February 24, 2013
2nd Sunday in Lent
Phil. 3:17-4:1
Papers, Please
(The 3 B’s of (Christian) Citizenship)
About halfway through “Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade” Indiana Jones and his dad, Henry Jones, Sr., find
themselves aboard a dirigible trying to escape the Nazis. The Nazi chasing them
boards the giant balloon and is about to confront Henry when our hero, Indiana,
posing as the conductor, taps him on the shoulder and asks, “Ticket, please,”
and promptly throws him out the window.
He then turns to the rest of the passengers and says, “No ticket.” The other passengers eagerly pull out their
tickets to show him. Perhaps you haven’t
been aboard a dirigible, but traveling by train and you are asked, “tickets,
please” or traveling internationally, “passports, please.” And then there’s that moment of fear that the
country won’t let you in, or on an overnight train in Europe when the conductor
asked for and kept our passports – he gave them back to us in the
morning. What happens without passports
or tickets? You might get thrown off a
dirigible. Or get arrested.
In November 2011, a police officer
in Tuscaloosa, Alabama stopped a rental car that had no tags. The driver had only a German identification
card and so he was arrested and taken downtown.
He was charged with not having proper identification: no papers. The man was released after an associate
retrieved his passport, visa and German driver’s license from his hotel. He was a German executive for
Mercedes-Benz. Alabama’s tightening down
on immigration papers continued the next month, December 2011, when police
ticketed a Japanese executive of Honda, at a checkpoint. Mr. Ichiro Yada even had with him an
international driver’s license, passport, and U.S. work permit! You see, Alabama enacted a law in September
of that year requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they
suspect of being in the U.S. illegally.
They dropped the charges against Mr. Yada after being shown a copy of
his Japanese driver’s license.[1]
I think we’re going a little crazy here. Papers, please. Tickets, please. Passport, please. We just read in Philippians that our
citizenship is in heaven. What documents
do we have to support that? Perhaps you
have the certificate from when you baptized, or confirmed. Maybe you often wear a cross necklace or
carry a Bible. How do you show that you
belong to God?
Citizenship has to do with belonging,
who belongs and who doesn’t. If we are
citizens of heaven, then we belong to Christ.
In baptism we are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever, to quote
the old liturgy.[2] Everything we do stems from our baptism. It was our entry way into belonging to Christ
and becoming citizens of heaven. If our
citizenship is in heaven, then it is not here.
Here, in this space where we worship God, we are all here at God’s
invitation and so we all come as equals, not at the mercy of immigration
officials but at the mercy of the Holy Spirit.
If we belong at all, it is by the grace of God.[3] The Holy Spirits works within us and through
us, names us and seals us. We do not do
that work ourselves. And this space
serves us, we do not serve this space.
This space belongs to God and he and he alone makes it holy so that
where we are standing is holy ground. Each
worship space becomes a foreign land that we call home and we do not have to
show papers to enter.[4] As Christians, our notions of who belongs and
who doesn’t are a little different from society’s standards because we say
everyone is welcome.[5] When we celebrate communion, we believe
everyone is invited and welcome to participate.
It’s not my table or Pastor Ken’s table, it’s not Orange’s table or a
Methodist table, it’s the Lord’s table and we are all invited guests,
Pastor Ken and myself included. So
citizenship is about belonging, and we are all invited to belong to God.
Citizenship is also about boundaries. We know that nothing can separate us from the
love of Christ, but what separates us from people who aren’t Christian? How do you know if someone’s a Christian? We don’t all wear cross necklaces. There’s the 1960s song, “They’ll Know We Are
Christians By Our Love,” but people who aren’t Christians do good things, too. We don’t have the monopoly on doing
good. What’s different for those of us
who belong to God is the reason why we love, the reason why we serve, the
reason why we do good things. And the
answer isn’t “because we’re supposed to.”
The answer isn’t “because that’s just what we do.” The answer isn’t “because if I don’t, then no
one else will.” The answer is because
God calls us to. God calls us to love
him. God calls us to love our
neighbor. God calls us to come and
worship him. God calls us to serve.
A couple weeks ago, Pastor Ken shared a story we heard at the district clergy
meeting with Bishop Hope Morgan Ward. She
also related to us a conversation with a lady who taught preschool Sunday
school at a small church she pastored.
This lady was feeling burned out because she’d been the preschool Sunday
school teacher for a long time and wanted to quit, except she felt like if she
did, then no one would teach the little kids.
Bishop Hope advised her not to worry about that and the lady promised
she’d pray about it. The church was
going through a time of connecting all the members with different ways of
serving at the church and had them all listed on cards that they passed
out. The lady took her card home and
prayed about it. When she turned it in
the next Sunday, she had marked preschool Sunday school teacher. Bishop Hope was surprised and asked her
why. The lady said she didn’t really
want to be a trustee or cook in the kitchen or lead worship or any of the other
options listed on the card. When she’d
prayed about it, God was calling her to continue teaching the preschool Sunday
school class. So let’s not worry about
“if I don’t, then no one else will,” but let’s work on how God is calling each
of us to serve. Because God is
calling. You don’t get to say, “I’ve
done my bit.” God is not done with you
until you reach heaven. We gather once a
week for worship. Many of us are
involved in small groups during the week.
