Honoring Our True Citizenship Philippians 3:17-4:1 Dr. Christopher C. F. Chapman First Baptist Church, Raleigh February 21, 2016 Citizenship is a subject that stirs strong emotions and for good reasons. We care about our national identity, feel proud of our heritage and want to protect what we deem to be good and noble about America. I remember very clearly when my father of nurture became an American citizen, how important it was to him. He was from Devon, England, was in the SAS and had spent the better part of a decade as an operative in the Middle East. He came to the United States to train troops for anti-guerilla warfare in Viet Nam, but became frustrated with the incongruence between stated purposes and methodologies in that war and decided to leave military service, move here and marry my mother. He did, after doing a mercenary job for King Feizal, and we moved to Miami for him to do an MBA, and there he began the process of becoming an American citizen. This should have assured my grandmother in Lincolnton that we were going to stay here. She worried he was going to take us to England, even told my mother as she was walking down the aisle, I ll take you back anytime! She never warmed up to him after he refused to eat the grits she cooked, saying, In England we feed this to cows. It was not a smart move, and he held on to some British customs, but he appreciated the wonderful qualities of this nation. Whenever he heard other British people pining for home, he said, If you think it is so good back home, why don t you go? He loved it here and valued his citizenship, like all who come from other places. Citizenship is a precious thing. And yet, for Christians, our true citizenship is not of this world. Or at the very least, we are dual citizens, and our loyalty to any earthly realm must come in a distant second to our primary loyalty. For we are citizens of heaven, according to the Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Philippi, and thus, our ultimate loyalty is to this realm and the God who rules it in love. 1
Paul urges the Philippians to join in imitating him. This may seem arrogant, but what he means is be like him in trying to follow Jesus, by living a life of self-giving love, and he is doing a pretty good job of this. He writes this letter from prison. His faithfulness knows no limits; it gets him into trouble. This is what he wants the Philippians to emulate. He says that many live as enemies of the cross with their bellies serving as gods and their minds on earthly things. We don t know whether he is talking about specific sins related to eating or speaking in a more general sense wherein the belly is a metaphor for many earthly things. Either way, he is talking about the world s ways as opposed to God s ways, earthly values as opposed to heavenly values. He obviously wants his readers to choose the latter and to drive this point home, he says this. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wants the people of Philippi to take seriously this matter of following Jesus in the way of the cross and to do so, they must realize that it is not simply a matter of having some different ideas or even making a few minor adjustments in the way they live. It is a radical reorientation of life wherein the Jesus ways replace their normal ways. They may live in Philippi and have certain loyalties to their city and the Empire of which it is a part, but they are citizens of heaven, and that is where their ultimate loyalties lie. Remember this, Paul says, stand firm in the Lord, be transformed into this life of sacrificial service and love. We may feel like Paul is writing to people in a very different context than ours and thus the focus on citizenship doesn t translate. He is writing to people whose competing loyalty is to the Roman Empire, an enemy of Christ, whereas our competing loyalty would be to America, a friend to Christ. But there are flaws in both of these assumptions. First, while the Roman Empire is often hostile to early Christians, Philippi is a Roman Colony with special status and it is located on a significant trade route. The people who live there are proud of their standing and thus do not view Roman citizenship as a negative thing. The little church to which Paul writes will experience tension, but Roman citizenship is not yet the clear-cut negative we might think it is. So, the very idea that their true citizenship lies elsewhere is jolting. 2
