Citizens of Heaven and Earth: Reflecting on the 4th of July

(A note: I generally post on faith and science issues. This week, because it's the week of July 4th, I decided to look at how faith intersects with civic life. It's not too much of a stretch to see how these reflections can also be an analogy for any encounter of Christian faith with culture. By the way, Blogger and I are fighting over getting the font size and style correct. I'm currently losing. So I'm posting as is.)

The Fourth of July might make us think of one of three things. 

The first is this: “Why does the 4^th of July have to happen this year on a Wednesday?”

Second is this: "What does this mean for our country?" Most of us know that this is the day on which our great country signed its independence from England. On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

And finally, we might go even deeper and ask, 

“What does it make to be a good citizen?” “What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus and to celebrate this day as an American Christian?”

The answer that I’m offering here is that our calling is to know the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ and to follow this God in mission in the world. This call brings us freedom and joy.

And I want to look at through this topic through the eyes of the Apostle Paul. In his words from the book of Philippians, we find freedom and service that we might never have imagined. 

Two texts from Philippians on citizenship

I’m going to take up two texts from this Pauline letter that may at first be contradictory. He affirms two things:

1.   In chapter one: “Let your manner of civic, public life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ…” (And in this passage he uses the Greek word politeuomai, which more literally signifies “be a citizen.”)
2.   And then in chapter three: “Our citizenship is in heaven…”

How can we be both citizens of heaven and earth? What does that mean?

To answer those questions, we need to step back for a moment and note a paradox: when Paul writes this letter, he’s a prison seeking and he’s working to inspire this group of Christians. From this man in chains we learn about freedom. 

And then there’s the historical context: In order to understand these words, we have to grasp the context in Philippians. This city in Europe, though about 800 miles from Rome, was a colony of the Roman Empire. Why? In 42 BC, there was a huge battle by Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) and Mark Anthony and the leaders of Julius Caesar’s assassination, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The conquering general and later emperor Octavian had to figure out what to do with all these Roman soldiers in Philippi. So he made this part of Europe a Roman colony. This meant that, though they did not live in Rome, they were Roman citizens, which signified, among other things, freedom from taxation. And they were very proud of their citizenship and their city of Philippi, which Acts 16:12 calls “a leading city of Macedonia.” 

OK to these two passages…

We are citizens on earth.

NIV, Philippians 1:27-28 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner (lives as citizens) worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit,striving together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.
Or as paraphrased in The Message…
Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. Let nothing in your conduct hang on whether I come or not. Your conduct must be the same whether I show up to see things for myself or hear of it from a distance. 

We are even more citizens of heaven.

NIV, Philippians 3:18-21 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
And again, those key verses paraphrased in The MessageThere are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.  But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! 

In a word, we—like the Philippians—are citizens of earth, and citizens of heaven. Because we are citizens of God’s country (as it were), we are free to serve this country we love.

Free to love God as citizens of heaven

We are free for God: that’s where our citizenship lies.

This implies that we worship God with our entire lives, our everyday, ordinary life, our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life” a la Romans 12:1-2 and The Message, and this is our “living sacrifice.” 

Getting our identity straight

This implies that we are free from being defined by any label such as “American Christian,” “Republican Christians” or “Democratic Christians” or even “Presbyterian Christian.” The adjective always has to inhabit a priority entirely secondary to the noun.

      

This can get so confused. I’m told that a few years back the Church of England and the Church of Scotland were in talks to have a merger, and a pastor in Scotland was having conversations in his town with various people. This Scottish pastor met a man man told him, “I’m totally opposed to this.” 

And the pastor responded, “That surprises me a bit. I always thought you were an atheist.”  

The man shot back, “Aye, that I am, but I’m a Presbyterian atheist.”

Having a standard outside our culture

And this takes us to the power of being citizens of heaven. Unless you have something outside the culture, you can’t speak into the culture. As I mentioned in another post, during the years leading up to World War II, the Nazi regime had very few resisters. One of the few was the small Confessing Church in Germany led by the theologian Karl Barth. In 1934 they said a distinct No to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews because—as they put it—Jesus Christ is the “One Word we have to hear and to obey in life and in death.” They could state a word that was angular to the way that the Nazis asserted that God, through the Weltgeist (the world Spirit or Mind) was speaking through the achievements of the German Volk. 

That’s what it means to be free to serve our country.

And there’s also the personal angle

As citizens, we are free to serve God.

And here it’s important to realize the difference between freedom from and freedom for. I’m beginning to think that the main reason to be free from entanglements that hold us back—even sin—is to be free for serving God.

            

This week, there’s been a lot of interest in LeBron James and where he’s headed. We now know it’s the Lakers. (Good luck in the Western Conference with my mighty Warriors.) Lebron is a uniquely talented player, but this talent leverages some significant natural physical qualities. And this makes me realize that no one will be as interested in me if I were to declare my intention to play for the NBA. Despite that fact that I’m free from any hindrances to play basketball, I’m not free for this. 

As Paul says, 

“Let your manner of civic, public life—your citizenship—be worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”

Here I’ll just close a few questions directed at you and at me:

• Do we live representing the kingdom of God?
• When we look at the Gospel of Christ—his care for the hurting, the outcast, those damaged by religion and society—do we live up to that standard?
• Do our lives reflect Jesus? Are we his hands and feet today?

