Miracle and martyrdom

So I just picked up a book called Understanding Jacques Ellul, by three professors at Wheaton (Jeff Greenman, Read Schuchardt, and Noah Toly). More Ellul!  It never ends!  Anywho, I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone everywhere if a.) you have tried to read Ellul and find him dense and difficult to follow (which he is), b.) you want to get a grip on the interconnectedness between media ecology, technology, religion, politics, and the Christian life, c.) you love Ellul, or d.) you're alive and can read.  

Here's what these guys have to say about Ellul and the city:

...he believed [the city] was the most significant human achievement--even the sine qua non of a host of other achievements--but he believed that this achievement represented a fundamental rejection of God and God's promises.  Self-expression and self-realization, for Ellul, are expressions of our sinfulness, even when the issue in great achievements.  

[...]

For Ellul, Christians are called to the city in imitation of the ministry of Jesus Christ, whose work in Jerusalem represented both martyrdom and miracle.  Christians are without question called to live and work in the city.  In doing so, they represent the presence of God in the midst of the self-assertion, self -realization, and self-sufficiency of human beings--the body of Christ, as God's greatest accomplishment  in the midst of the greatest accomplishment of his rebellious creatures.  Our presence in the city should signify and symbolize what the heavenly city of God will be like and that it will be different from the city of man.  For this betrayal of the city and the self-sufficiency that it symbolizes, Christians should expect rejection and suffering.  In other words, they should expect to follow Jesus' footsteps into martyrdom.   

If the city does not reject us, then this is, strictly speaking, miraculous.  Like the resurrection and ascension, this is a supernatural even that requires God's intervention. For the people of faith in a God who performs miracles and rules over nature, this is perfectly conceivable, even if it is both unexpected and unlikely.  For this reason, Christians should not prejudge whether our faithful representation of God's judgment upon and adoption of the city, of the promised triumph of faith over self-assertion, self realization, and self-sufficiency, will result in miracle or martyrdom.  That is up to God.  We know we are called to the city.  We cannot know whether our calling is to martyrdom or to miracle.  

-Jeffrey P. Greenman, Read Mercer Schuchardt, and Noah J. Toly, Understanding Jacques Ellul: (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), pp. 70-73. 

At the moment, its pretty popular to be an "urban church" or to be "intentional" about "loving the city", etc etc.  I think this is excellent.  However, I have wondered how often, in the name of affirming the goodness (image-bearing) of all that goes on in the city--art, music, culture, community--we cease to embody (as Ellul would say it) the presence of the Kingdom in the city.  Or, using Ellul's terms, how often does it seem a miracle that the city does not reject us?