Written by Catherine Brooks
‘It’s just so nice to get out of London.’
Have you said that yet this weekend? Imagine a Londoner – let’s call him Danny. He’s had a great weekend at Revive, but now he’s back home to the reality of daily life. It’s only Tuesday afternoon but he’s already disgruntled because he couldn’t get into the office today due to a ‘passenger incident’ on the District Line. So he’s trying to conduct a Zoom meeting on his kitchen table while his daughter is having a clarinet lesson only three feet away. Meanwhile, he’s getting a parking ticket because he didn’t notice that the space he found was reserved for a removal van. He’s also very tired because some drunk neighbours woke him up singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ in the street. On top of that, he feels guilty because he knows he should be doing evangelism but he can’t figure out how to bring up Jesus with his colleagues who are championing an LGBTQ agenda and already eye him warily.
Danny used to be excited about living in London, but now he’s feeling worn down by it and has lost sight of why he bothers.
Can you relate to Danny? Do you too need reminding why you once found London exciting?
Shakespeare wrote:
‘What is the city, but the people?
True, the people are the city.’
I’m inclined to agree. London isn’t just landmarks, transport networks, parks and theatres. It’s a group of people. And of course it’s these very people – millions and millions of them – who can make London such a challenge.
These Londoners get in your way when you’re trying to run home from the office. They park their cars so you can’t park yours anywhere near your flat. They sit on the tube looking miserable. They keep buying flats and houses, causing the prices to just keep going up. They’re willing to pay the extortionate rent that the landlords (who are also people, by the way) are charging. And because of the need for so many homes for so many people, the flats are tiny. My husband and I think our flat is quite big, but it doesn’t stop our bedroom doubling up as a home office and piano room.
On a more serious note, as we’re faced with all of these people daily, we might be reminded of God’s sobering description of humanity in Romans 3. ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practise deceit.’ You hear it at the school gate and on the night bus. Ever sat in a pub on a Friday evening? ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ Do you worry about walking home alone at dusk? ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood.’ From the politicians to the drug pushers, ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’ It’s true: humanity is in a terrible state. And the more people we’re faced with, the clearer we can see the truth of it.
So how have you been coping with these Londoners? Have you lost your patience?
People are difficult. But the truth is that we have some astonishingly good news: our God loves people.
He loves city people – every kind of person. He loves politicians, teachers, bankers, doctors, delivery drivers, traffic wardens, road-ragers, pensioners and moped-muggers. How do I know? Because he even loves me:
‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’
Christ died for ungodly sinners. He didn’t just die for the nice people in my church whom I’d trust with my very life (who of course are also sinners). He died for his enemies.
And he died to save sinners from all over his world: ‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.’
That’s such good news isn’t it? This has always been God’s plan. He said in Isaiah that it would be too small a thing to save only the Jews. And of course the Lord Jesus charged the apostles to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’. The gospel has always been for all people groups.
So how did the apostles in the early church go about this task of reaching all nations? Did they travel to every part of the world? Or did they find a shortcut?
The late Tim Keller wrote that ‘the rise of early Christianity was largely an urban phenomenon … First-century Antioch serves as an example; it was a virtual United Nations, with Asian, African, Jewish, Greek, and Roman sections. From Antioch there were powerful networks that led back into three continents. Capital and culture flowed back and forth through those networks. And thus Paul’s mission strategy was remarkably urban-centered.’
The first evangelists saw that cities such as Antioch were a fast-track to reaching the nations. From the city, the gospel would spread out into the countryside and also out to the wider world as people went back to their home countries. It’s thought that Antioch had less than half a million people living in it at the time. London today is almost twenty times that size. If Antioch was a strategic place to preach the gospel, how much more so is London?
What an opportunity! If we’re longing for the day when we will join in that assembly of the righteous – an assembly of people from every tribe and tongue and nation – then we are extraordinarily privileged. According to ‘World Population Review’, 36.4% of Londoners were born outside the UK. If we long for opportunities to share the gospel with all nations – if we really believe that this is God’s agenda for us and we want to obey it – then we really have hit the jackpot.
I know it might feel impossible to see things this way when all the things about people I mentioned above are still true. But we can start by praying that the Lord – the God of the impossible – would give us love for people. This way we can stop seeing them as an irritation or an inconvenience. We don’t have to just grit our teeth and push on through; we can actually grow in love for people. We can see them as image-bearers.
The Lord Jesus didn’t live in a city of nine million people, but he had crowds following him wherever he went. When he was tired or when he wanted to retreat to pray, the crowds followed him and he responded with love. He had compassion on them.
With the Spirit’s help, we can become like Christ. We don’t need to pretend that all these people in our city are nice. We don’t need to make false claims about altruistic commuters (although actually I’ve often found commuters to be quite accommodating). But we can have compassion on them, because they are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Like the Ninevites, they don’t know their right hand from their left.
In 2021, all the Revive talks were from Jonah. You can listen to them on the Co-Mission podcast. We were reminded then that Jonah did not love the people of the great city of Nineveh. This prophet didn’t know grace, so he didn’t show grace. With the Lord’s call upon us to make disciples, when does our attitude towards the city-dwellers around us stray into a Jonah-esque lack of compassion? Are there ways we need to reflect on and reconsider God’s grace to us, that we might look with grace on our neighbours? If someone had the kindness and compassion to share the gospel with me, then surely I can extend that kindness to others.
And in truth, London’s not all bad. Let’s also give thanks for all of the genuinely good things about our city. The diversity makes it a lavishly rich place to live, to work and to be part of a church family. We’re part of a network of churches who support each other in various ways so we know we’re not alone. And living somewhere so densely populated means that we can share the good news with more people. It’s simple maths. And this is not to mention all the other reasons people love London, such as the theatre, the parks and the history.
In the new creation, will it matter to Danny that he stayed in London rather than getting more sleep in the five-bed detached house he could have bought in his home town? As he sings, ‘Salvation belongs to our God’ along with millions upon millions of former city people, in all their glory, will he regret the hours sitting in London traffic? Or will he be thanking Jesus for the privilege?
