Hope in the Brownfields
Some of you are old enough to remember the old Allied Steel plant that was along the riverfront here in Clinton. For those of you who don’t remember, picture two very long, very obviously industrial buildings that sprawled north and south near the heart of our downtown. They sat right behind our municipal pool.
One nugget of history is that these plants provided the steel for the highway 30 Illinois/Iowa bridge. Local manufacturing for local projects. What a novel thing. Because it is so rare to see now I’m always shocked at the thought. I live in an old enough house here in town that I often stumble across the signatures of local factories and shops stamped on metal, brick, and wood throughout the home. Clinton Lock Co. is on my old doors. Lyons foundry is on the metal doors to my fireplace clean-out. It’s a nice reminder of our rich legacy of making things here in town.
I’m not old enough to remember the Allied buildings as a functioning steel plant. But I do remember the broken glass and how haggard they looked down there. When I reach into my childhood memory I imagine dark and dirty factory brick, nestled into a nest of weeds and dusty rock, and all along the side were windows, lots of windows. The windows are what I remember. Green and broken. There was so much broken glass. I often wondered if kids just lined up there and threw rocks into the hundreds of green windows.
Well now the buildings have since been torn down. And the only thing that remains is green space. And that’s all that will ever be there. That’s because the area is classified as a ‘brownfield site.’ Which means the ground is poisoned.
Years before Allied Steel built on that ground there used to be a power plant called Interstate Power. Like most old power plants, generating power was a dirty business. And over the years the ground became poisoned with coal tar.
This was all discovered because a developer wanted to use the land. Technically speaking the land was purchased in order to be Redeemed. That’s the technical definition of redemption—buying back something previously discarded to be set to good purpose again. But it can’t ever be used for productive purposes again. What a disappointment.
The whole thing is an all too common story to industrial communities like ours. I once had a conversation with a friend about this. He grew up in Russia as a missionary kid. And he told me that Clinton felt like Eastern Europe. I asked why is that? He said it felt dark and full of postindustrial blight. Sadness hung heavy in the air like a looming cloud of coal dust. Places like Clinton feel pregnant with disappointment. A sense of hopelessness penetrates the hearts of many who live here.
That’s the heartbreak Jesus wants to transform. This is what Jesus has been doing with his people for centuries. In the midst of a broken world, full of loss and disappointment, God is bringing us hope through Christ Jesus.
Hope is not wishful thinking. Instead, real hope is longing for something with all our heart with the assurance that we will get it. By faith in Christ you will receive Christ. And he will cause your life to flourish. You can bank on it.
The reason Christians are so confident with our hope is because we are confident in our Gospel. The Apostle Peter wrote to the church centuries ago reminding them of this hope.
1 Peter 1:3–5
[3] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [4] to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, [5] who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
This is good news for those who live in a brownfield town, a brownfield season, a brownfield life. The Gospel is for the broken naysayers in the world. The Gospel rattles our hearts and transforms our perspective. Instead of seeing the sadness and disappointment that surrounds us in this fallen world and drawing the conclusion that “it’ll never come here,” “it’ll never work here,” or “It’ll never stay here.” Instead of this heart posture the Gospel gives us real hope. The final outcome, despite what our circumstances may suggest, is flourishing and renewal. This is what faith in the Gospel produces. Faith in the Gospel means we are actually pregnant with hope.
So for those of you who battle with the hopelessness that surrounds you, remember the resurrection. The resurrection is that great reality that dead things will really come back to life because Christ came back to life. And all who have faith in Christ are given the Spirit of Christ. Quite literally, if you have faith in Christ, you are impregnated with the Sprit of God, that in due time, will birth a redeemed and restored life in the New Creation. And in the New Creation there will not be a single brownfield site. All lives and all land will be redeemed.
But until that final day, remember that you still have the seed of this hope. And that seed has already cracked open and started to bloom. The hope inside you is alive. And so you are alive. Even when the wood around you rots, the metal rusts, the jobs offshore, the people die, know this: The Holy Spirit is transforming and renewing you from the inside out. You are alive on the inside. And so when circumstances on the outside threaten to disappoint you, you will be unmoved. The indomitable hope of Christ cannot be polluted, cannot be lost, and cannot be destroyed.