If you’re not, I highly encourage you to join one. The final part of our 3-G motto, Gather,
Grow, and Go, is to serve. The only
question is how and where. We have lots
of opportunities at the church to serve, many weekly and monthly ways to serve
in the community. What is God calling
you to do? How is God calling you to
serve?
Being citizens of heaven does not mean that we live in an alternate
reality or that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the problems and crises of
this world. Rather, it means that we
engage this world with completely different set of values.[6] We don’t serve because it’s a good thing to
do. We’re not involved in prison
ministry or with the homeless shelters because it’s something we’ve always done
and we’re nice people. We do it because
it’s what God is calling us to do. One
mark of your citizenship is that you are answering God’s call on your life,
whatever that is. And on the outside it
may not look any different from someone who isn’t a Christian, but you know why
you do what you do and you can share that reason with anyone who asks.
The Disciple’s Path bible study
started this past week and in Week One there is a chart of Spiritual Practices,
divided into individual ones that we do on our own and communal ones that we do
with others.[7] The “Personal Spiritual Disciplines” were
Prayer, Scripture Meditation, Financial Generosity, and Invitational
Evangelism. The definition of that last one,
Invitational Evangelism, was knowing the Gospel story and knowing your story
and some in the group confessed that they didn’t know their own story very
well. You can’t tell others why you do
something, can’t tell them what makes you different as a citizen of heaven, if
you don’t know your own story, if you don’t know what God is calling you to
do. If you need help with that
discernment, Pastor Ken and I would love to pray and listen with you. Just let us know.
Regardless of the specific ways you
live out your calling as a citizen of heaven, there is one thing God is calling
all of us to and that is becoming like Christ. Citizens of heaven are always striving to
become more like Christ. This is the
Christ who said that the first and greatest commandment is: “you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”[8] Love God.
Love your neighbor. This is the
Christ who is transforming us to become like him, a process which continues for
the rest of our lives, as we are going on to Christian perfection.
The folks participating in A Disciple’s Path bible study also
told me that Pastor Ken and I are doing a good job preaching on prevenient
grace, God’s grace that comes before we know him, calling all of us into
relationship with him, but that we preach less on justifying grace and
sanctifying grace, at least by those names.
Justifying grace I think you all are familiar with, even if not by those
words. It’s saving grace, it’s being
justified by grace, being made right with God through the atoning work of Jesus
Christ on the cross. The last one,
however, is the one I’m talking about in becoming like Christ, and that’s
sanctifying grace. This is the
sustaining grace as “we continue to grow in the likeness and image of Christ
through the perfecting work of the Holy Spirit.”[9] You see, we never stop growing. God is never done with you. You may at times feel that you are done with
God, or need a time-out, but God is never done with you. “Sanctifying grace is where we figure out
that it’s not ‘all about me’ and begin to participate in God’s redemption in
the world.”[10] As citizens of God’s kingdom, we work with
him in this transformation process.
You know, I started off thinking
that our two Lenten studies were very different. A Disciple’s Path is about growing in
your faith through the five parts of our membership vows and is steeped in
Wesleyan theology. Becoming the
Church Together is about looking at the issue of immigration through the
lens of faith. The two studies aren’t
quite so different after all. Working
for justice, serving with the poor and marginalized, which many immigrants are,
obeying God’s call on your life, loving your neighbor, some of whom are
immigrants right next door to the church, these are all part of a disciple’s
journey, all part of being citizens of heaven, all part of becoming more like Christ. Part of what I love about Methodism is the
balance of personal piety with social action.
It’s not all about you and studying the Bible. It’s not all about works of mercy,
either. The Christian life, Christian
citizenship is about both as we continue to grow and serve and love God and
love neighbor and become more like Christ.
There are no passports, no papers to prove you’re a citizen of
heaven. You don’t need a ticket to get
there, and you won’t get tossed out the window if you don’t have one. God invited you here, and he invites you to
continue your relationship with him, growing your love of him and loving your
neighbors, papers or not.
[2] The Book of Common
Prayer, 1979, p. 308
[3] Claudio Carvalhaes,
lecture, Festival of Homiletics, Atlanta, GA,
May 17, 2012
[4] Ibid.
[5] Becoming the Church
Together: Immigration, the Bible, and Our New Neighbors, North
Carolina Council of Churches, p. 13.
[6] Alejandro Botta, “Second
Sunday in Lent” in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: A Lectionary
Commentary, Year C, Dale Andrews, Ronald Allen, Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm, Eds.,
p. 131
[7] James Harnish, A
Disciple’s Path, Daily Workbook, p. 29
[8] Mark 12:29-34
[9] James Harnish, A
Disciple’s Path, Daily Workbook, p. 23
[10] Ibid.