Second, the idea that we live in a Christian nation is fundamentally flawed historically and theologically. We have magnificent freedoms here that have allowed Christian faith to flourish but the founders were adamant in insisting that no religion would be established as the religion of this nation. The First Amendment says so explicitly, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Furthermore, the idea that America is the new Israel through which the world will be saved, an idea some Puritans seemed to support, flies in the face of the claim that after trying to work through one nation, God has chosen a new way to save the world, the way of Jesus, a way for all nations. Our context is different than that of people living in Philippi in the first century, but, like them, we are jolted by this calling to consider the privileges and responsibilities of our true citizenship, and, like them, we need to embrace this calling. We should never downplay the blessings we have in this nation nor do we need to adopt a Christ against culture perspective wherein everything about our culture or nation is viewed to be evil. But we do need to acknowledge that no nation equals the beloved community" and remember that we are citizens of heaven. If we are to honor our true citizenship, there are ways in which we must seek something different than what we see in the world around us. So, what might this include? Where do we feel the tensions of dual citizenship and what does our true citizenship require? One distinctive calling we have is to value every life, every person, every child of God, as the sacred creature he/she is. Part of what this means is embracing the outsider. Whoever is out in his day, Jesus brings in Gentiles, Samaritans, lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors. Even those within the inner circle who are still left out in some ways like women and children he welcomes into places of full acceptance. If we are to follow him, we too will see the dignity of all people, the image of God in every person without exception people of all races, cultures and religions; people of all sizes, shapes and identities; people who were born here and people who have come here from many different places all over the world. This isn t a political idea, it s a biblical idea, a Jesus idea. 3
But there is more to this different way of valuing life than simply embracing the people others might exclude. It begins with something more basic valuing people not on the basis of superficial qualities like appearance, wealth and social standing, but on the basis of something deeper - who they are as children of God, the character of their hearts. According to the way the world views things, what matters is what we look like, how much stuff we accumulate, what accomplishments we have. According to the way God views things, what matters is things like faith, hope and love; gentleness, humility and patience; the capacity for compassion and a willingness to forgive. For beauty is transient, wealth is relative and there isn t anything we can accomplish that comes close to the value of love, the kind of love we experience in Christ. In regard to beauty, I love the story about the high school boy in Utah who used $500 he earned working three jobs to buy flowers for every girl in his school for Valentine s Day. Seventeen-year-old Hayden Godfrey gave all 834 female students at Sky View High School a carnation. I don t think anything can compare, he said, to seeing every girl in your life holding a flower as they walk through the halls. It was a wonderful gesture but also a symbol of how God views us. All of us are beautiful, magnificent, precious, not just a lucky few. Of course, we did even better than flowers on Valentine s Day, thanks to Sabrina Tyndall and Myra Brickell; we all received cookies! In regard to wealth, I think of the story Murphy Osborne has told about what someone said to a very wealthy man with many homes, boats and other possessions. I have one thing you don t have, he said, to which the wealthy man replied, And what would that be? The answer was, Enough. Enough when do we ever have enough? Only when we quit valuing life by possessions and accumulated wealth. Jesus died without a penny to his name. What might that say to us? In regard to accomplishments, the Apostle Paul says it best. He says that compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord, everything else is skubala (Philippians 3:8) which we translate as rubbish, refuse or dung. But these are all euphemisms. Paul is using a four-letter word here... That is what all of our accomplishments are worth in comparison to the value of knowing Christ. 4
So, the world around us has a way of valuing life. Some lives matter more than others. And the way the world makes these decisions is on the basis of superficial things like appearance, wealth and accomplishment. God values life in a different way, a way modeled by Jesus who embraces all people in love and values matters of the heart and soul most highly. Since we are his followers, since we are citizens of heaven, this is how we are called to value life too. Another distinctive calling we have concerns the manner in which we relate to each other with kindness and civility, mutual respect and concern, a capacity not to simply tolerate one another with all of our differences, but to embrace one another in love. We don t know what all Paul is thinking about when he uses the term earthly things, but there isn t much in the world around us right now that is more contrary to the Spirit of Christ than the incivility with which people treat each other. The most obvious place to look is the political arena in which there has always been incivility, but we seem to have sunk to a new low. The old rule of discourse is that when people run out of substantive ideas, they start using profanity and making personal attacks. Thus, when we hear this kind of rhetoric, we know to tune out. But in politics