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Sunday Sermon

Lent 1

“True citizenship”

28th February 2010

Today’s reading:  Philippians 3: 17 - 4: 1  &  Luke 13 31 - 35

(Click of reading title to view readings)

“Our citizenship is in heaven”

 

The story goes of a missionary passing through customs and seeking a visa. While filling in the necessary forms, he wrote that his citizenship was heaven. He had an immediate audience to which to preach!

 

Having just listened to the Gospel reading, we can assume that Jesus considered himself as a citizen of Jerusalem. Yet He was born in Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, and spent most of His time near the Sea of Galilee.

 

However, it is not too difficult to see Jesus’ claim on Jerusalem. It was four chapters earlier in St Luke’s Gospel that Jesus had set His heart and purpose on going to Jerusalem. Luke 9: 51 “As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” In today’s reading we hear Jesus declare: “for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”

 

Jerusalem symbolized a focal point for God’s purpose on earth. Tradition suggests that the mountain where Abraham had proved his faith and obedience in God by attempting to sacrifice his son Isaac was in fact Jerusalem – mount Moriah – perhaps the same “green hill far away outside a city wall”.

 

Jerusalem was the capital city for Jesus’ ancestor, the great King David, to establish the centre of his kingdom, and where his son Solomon built the Temple in honour of God’s name.

 

Jesus also expressed a great love for Jerusalem as He uttered His sorrow on what He knew would be the fate of Jerusalem forty years later: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

 

Some of the final verses of the Bible express the joy of heaven in words referring again to Jerusalem: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21). The Church is the bride of Jesus the Messiah, dwelling in eternity.

 

In a very special and mystical way, Jerusalem is the city where all God’s purposes are, or will be, fulfilled.

 

No wonder hymn-writers have penned: “Jerusalem my happy home” or “Jerusalem the golden … the home of God’s elect!”

 

MY QUESTION THIS MORNING IS TO ASK, WHERE YOU AND I TRULY BELONG? WHERE IS OUR HOME? WHAT IS OUR CITIZENSHIP?

 

St Paul, writing to the Philippians, contrasts the world of the enemies of Christ

“Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame; their mind is on earthly things”

with heaven where Jesus Christ

“will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”

 

Citizenship of heaven is not just a vague abstract hope, but a concrete certainty where we have recognizable bodies, transformed or born again by the power of Jesus.

 

Our life on earth is like a pilgrimage of preparation for the eternal dwellings in the presence of God, under the reign of Christ.

 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes it clear that the destiny of Christians is the heavenly Jerusalem of Jesus:

“You have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven” (Hebrews 12:22).

 

Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness were not-so-much a foretaste of heaven as the reality of a journey through life, to the eternity of heaven.

 

Our observance of Lent can teach us the reality of both the journey of life on earth as well as the joys that await us in heaven.

 

Jesus understood life’s journey as He taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6: 19).

 

In this life, Jesus goes on to encourage us in our journey to heaven:

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

 

All too often, we are so focused on our day-to-day earthly life, our necessities and our pleasures, that we, all too easily, loose sight of our heavenly home and destination. All too easily we settle for citizenship on earth, as opposed to the heavenly city and New Jerusalem, where Jesus reigns.

 

The new curate visited a well to-do widow. “So your husband is now in God’s nearer presence? But let’s not talk about gloomy things like that!” All too often, we hide from death, and hide from the positive glories of that famous gateway through which we must all pass. We will do anything to extend our life on this side of death without welcoming the glories of that city that awaits us.

 

If Jesus has dies so that the division between us and heaven has been bridged; and if we have accepted and invited Jesus to be our Saviour, Brother, and Friend; then why not live and show a little more joy and gratitude?

 

Our true citizenship will shape our use of our money, our time and our expertise or talents. Our citizenship will decide our behaviour, morals and standards of life. Our citizenship will influence our prayer time with God and our conversations with people. It will influence our work and our friends. It will control the first thing we do when we wake up and the last thing before we sleep. As the Archbishop of York suggested, begin with “Good Morning God” and not “Good God it’s morning!”

 

So on this second Sunday in Lent, spend time assessing and enjoying the benefits of being a citizen of heaven.