A City to Run To

On the north door of Durham Cathedral, in England, hangs a heavy bronze ring. For centuries a man with the law at his heels could grasp it and claim sanctuary. But Durham’s sanctuary ran out: after thirty-seven days he confessed his crime and left the kingdom for good. Safe, and never going home.

When Israel crossed the Jordan, the LORD told them to set apart six towns: “cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee there” (Numbers 35:11). If the axe-head flew off the handle and a man died, his nearest relative became the avenger of blood. We know him. The oldest justice is the hot pursuit of the wronged, and standing over his brother's body he feels less like a man breaking the law than the only one keeping it. The six towns are God laying a hand on that instinct and holding it still — “a refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer may not die” (Numbers 35:12). So what he does with his own wrath at the cross is not a change of character but its completion.

But the refuge came with a strange condition: “he shall live in it until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil” (Numbers 35:25). His homecoming waited on a death that was not his own. We would take Durham's thirty-seven days over that. A term we can count down is a debt we are paying; a release we had no hand in leaves us owing somebody forever. We would rather be let out than let off.

We are the ones “who have fled for refuge” (Hebrews 6:18) — guilty of more than we meant, and of things we meant exactly. The old law gave no city to the man who swung the axe on purpose. Our High Priest did not die inside the system but outside the walls, a man with no city (Hebrews 13:12), and the gate swings open to the ones the old law had no room for — to us who meant it. Each old priest's death opened the cities for a generation and had to be repeated; this one opened them for good — “he always lives to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25).

The city is a person now. The walls are not the limit of our freedom but the shape of it; our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). On Monday that looks like going in to work with the thing we did still true, and not spending the morning assembling a version of ourselves that could survive being known. Our hand is not on the ring. We are inside, and the door is open.