New City Notes

ypically, around Christmas, I spend way too much time complaining about how materialism in America subverts the truth of God’s incarnation and diminishes our capacity to appreciate the depths of His relentless love for us.

In fact, the bewildering beauty of the Kingdom crashing into our world is rarely glimpsed by dwelling on the counterfeit. This I am learning, and I’m finding it easier now not to get drawn into the negative. 

I was helped to see this in the rediscovery of a remarkable passage in a Worldview conversation with some friends at New City this Fall. “For you know,” the Apostle Peter writes, “that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you…but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect, who was chosen before the creation of the world…” (1 Peter 1.18-20). I’m now using this scripture as a True-North point to help me navigate my seasonal curmudgeonly tendencies (known in some circles as SCT disorder!).

It is truly an astounding thought.  From the very beginning, God knew creation would cost him dearly, the very life blood of his beloved Son.  Before the first stars were cast from his hands into the heavens, he knew these hands would—one day—grow flesh, hold a carpenter’s hammer, and shatter in the piercing of a nail through bone by the fullness of our rebellion.  Still he created.  And even still, he came!…a lamb without blemish or defect, who was chosen before the creation of the world…

Advent is the time we remember and most celebrate God’s climactic and sacrificial engagement with creation—born in a barn, tempted in the wilderness, executed on a hill.  Immanuel, God with us, redeeming and esteeming every square inch of our lives and releasing us, his image-bearers, to engage redemptively the people and places around us.

This essential truth—and not the counterfeits that want to arrest our attention--is what we should focus on this Advent season.  And this is the truth which New City has strived to flesh out through a cultivation of Art and Dialogue in nine years of ministry in Knoxville’s Old City: cultivating opportunities for the redeemed to experience and express God’s love.    In this way, through the songs, stories, parables, pictures, and seminars we present at the Cafe, our ultimate aim is to creatively engage the imagination of the church and the world for Christ, and pray for transformation--our own and our neighbors.

Thank you for taking time to read this, and thank you for the various ways—direct and indirect—that you have participated in New City’s redemptive efforts.   In the graciousness of your prayers and continued financial support we have walked through a sabbatical season and arrived at a very deep place of blessing and promise. More on that later.  For now, let us celebrate the coming of our King, the Lamb chosen before the creation of the world.