BY SAMIR SELMANOVIC

he following is a condensation of a sermon given at the Church of the Advent Hope, New York, as part of re:church's Loving Babylon Conference (see sidebar), and retains some elements of oral delivery. The scriptural basis of this sermon is the story in Joshua 22 of the return of the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh to the land east of the Jordan River after the conquest of Canaan. Tensions developed between these two and a half tribes and the remaining tribes in the Promised Land with reports of an altar built on the banks of the Jordan.-Editors.

THERE ARE STRIKING PARALLELS BETWEEN the two and a half tribes and contemporary "Israelites" who feel their mission is to secular people; they want to move outside familiar territory, across, on the "wrong side" of the river. Such people are different; they struggle to break through to a new land and claim it for God. Our spiritual grandparents-these Israelite tribes-were allowed to cross the Jordan and were urged to be faithful in this strange land of Amorites: "It is a different place, and you have to be careful there. Cling to God for everything, and may walking in all of His ways be your joy" (Joshua 22:5, paraphrase).

That's us-those who live and work in the "strange" land of today's cities. This land is off the maps of large churches. Yet we choose to live in a secular culture, and we have a mandate to raise a community of believers among "the Amorites." The land is strange to us in many ways. It is a foreign culture but one we are learning to appreciate.
So how can we stay faithful in places we might refer to-and even be tempted to dismiss-as "Babylon"? What would a faithful community look like here? How in the world would such a community survive? I reflected on these questions and found three answers, three ways to think about our journey.

We Love and Resist the World
First, a faithful community loves and resists the world at the same time. Why did the two and a half tribes build that problem altar in the first place? They did it to resist the new surroundings. They did not want to be assimilated and lose their identity. They were afraid of their own weakness, the allure of the gods of the new land, and determined to resist their seduction.

But at the same time, they loved the land. The land was good for farming. And although the people were living in villages and small towns, the Amorites had an impressive culture. There were many things to like about the world in Gilead, in Babylon, in Greece, in Rome! Just as there are things to like in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, Houston, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Sydney, Shanghai, and thousands of other cities.

It's a wonderful world in many ways. Nature has been cursed, but it also has the blessing of God. And culture is made by humans who may behave like both angels and beasts at the same time. Even though we all live under a curse, there's something godly even in secular culture. In humanity, in culture, we find splendor and shame at the same time.

So we are to both love and resist this culture. The God of the Bible loves the city. The prophet Jonah finished his book with God's punch line, "How should I not have compassion for that great city?" (Jonah 4:11). God loves to be with humanity, and cities are just that-a lot of people to be loved. So we can't leave the cities behind. We can't pretend there's no God-given beauty and righteousness in the world. We can't dismiss the culture around us. Instead of running away, we must turn back and become engaged.

Loving
Some time ago a couple of church members attended a Bob Dylan concert here in the city. We were jamming with humanity: we were singing songs of rebellion against injustice, songs about the search for the meaning of love, songs about struggle, songs praising honesty, wisdom, and goodness in the world. There was a lot of "righteous" stuff. As I sat there, I felt, These are my brothers and sisters in creation; we all share the privilege of the love of God. There is this thing that binds us together, and over time I learned to be free to share my treasure with them, my journey, my faith.

The Israelites said to the two and a half tribes, "The land might be defiled" (verse 19, paraphrase). If you grew up in a church, you may have been told "If you go there, Jesus can't go with you"-which practically means "When you need Him the most, He won't be there." Only when you're in a safe place can heaven bless you. And this teaching has seeped into the church's attitude toward this world.

Places without God's presence? He is present everywhere. God takes care of every person from the day they are born, and works with them and helps each one to grow into a being who can love well, do good, and be just. He's there with compassion, and He's there with tenderness when they're hurting, and He's there with a stick when a stick is needed, and He's there with miracles, and there are angels surrounding every person. You can't chase God out of those places, because wherever there is a person, God follows.

Do you have the ability to enjoy people? Jesus enjoyed people. When they wanted to crucify Him, they said, "He loves sinners." But they didn't use the word "agape," as in "loving people in spite of who they are." Instead, the establishment was disturbed by the fact that Jesus had a philein relationship with them. He liked them, not just loved them. He enjoyed them as they were. They were His friends.

There are too many Christians, Adventists included, who are just dead inside. They appear calm and self-controlled. But they are calm, not because they are pious or because they are orthodox, but because they're dead. They have a paralyzing fear of feeling love toward people who are different. But a mature Christian has the freedom to love the people of Babylon while walking with God.

Resisting
But you also have to resist. You have to exhibit a value system alien to the dominant culture. You become a resident alien: I'm a member of God's kingdom in New York City. I'm part of the "colony of heaven"-an alternative city within the city. I'm not talking about being different as in being weird. We're "strange" for a good reason. We pursue holy lives.

