Lord, may Your Word speak to us this morning, in Jesus' name. Amen.
A church Sunday School teacher wanted to find out if her class understood the concept of getting to heaven. She asked them, 'If I was kind to animals, darned my husband's socks, and gave you all lots of sweets, would that get me into heaven?'
'No!' the children answered.?
'If I bought all my clothes from Oxfam, cleaned the church every week, and went on missions to Africa in my summer holidays, would that get me into heaven?' ?
Again, the children answered 'No!'
'Well, then', said the teacher, 'if I sold my jewellery and my car, and gave all my money to charity, would that get me into heaven?' 'No!' said the children.
By now, the teacher was thinking that her children were full of deep Christian insight and spiritual understanding; so she asked 'Then how can I get into heaven?' A six year-old boy shouted out: 'YOU GOTTA BE DEAD.........'
"Our citizenship is in heaven", wrote St Paul to the Philippian Christians in today's Bible reading. And many people hearing those words make just the same mistake as the little lad in the Sunday school: we think what Paul meant was that we've got to wait until we die, then we can go and live in heaven if we've been good enough. But that is not what Paul meant. To understand what he did mean, we need to know a bit about 1st century Philippi - to where Paul sent his letter.
Philippi was a Roman colony. It was full of veteran soldiers of the great Roman empire who had settled their with their families, as well as several local folk - some of whom had benefitted from the Roman presence and others who hadn't and who resented the alien Latin-speaking people who had taken over their Greek town. Philippi was located on a main trading road and it was close to the Adriatic Sea, where you could set sail for Italy and travel on to Rome. So there was quite close contact between the Philippian colonists and their mother city. They were proud of being Roman, and they'd have continued to do things the way they were done in Rome - including worshipping their emperor, Caesar, as their lord and god. But when someone in Philippi said "Our citizenship is in Rome", they didn't mean that they wanted to go and live in Rome. No. The task of a Roman citizen in a place like Philippi was to bring Roman culture and rule to northern Greece. Roman citizens expanded Roman influence wherever in the world they happened to live.
But supposing things became difficult for the Roman citizens in a place like Philippi. Maybe there was a local rebellion or an attack from northern 'barbarian' tribes? In that case, those Roman citizens would hope that their emperor would come from Rome and rescue them; save them from their enemies and establish the glory of Rome in their midst. That's the picture Paul has in mind in Philippians chapter 3 verses 20 - 21. You can look at it again on the blue service sheet. Paul pictured the church as a colony of heaven, with the responsibility - as we pray in the Lord's Prayer - for helping to bring the kingdom and will of heaven to earth. Paul encouraged the Philippian Christians to "stand firm in the Lord" (4:1) - to give their loyalty and allegiance to Jesus rather than to Caesar as the true Lord and Saviour. And to trust that in due time Jesus Christ would bring in fully His kingdom to transform this old decaying earth with the glorious new life of heaven.
Now obviously, you and I don't live in the 1st century Roman colony of Philippi. Superficially, there are so many differences between our world and that to which Paul wrote his letter. And yet, when you scratch beneath the surface, there are so many similarities. Not least the fact that in our society too, many people choose to live 'as enemies of the cross of Christ'.
In modern Britain, as in ancient Philippi, the Christian faith is mocked and marginalised; instead many worship the false gods of money, sex and power. We may laugh at the idea of folk whose 'god is their belly' - and yet don't we all know the hold our various appetites can have over us? Especially when, everywhere we look, seductive advertising lures us to set our minds on earthly things? But that way, warns Scripture, lies destruction. After all, our present bodies will die; so if our earthly lives revolve only around bodily pleasures, we will soon find such pleasure to be fleeting and ultimately unfulfilling.
But the good news of the Bible is that we don't have to be dead to begin to experience heavenly joy and true fulfilment. In Christ we can share a foretaste of the joy of heaven right here on earth. Faith in Jesus Christ gives us the sure and certain hope of resurrection to fullness of life beyond death; yet even now in our mortal bodies, we begin to share that transformed and renewed existence, because "our citizenship is in heaven".
Baptism is all about this. As John said just now in the Prayer over the Water: "In it we are buried with Christ in His death. By it we share in His resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit." Maximillian and Louie, along with all of us who have been baptised into the Christian faith, have come to Christ the Lord who, as the hymn says, "makes all things new". Baptism gives us a new citizenship; we're not just citizens of the country named on our birth certificate - we're now citizens of heaven also; and that is our primary allegiance.
A guy dreams he's gone to heaven and as he approaches the pearly gates he sees millions of clocks. So he asks St Peter what the clocks are for. Peter replies that every person on earth has a clock in heaven, and each time a person sins, the hands on their clock move just a bit. The man says, "Where's my clock then?" Peter replies, "It is in the office; Moses has been using it for a fan."
Well! Our heavenly citizenship does not depend on us being nice good people who never sin. All human beings mess up; not one of us is 'good enough' to get to heaven on our own merit. Becoming citizens of God's heavenly kingdom depends entirely on putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It's through His blood, shed upon the Cross, that you and I are washed clean from the stains of all our failings and shortcomings. It's the love of God in Christ that reaches out to welcome us to our heavenly home and to heal the scars of our hurts and fears. It's though a life of developing a relationship of love and trust in Jesus that we can be confident we will one day share "the inheritance of the saints in glory".
But if we want to rise to new life in Christ - not just when we die but starting here and now - then we will, daily, strive to turn away from what is destructive and deceitful. God calls Louie and Maximillian; God calls you and me, and all the baptized, out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Those whose citizenship is in heaven do everything they can to walk in the light of Christ all the days of their life. Sometimes that is fairly straightforward and plain sailing. But often, there's a real battle going on - in us and around us. The promises that have been this morning - to 'reject the devil and all rebellion against God', to 'repent' (which means to 'turn away from') the 'sins that separate us from God and neighbour' - keeping these promises means that things in our lives have to change. Some things must go. Turning to Christ as Saviour; submitting to Christ as Lord; this is what opens the way to our citizenship of heaven and brings us new life and health and peace and fullness of joy. It's a wonderful thing. But it will bring us into conflict with the powers of darkness and forces that would hold us back and keep us enslaved to the deceit and corruption of evil.
Lent is one of those times in the year when all of us who have been baptized into the Christian faith are reminded that following in the Way of Jesus Christ takes perseverance and commitment. And it is something we cannot do on our own. If we are to "fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil, and remain faithful to Christ to the end of our life', we need 2 kinds of help. First, we need every day to ask God to give us the help of His Holy Spirit, His divine energy, to work within us, guiding us and strengthening us. Second, we need one another.
Just now, we welcomed Maximillian and Louie into the church, 'the fellowship of faith'. We who have our citizenship in heaven, we are children of the same heavenly Father and we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to help and encourage us - to share one another's joys and support one another in our sorrows and struggles. We cannot go it alone.
Someone has said, 'We are not citizens of this world trying to make our way to heaven; we are citizens of heaven trying to make our way through this world'. So let's bring the culture and atmosphere of heaven with us wherever we find ourselves on this earth. As citizens of heaven let's expanded heaven's influence in the world around us. Then, in due time, we will be fully transformed into Christ's glorious body.
Mary Barr
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