everything has been turned upside down. The more personal and venomous a candidate becomes, the more people tune in. But before we become too critical of this one arena of life, we need to acknowledge not only that this sort of spirit has crept into other parts of life, it has crept into the life of the church. In the church, we are called to honor our true citizenship and model a better way of engaging our differences, but far too often, rather than modeling a better way, we simply reflect the values of the world around us. There is a joke about a man being told the people of a church wanted to share their love with the world. I don t know about that, he said, All I know is they sure do hate each other! So it seems at times, partly because we fight the most with the people closest to us, but partly because we have been influenced too much by the culture around us. We can do better and at times we do. But as I have noted before, this is one of the greatest gifts the church could offer our culture. If we 5
could model a way of dealing with differences where each person is free to express his/her opinion, and each is free to respond whether in agreement or disagreement, without personal insults being hurled, without character being impugned, and without the fear that a relationship will end; if we could model that way, the way of civility; we would live out our calling more fully and offer a wonderful gift to the world. It is easy to get caught up in the frenzied spirit of incivility, but we have a higher calling, we are citizens of heaven. So, we have a calling to value life in a distinctive way and to relate to each other in a different way. Then, we are called to pursue noble things - things like righteousness, justice and peace - in a distinctive way, in the way of the cross. This is what Paul is talking about through all these images of imitating him, recognizing our true citizenship and standing firm in the faith. He is talking about following Jesus in the way of the cross. We tend to think of this first in regard to how we spend our energy in and through the life of the church. We should be humble and selfgiving here, focused on love and service. Thus, we care for the sick and grieving, serve the poor through our clothing ministry and fellowship fund, do mission work in other states and nations. And all of this is part of what it means to follow Jesus. But another part involves our everyday lives, because the essence of the calling to live in a different way, to honor our true citizenship, involves the whole of the lives, not just our leftover time. This means we choose a different path, a more gentle and loving path in the way we drive to work or school... the way we treat people in a restaurant or grocery store... the way we do our work... We choose the path of selfgiving love wherever we are, looking first to the needs of others, and pursuing the noblest goals not by force and demand but by a willingness to sacrifice our interests, even lay down our lives if necessary. One of the most moving examples of this way of life I have come across in recent years took place on a bus in northern Kenya. When Islamic militants stormed the bus on December 21of last year, threatening to kill any Christians present, a Muslim school teacher 6
named Salah Farah and some other Muslims on the bus shielded the Christians with their bodies and said that the militants would have to kill all 62 people there, including them, or leave. The gunmen panicked and left but not until they had shot Farah in the arm and hip. While being treated, Farah said he didn't know what got into him, but he knew these were bad people and had to be stopped. He died on January 18 of this year of complications from his wounds. The Kenyan government described him as hero. Wellington Mutiso, an official with the Baptist Convention of Kenya, said the Farah s actions demonstrate that not all Muslims support al-shabaab. He laid his life as a ransom for the Christians who would have been killed, Mutiso said. It is a moving story, a startling story, a hopeful story. But most of all, it is a story that reminds us just how powerful this different way of life Jesus models is. It doesn t always require the literal laying down of life, but it does involve sacrifice and service, giving up self-interest to help others. It is a different way of life, a radically different way. But we are citizens of heaven. It is how we are called to live. Martin Luther once said that whenever he was tempted to be something other than who he really was, to be less than his calling in Christ, he would say to himself, But I am baptized! In other words, I have been claimed in love! I have made a commitment to follow Jesus! I am better than this! It is a helpful strategy. Paul suggests a similarly helpful strategy. Whenever we are tempted to be less than we really are, whenever we are tempted to devalue another person, to act in an uncivil way, to use force to get our way or simply refuse to give up something for others, we can say to ourselves, But I am a citizen of heaven! In other words, I am different! I am better than this! I am a follower of Jesus! If we can remember that, we will honor our true citizenship. 7