When people see us, what should be their first impression? "They're a giving people. They're patient. They stand up for justice. They're daring. They sacrifice for the poor. They don't look to be number one. They resist immediate self-gratification. They love life. They outrejoice us. They outcelebrate us-truly present, truly different, at the same time." It's just like the life of Jesus, completely different but fully engaged with us.
People often think that resistance to the world would be to identify with the different countercultures of the city. But today counterculture has been swallowed by the culture: it used to be that you could rebel against your parents by doing weird things, such as taking drugs in the sixties, piercing your body parts, or doing something to make a statement that you are different-but nothing like that exists today.

There's no way to rebel effectively. Except if you believe the kingdom of God is the reality of this world. Instead of succumbing to the city or running away from it, you can open your redeemed eyes and see that the kingdom of God is the ultimate reality in this world, and that in the very midst of Babylon you can be a part of a faithful community that is learning to live by rules and values everyone will one day live by. God rules: strange belief indeed!

We have to learn to live in a place of self-interest and power and greed and a twisted view of love, but we resist being assimilated. When you join the forces of the kingdom of God, you join the political platform spelled out in the Sermon on the Mount, you build a community of resistance. That's the first way to build a faithful community: love and resist the world.

We Are Willing to Look Unfaithful
And there is a second way: If you want to be a faithful community, you must be willing to look unfaithful. Notice the plot of the Joshua 22 story. First the 10 tribes say, "Go across the Jordan and be faithful." So they go across the Jordan and they are faithful. That's clearly explained. But these tribes come back and say, "Why are you unfaithful?" And there's a paradox.

In changing times and circumstances, a faithful community is willing to look unfaithful in order to be faithful. That's a high price. Measures of faithfulness are different in a Christian ghetto or in a Christian subculture or in aloof academia than when you are a resident alien in the mission field, loving and resisting the world in one of the mission stations out there. The question to ask yourself is "Who is the ultimate audience of my faithfulness?"

And so we, as believers who want to be creative and seek for the expression of deeper real values of our tradition, say with the two and a half Israelite tribes: "If we are unfaithful, don't spare us." The Lord knows where our heart and mind are. He's the witness, and if it looks as if we go astray, we are ready to take responsibility for our actions.
There are no footprints where we go, only where we have been. Churches such as ours are mission stations, deep in the jungle of a secular culture. It's a laboratory. There must be more tolerance for experimenting and doing things differently and falling down and struggling, even rewarding trying and failing.

We are people in a mission field. Here people matter more than niceness and neatness. Inside the system you can pursue niceness and neatness. But this is a war zone. Niceness and neatness? Quite honestly, we don't have time for that. People here are bleeding. Lives are broken. We must be faithful to them.

Christians who are not fighting their battles in secular culture but stay in a safe subculture are not necessarily more faithful. They might be even more conformed to the culture of the world around them and put up no resistance. They often opt for boundary markers, not rootedness in another order, pursuing holy cows instead of pursuing holy lives.

"Faithfulness" is often equated with "not changing," but faith means change. Change in order to present the unchanging message. We change because we want to be faithful, because we love Adventism at its best. We will ultimately be faithful to all if we take care to be faithful to the Lord only. The prophetic risk of being misinterpreted must be there.

Jesus came across as unfaithful. He had as much problem with the religious crowd as He did with the irreligious. He was touching lepers, which was dangerous; attending parties of tax collectors, who were real criminals; talking alone with prostitutes, who were real offenders of God's law; praising Samaritans, who were real national enemies. You know why He did that? Because He was holy. Not in spite of His holiness. Here's the irony: the only rabbi the outcasts could touch turned out to be God Himself!

We want to reach out and compel people to become followers of Christ, pay the cost of discipleship, and accept the pain of transitioning their lives from living in the culture of the world to a new reality of the present kingdom of God. That's a huge transition. To become an Adventist, a person needs to be daring, resilient, and long-suffering. They must be able to stand seeing their family and friends in agony over their decision and changing priorities.
But once these new members arrive in the Adventist subculture bloodied and bruised, they are appalled at the amount of conformity and apathy. It really hurts to see it. It needs to be challenged and cracked wide open. Where is the boldness that we ask for from the world in our own Adventist organization? Where are those struggles on the part of those of you who have grown up in the church? Are we afraid to disturb the system?

Ten years after my own bruises and struggles, I find myself becoming assimilated into the Adventist subculture and shrinking from these risks. I see bruised people coming to church, and I begin to assume that these people have to adjust to us! What is appalling to the outside world is the lack of courage and stamina on the part of Christians to correct themselves, restructure their organizations, and confront their own demons. There must be disturbance, there has got to be mess, because only then can we be faithful. We never just drift into faithfulness.