As we reflect on these questions, my prayer is that they will that, that we may we know that kind of freedom, the freedom as we celebrate the birthday of the United States of America, but even more the freedom, by the power of  the Holy Spirit, to let our manner of civic life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ.

That’s the way I want to celebrate the Fourth of July this year and every year. 

On God's Will, Free Will, With a Bit of Science Thrown In

Recently, on a Facebook page dedicated science and faith (which I manage), there's been some discussion of whether science allows for us to have free will. Is there a place within scientific research for true human agency, where our decisions actually affect the world and our lives? Or is life, and particularly our actions, fully determined? Some, like Francis Crick, conclude that science, and especially the cognitive sciences and genetics, indicate that we are "nothing but a pack of neurons."

That's fairly bleak, but a similar kind of anti-free will thinking can enter into Christian conceptions of life. It's the conviction that somehow God has an iron-fisted will that determines our life like automatons.

These two modes of thought led to some questions that raced through my head when I preached yesterday on Proverbs 3:5-6. 

Are we free in any sense? What does it mean to "trust in God" and "submit to him," or as another translation (NRSV) puts it, "acknowledge him"? 

To answer those questions, I stepped back to my core conviction and worked from there: Our lives flourish when we follow God’s will. Sometimes our misconceptions of how to follow God’s will get in the way of God’s simple wisdom for us. It strikes me that this verse and others like it (e.g., Psalm 37:5-6) lead us to a gracious and interactive God whose will is (at some level) simple.

(A sidebar: We often let misconceptions that get in the way. First of all, we think that God’s will is decided by us individually, outside of community; and secondly, that God’s will is a detailed roadmap instead of following a Person, Jesus Christ.) 

My mind then journeyed to two images: First of all, a rigid view of God's will, as well as the deterministic view of our live as "nothing but" our neurons, that set us on a railroad track view of life. Either we somehow find this rigid will of God, get ourselves on the track and stay there. Woe to those who get derailed! Or we're stuck on a very similar track by our biology and it's "nothing buttery," and we're not getting off. 

Neither option sounds much like the "abundant life" that Jesus talked about (John 10:10) nor the "broad place" that psalmists celebrate as God's redemptive work (e.g. Psalm 18:19). 

Image two (I'm a jazz drummer): the God who improvises with us by the Holy Spirit, and we are called to follow God’s will in a dynamic, improvisational way. 

This is God who didn't let the the persecutor of the church, Saul fall off the track and get derailed, but who met him on the Road to Damascus, changed his name to Paul (Acts 9:1-9), and then led him in dynamic ways in his mission journeys. (Read the final eight or so chapters of Acts to see how many unexpected twists and turns God takes Paul on). It's this gracious God who doesn't set us on a narrow track, but in a broad expanse in which we can listen and try out and even make mistakes. As Psalm 18:19 declares, "He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me because he delighted in me."

From God's perspective, the Eternal One who is able to transcend time while still being intimately involved it, we might say it all looks a perfectly organized scheme. But from our perspective, we experience the One who "works all things together for good" (Romans 8:28), even in and through our mistakes, our attempts, and our decisions. It's the God who leads us in a truly free life. This is at least part of what Jesus means when he tells us that he will make us free indeed (John 8:36).

And all this strikes me as both good science and brilliantly liberating theology. And it's a great life to lead.

Some Assorted Thoughts on Freedom

I've been thinking about freedom recently--perhaps because our country is just about to celebrate our Declaration of Independence. I've been meditating particularly on the way our search for freedom in the United States connects with Jesus's words in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John:

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. 

I'll keep my blog entry unsystematic, but two things have come to mind. First of all, although we can hear this as a generalizable promise about abstract truth, it's really about a  relational truth. It's the truth of relationship, not of mathematics. Put in a question: how do we relate to the living God? Jesus offers us freedom when we are in relationship with the Living God.


Secondly, freedom here is not what we so often think as liberty or independence. It is not freedom from; instead it is freedom for. It not solely to be independent from external constraints, but the capacity to do what is right. Two citations help me on this, first from the ever-witty, G. K. Chesterton, who reminds us that being only free from may, in the end, make us less human:

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

And the second from Peter Marshall, who, I think, sets the the right tone and direction. It's a fitting summary statement, fitting enough that I think I'll just close with it.

May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.

Whose Are You?

I've been thinking about citizenship recently as I muse on two passages from the book of Philippians. First the Apostle Paul's exhortation to this group of house churches in ancient European city of Philippi:

Only, live your civic or public life worthy of the gospel of Christ. (1:27; I added italics and elaboration)

And then Paul lays out the contrast between the life of the citizens of the "secular city" (to use Augustine's term) and that of followers of Jesus--particularly whose they are:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (3:20-21, again, my italics)

I've been thinking about this because I'm working on a sermon for our presbytery (the regional gathering of our denomination). I'm asking the question: What do we need to hear in light of some contentious political battles in our denomination? It seems to me we need to hear about freedom. We need to hear about our citizenship about how to answer "Whose are we?" The answer: we're free for God and therefore free from being defined by human associations so that we can be free to re-engage in this world with love and service. When we know we ultimately belong to God then we can serve this world more effectively, worthy of the Gospel.


At least that's how I see it. What do you think?