, I worked with Auggie Juve Meza on an URGO project that explored the history of Augsburg\u2019s relationship to its place and its neighbors.\u00a0 One of the things that Juve learned in his project is that Augsburg had a difficult relationship with its urban location for a significant part of its history \u2013 at one time, we seriously considered moving the campus to Richfield \u2013 and even when that effort failed, it was 30 or 40 years before Professor Joel Torstenson and his colleagues developed a framework for Augsburg\u2019s role in the city that sought to embrace the city as our home, as the place where we are authentically engaged in our mission-based work \u2013 this year, in fact, we celebrate the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of that transformative shift in Augsburg\u2019s life in the city.\u00a0 It can be difficult to love Jerusalem or Minneapolis when they betray and crucify, when they are fearful and dangerous places \u2013 but love them we must, Jeremiah reminds us, if we are to do God\u2019s work and find our own welfare.\u00a0 We are called to love the city with all of its tensions and messiness \u2013 and therein we will find our own redemption.<\/p>\n

My second point about cities is that we must be open to their remarkable otherness \u2013 the diversity of friends and strangers alike \u2013 if we are to do God\u2019s work here<\/em>.\u00a0 The Psalmist reminds us that \u201cthe tribes go up\u201d to Jerusalem and only then is it a city that \u201cis bound firmly together.\u201d I remember vividly one of my first forays into our neighborhood.\u00a0 I was shepherded through Cedar-Riverside by the legendary Mary Laurel True, whose cell phone number is on the walls of most Somali homes and businesses in our neighborhood \u2013 because they know she will help!\u00a0 Mary Laurel introduced me to good people whose lives and work intersects with the college.\u00a0 We sat in one of the mosques in the neighborhood and spoke with the elders about peace and the God of Abraham; about our lives here together in Cedar-Riverside; about our children and the aspirations we have that their lives will be meaningful and successful; about the world and how frightening it can be to live with strangers; about democracy and civil discourse.\u00a0 In other words, we spoke as fellow humans living together in the city.\u00a0 On Good Friday, Jesus died on the cross alongside common criminals \u2013 who, like all of us \u2013 have strayed from the path of righteousness and yet Jesus included them in his final prayers.\u00a0 On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples in Jerusalem, giving them the wisdom and skills to engage with strangers of many languages and cultures, to pray together in new and strange vocabularies.\u00a0 Today, we live alongside of immigrants from far and wide who share our fears and our aspirations.\u00a0 In our diversity, God is at work and we are called to love these friends and strangers with whom we live in the city.<\/p>\n

Finally, I believe that those who are called to God\u2019s work in the city must learn from the work of the late Jane Jacobs, the legendary urban theorist, whose The Death and Life of Great American Cities<\/em> (originally published in 1961) was a clarion call to arms for all those who loved the diversity and energy of cities that was being ravaged by trends in architecture and city planning.\u00a0 One of Jacobs\u2019 main points was that the well-being of cities is defined primarily by common, ordinary things<\/em>.\u00a0 Common things like sidewalks, parks, defined neighborhoods, and a diversity of architecture styles and buildings of different ages.\u00a0 These common, ordinary things, when thought about with the needs and aspirations of citizens in mind, will create healthy, sustainable and vital urban centers.\u00a0 It is not about spending a huge amount of money, she warned, it is about \u201cthe innate abilities (of cities) for understanding, communicating, contriving and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties.\u201d\u00a0 It is about pageantry and ritual, about the small denials and acts of kindness, about meeting in upper rooms to wash each other\u2019s feet and break bread together, about the tensions of daily life where the religious and secular intersect and sometimes conflict, about talking with each other even when we don\u2019t understand, about being sent forth to do God\u2019s work even when it is not clear where the work will lead us.\u00a0 It is about, in other words, a reflective practice of city life \u2013 what we might call the genuine work of urban planning.<\/p>\n

Jerusalem, Oh Jerusalem.\u00a0 We pray for your peace.\u00a0 Cedar-Riverside, Oh Cedar-Riverside. peace be within you.\u00a0 We are called to repair the breach, to stand with our neighbors, to embrace the diverse and ordinary and messy nature of our lives together.\u00a0 City of both the crucifixion and the resurrection.\u00a0 City of stranger and friend.\u00a0 City that calls us in and sends us forth.\u00a0 City that marks out our lives of faith now as it did millennia ago.\u00a0 City that reminds all of us that our welfare, our redemption, depends on how well we tend these sacred and holy streets and neighborhoods and neighbors.\u00a0 City that is our home \u2013 now and for life eternal.\u00a0 Thanks be to God.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a homily I preached in our chapel this month… Scripture: Psalm 122 \u00a0\u201cJerusalem\u2014built as a city that is bound firmly together\u2026For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.\u201d \u201cA city that is bound firmly together\u2026\u201d\u00a0 I wonder if any of us can imagine what such …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51491"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51536,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51491\/revisions\/51536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}