Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

This Thursday, Louis Dominique, one of our members who faithfully attends the 8 o’clock service, will be going to Faneuil Hall. There he will say some words, sign some papers, receive a document, and, after a long and arduous process, become a US citizen. And after that day, so much in his life will be different. It will be a day of great joy for him, and he will have all the rights and responsibilities that citizenship entails.

We can rejoice and celebrate with Louis this week. And we can reflect on what it means for us to be citizens of this realm. For if we have been born with those rights and responsibilities, if we have not had to work for them, we may not always recognize the great gift that we have.

Louis’ great blessing does invite us to reflect on the meaning of citizenship. But our word from scripture today invites us to do so as well.  For in that word we hear about another realm, and our participation in it. It is the apostle Paul who, as he so often does, quite willingly defines us and tells us who we are. He does so in his letter to the church in Philippi, a letter that across the centuries has been forwarded on to us through the postal system we call the Sunday Lectionary:

Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you ever considered yourself a citizen of heaven? We may often think of those who have gone before us as the true citizens of heaven – the communion of saints, our loved ones, who in the words of the bidding prayer from Lessons and Carol,  “dwell upon another shore and in a greater light.”   And indeed, Paul suggests that we should not be focusing on the earthly, but on the heavenly. At the same time, Paul is talking in the present tense to the Christian community he knew, whom he loved and longed for, his joy and his crown.

He and they, and we, are citizens of heaven.  Not surprising language, really, for one who followed Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus who came proclaiming the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Heaven may mean something about the afterlife, about the future but for both Jesus and Paul, it also clearly meant something very much about the present, and the lives we currently live.

What does it mean to be a citizen of heaven? For one thing, it means we can move with a kind of assurance through the present. You know what it is like when you are on a journey and you have the documents you need, that prove to the authorities that you are who you say you are? Crossing the border – and you have your passport – good. Crossing the border and you forgot your passport – not so good – and the anxiety goes through the roof.

Now an ancient man named Abram did not have any travel documents with him, when he and his wife Sarai set forth on their journey. They were nomads. But they had perceived a call. God told them to leave the land where they dwelt, and to go forth. And God promised to be with them.

So there is assurance: there is the knowledge that we as we walk and work, as we live and love, as we fail and succeed, we do so in the presence of a God who calls us. We know that though we ourselves on this earth are as numerous as the stars, we are known by name even as Abram and Sarai were known by name.  And we walk with the assurance, or yes, let us call it what it is – the faith – that whatever the circumstances of our lives, however unlikely the call that God makes to us may seem, there will be fulfillment.

God asked Abram to look heavenward, but did so in order for Abram to recognize God’s faithfulness in his earthly life. A child, an heir, and not only that, a multitude of descendants who will outnumber the stars? That seemed impossible to Abram and Sarai. But God was faithful to them. Their lives would be changed. Their names would be changed to Abraham and Sarah.

And so, as we consider the ways that God calls us, both as individuals and as a community, let us remember our citizenship. Our passports may give us the ability to travel to far more places than we ourselves can even imagine. Which is not to say that those journeys will be easy, or that they will keep us safe from any harm. Citizenship papers can give us assurance – the right to cross the borders of love and service to places we are called, but they also define us in ways that have consequences for us.

“Show me your papers,” says the border guard, or the security official on the train. The scene is familiar enough from movies about escaped prisoners of war trying to make their way to freedom, or from those about a spy in the Cold War trying to cross a border with counterfeit passport. And their hope is that the false papers they have had created will not give them away.

It is not giving anything away to say that you see such scenes, and the tension that results, in the movie Argo, about six American diplomats who are trying to escape from Iran after the hostage takeover at the US Embassy. Hiding out in the Canadian embassy, they are given new identities, new passports, and new stories about themselves to memorize so that they can make their way to the airport and onto a plane to freedom.

Declaring one’s citizenship has consequences. And so it is today that we also hear a story, not of harps and heavenly wings, but of a lament and earthly wings. We hear of Jesus, just prior to entering the city of Jerusalem for the last week of his life, looking out over the city that he loves. And he knows this truth: that those who bring the word of God to God’s people are not always beloved. Those who bear witness to love’s sovereign power will always be a threat to the sovereigns who wield loveless power.  Jesus is a citizen of heaven.  And when he looks out over the city, he knows what is to come: his own rejection and death.

So what does he do? He fulfills the vows of his citizenship. His arms reach out to embrace the people even as a mother reaches out to shelter her baby chicks.  To be a citizen of heaven is to travel through this life with assurance, yes. Assurance when the circumstances that surround us seem to suggest that God’s intentions cannot be fulfilled. And assurance that allows us to act as loving and compassionate people in the midst of rejection or harm.

If there is something else that characterizes the citizens of heaven, it is a sense of gratitude. I know that Louis is deeply grateful this week. As we can be, too, for the assurance of faith we are given. We will hear that kind of gratitude in our last hymn this morning.

Martin Rinkart, was a pastor living in Eilenburg of Saxony during the early 1600’s. He wrote the words of that hymn originally as a table grace. In it, one hears the gratefulness of a heavenly citizen. Gratefulness to God,

Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way,
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.*

Here is someone who has known blessings. Yet the historical background of his life tells us more. Rinkart lived through the Thirty Years War, and much of his ministry was taken up with its disastrous effects. His city became a place for refugees from the war, even though it was consumed by the plague as well. Eventually, Rinkart was the only pastor left in the city, and he presided over five thousand funerals, including his wife’s.

God’s intentions fulfilled? A life free from hardship? Not in the least. But living under those circumstances, Rinkart dared to write,

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us.**

The hymn writer Brian Wren has noted that this hymn represents either a massive act of denial or the most profound expression of faith.*** I know that when I sing those I will think of the latter, and praying for such faith. For to be a citizen of heaven is to look and dream of the future by looking deeply and intently at our lives today, and seeing the blessings and the bounty of God breaking forth in the midst of everything we see and encounter. It means looking toward the heavens and counting the stars, if we are able to count them, and to know that we are amongst them, as those named and called by God. It means looking to Jesus Christ and walking in His sacrificial way, always seeing his faithfulness to us as the embrace of a mother who will not abandon her children.

It means, brothers and sisters, looking at our life together and seeing in each other a joy and crown, and in all the changes and circumstances of our earthly lives, always  seeing the gracious opportunity to live out our calling: to be citizens of heaven.  Amen.

A Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church
Charlestown, Massachusetts
Preached on The Second Sunday in Lent
By the Rev. Thomas N. Mousin

February 24, 2013

* The Hymnal 1982 (Church Publishing Co: New York, 1982) #397
** ibid.
*** Brian Wren, Praying Twice, The Music and Words of Congregational Song (John Knox Press: Louisville, 2000)