It's all about "loving well." When the disciples came to Jesus, He said, "Look, I can't promise you anything-it will be a lousy life. Do you still want to be a Christian?" He was practically discouraging people. But He did promise one thing. He offered one thing that was worth everything. He said, "I offer you only one thing: I can teach you to love well." And that's worth everything! Is there any better promise in life?

If you want to learn to love well, you will have to deal with the difficulties of change, resist the idolatry of personal success and security, have courage to put the taboos on the table, humbly but boldly take on the systems and structures that are outdated. And you will look unfaithful! Are you willing to look unfaithful so that you can be faithful? Are you willing to pursue Adventism at its best and to change our organization so that we are faithful to the Bible and to the vision of our pioneers?

We Disarm
The third feature of a faithful community is that it disarms. The situation with the people of Israel in Joshua 22 could have ended in a bloodbath, but the presence of God disarmed both sides. They said, "God is with us and with you," and everybody threw down the weapons, both sides-those who are innovators, who are different, who are getting to a new land across the Jordan; and those who are on this side of the Jordan. They all dropped their weapons.

To be a faithful community, you need to deal with the Babylonian gods. But you also have to deal with the brethren who are concerned about what you are doing. The delegation in the book of Joshua said, "Everybody's talking about you." It's a tough journey to take. But what do you do with concerned brethren?

You listen, you self-examine, you change, you repent, and you say, "Thank you"-and mean it. You communicate with those who think differently, and do everything you can to understand their concerns. Instead of wasting your time and the strength of your heart on bitterness and avoidance, you ask yourself, "What is it that God wants me to see?"

When I was a student, Jon Paulien told us in his class, "We as Christians should have self-doubt." And after some years of thinking about it, I realized I'm supposed to doubt myself. That's how we respond to concerned brethren. We disarm them with genuine humility. Of course, sometimes the brethren do not want genuine conversation and are just going for the kill. But to perish that way is also a price of being faithful.

If both sides have self-doubt, we'll disarm each other. But if one side doesn't want to have self-doubt, you have it anyway. To be humble, to listen to the other side, to hear their point, is to be strong. You humble yourself, because in humility God conquered the world in Jesus Christ. You become so godly and humble that even your enemies stop being afraid of you. This is the way to grow; this is the way to disarm.

And if you are in positions of power and some of those on the margins are disturbing the equilibrium? Those of you who are administrators, I beg you to listen as well. Together we will be able to disarm even the anger of the world toward the church, disarm the sarcasm out there, disarm the suspicion toward God, disarm the fears.

We cannot build anything new through reaction. We must hear the pure music of the gospel itself and dance to it [Ps. 150:4]. Whatever new younger leaders build as a reaction to the past will fail. There must be a new start. Boldly, but not in arrogance or bitterness toward the past, bring your frustration and bitterness to God.

The ultimate sign of faithfulness is a community that can disarm itself. The problem was not the enemy who possessed the land; the problem was not jealousy among the tribes in desire for more land. The problem was that they did not trust one another, believe in one another, and stay with this basic assumption: "The hearts of the concerned brethren are in the same place as mine. They believe in the same God, they're doing their best, and I need to be open with them." God believes in us; let's not be afraid to believe in each other.

The Vision of a Faithful Community
"And the Reubenites and the Gadites gave the altar this name: A Witness Between Us that the Lord is God" (Joshua 22:34, NIV). It is all about Him. Nothing else matters. Here is the heartbeat of the coming young leaders in the church. We desire to be witnesses that the Lord is God. It's not my pastoral career, evangelistic success, church organization, or theological interpretations. They are not God. The Lord is God! And everything else is not! Everything else must submit to Him!

Our name is Adventist-which to me means "those who wait well." We are waiting for the Second Coming, and Jesus wonders, "Will the Son of God find faith when He comes?" (Luke 18:8, paraphrase). Yes, Jesus, You will find Your faithful community, those who "obey Your commandments and are faithful to You" (Rev. 14:12, paraphrase).

Why would we ever think of leaving the cities? Why would we ever think of abandoning the culture of the world? Our God is not like that! And we, His followers, cannot be like that either.
To be faithful, live in the middle of Babylon. The evil in Babylon is great, but it can be conquered with good. Babylon the Great is fallen, but in Babylon there must be the patience of the saints: they will love to the very end.

As the gritty New York poet and singer Leonard Cohen puts it on his most recent album, "Be the truth unsaid and the blessing gone, if I forget my Babylon" ("By the Rivers Dark").

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Samir Selmanovic is the pastor of the Church of the Advent Hope in New York City.