The city in our hearts
Stone to fleshly cornerstone
Home is where the heart is. You might have heard these words from the mouth of Elvis Presley, or perhaps you’ve heard that the simple adage is often attributed to Pliny the Elder in the first century, but they’ve been true words long before either walked the earth.
Since the first family was exiled from Eden, humankind has been homeless. And since the days of Cain in the Land of Wandering we’ve coped with this condition by constructing places we can call home. We’ve been building cities. Hewn stone takes the place of husbandry, dressed stone in place of the dressed garden: home is where our hearth is.
On one level, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We can’t erase the human condition but we can dedicate locations to community and family. And why should we not? No one who has ever experienced the feeling of home has ever wished they hadn’t.
Homes are good. When the places we inhabit—physically or otherwise—lend themselves to greater expressions of community and family and love and peace and joy, they are what they should be.
But the associated feelings are seductive and sometimes we seek them instead of what matters: safety, security, satisfaction, confidence, comfort, wealth. It’s not that these feelings are unhealthy, but that they are inevitably an illusion. The more power we have, the better we can fool ourselves with these illusions. And what better way to gain power than to build cities?
Don’t think too literally. Cities are simply an image of what humans do to procure these feelings in a world deprived of communion with God, oneness with Christ. Cities are whatever provides either an illusion of what we lack or whatever prefigures receiving it again.
In the natural man, what springs forth from the heart is only a begrudging nihilistic howl. In the disciple of Christ, it is a river flowing from the city of God.1
What makes the difference?
The difference is that we can’t build the city of God. If we attempt to create it, we attempt in vain. We can work for the kingdom of God,2 we can act in faith and know that God will provide meaning to our works, but we cannot transform the city in our hearts from Babylon to Jerusalem, from stone to flesh.
You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.
Exodus 20:23-253
And [across the river Jordan] you shall build an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them; you shall build an altar to the LORD your God of uncut stones. And you shall offer burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God, and you shall sacrifice peace offerings and shall eat there, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God.
Deuteronomy 27:5-7
The means of man are not the means of God. When we use human means, we reap human rewards.
Joshua laid an oath on them at that time, saying, “Cursed before the LORD be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho.
“At the cost of his firstborn shall he
lay its foundation,
and at the cost of his youngest son
shall he set up its gates.”Joshua 6:26
In [Ahab’s] days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.
1 Kings 16:34
There is a city not predisposed to this deathly fate.4
“We heard [Jesus] say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’”
Mark 14:58
Home is where the heart is, and in one sense Babylon is in our hearts. A voice from heaven is crying, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city! Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and her plagues!”5 But the biblical story reveals to us that we can’t leave Babylon on our own merit or works.
In one night Israel fled from Egypt, but in forty years Egypt had yet to be removed from Israel. God could rescue his people from Sodom, but his people could not cease committing Sodom’s sins.6 The exiles in Babylon could return to Jerusalem, but no act by Zerubbabel or Ezra or Nehemiah could heal hearts with Babylonian scars.
Humankind cannot heal itself of the human condition. But there is one who can.
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.
“Thus says the Lord GOD: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. And the land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation that it was in the sight of all who passed by. And they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the LORD; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it.
Ezekiel 36:24-36
God is who takes our hearts of stone, hewn stone, the cities that we’ve constructed, and transforms them into flesh. God takes our illusions and turns them into prefigurings of the very same city Abraham saw by faith, the city with foundations whose designer and builder is God.7
All who live and die in faith, though they were strangers and exiles on earth, saw from afar what is coming from heaven. People who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a home, a home distinct from the hearth of hewn stone they left in death. People who speak thus desire a better country, a heavenly one. And God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.8
But how does God transform our hearts from an illusion to a prefiguring?
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked.
2 Corinthians 5:1-39
We must clothe ourselves with the heavenly dwelling, the heavenly altar-where-God-is. In one sense, this is clothing ourselves with the means of God, that our nakedness be not exposed.10 But to reduce this act of God to merely changed actions and deeds and lifestyles on our part would be heresy. This is mystical, too: clothing ourselves with Christ.
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Galatians 3:26-2711
In baptism we are clothed with Christ.12 But to become clothed is not merely a once-and-done event. To be clothed is not a moment but a lasting condition. It is a perpetual one maintained by the Eucharist, by communion with God and the body of Christ, the church.13
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
John 6:53-5614
Whoever feeds on Christ abides in him and he in them. When we eat the flesh and blood of Christ, our heart of stone is transformed into a heart of flesh by the Spirit, in the spirit of Ezekiel 36. The hewn stone of Babylon in our hearts is replaced with the cornerstone of the city of God.15 We who have been naked and homeless since Adam and Eve are clothed and housed.
The means, the tool matters. It has always mattered. And when we let God dictate the means, we become the means. We become living stones, stones of flesh, stones hewn only by God, built into the city of God on the cornerstone Christ,16 the stone of help. 17We are not the mover, we are not the one who makes life grow. We are the field of plants that grow, the house that is the city-where-God-is.18
We still have the temptations of Babylon in our hearts, but we can see by faith what is unseeable.19 We can look to the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven,20 and we can prefigure it by letting God pour out of us.
Cf. John 7:38, Isa 44:3, 58:11, Ezek 47:1-12, Zech 14:8, Rev 22:1-2.
Cf. Col 4:11.
Biblical quotations are in ESV unless otherwise noted.
The city of God has a destiny other than the destiny of Babylon, but it’s worth noting that it was at the cost of his firstborn son that God transformed his people into living stones of the city of God.
Rev 18.
Cf. Ezek 16:46-52.
Heb 11:10.
Heb 11:13-16.
Cf. Heb 9:11.
Cf. Exod 20:23-26 above.
NIV. Cf. Rom 13:14.
Cf. Rom 6:3-11, 8:1-11.
I don’t want to entirely neglect the reality that there is a practical (“works” or “deeds” in the vein of James 2:14-26) component to clothing ourselves with Christ (cf. Rom 13:12-14, Eph 6:-18, Gal 6:16-25). However, I am focusing in this article on the mystical. I explored some of these themes in this post.
Matt 21:42, Acts 4:11, Rom 9:33, cf. Psa 118:22, Isa 28:16.
1 Pet 2:1-8.
Cf. 1 Sam 7:12.
1 Cor 3:5-17.
Heb 11:1.
Rev 21:1-3.
I got so much more from this by listening as I read along. Inspiring and challenging. I'll keep thinking of "Babylonian scars" and striving for earthly things. Also, excellent pacing and narration.