“Citizenship in Heaven”
Feb. 24, based on Ps 27:1-4 and Phil 3:16-21
Is the sentiment expressed in Psalm 27 something that can really be practiced?
When evildoers devour your flesh and an army encamps against you, can you really be confident and have no fear? Well, maybe you can, if you feel that God intervenes to protect you in all dire circumstances. I don’t actually think it works that way, so I find the hyper-confidence of this psalmist to be a bit inflated. But that doesn’t meant that I throw this psalm away. I know that the assertion of faith can help one overcome great difficulties. Faith itself, trust itself, may be a kind of miracle, producing confidence against all odds.
Further, the psalm gives us a hint of our subject: citizenship in heaven, because it pictures a kind of hope that goes against the usual competitive, domination system that characterizes human societies. It hopes for a justice that comes from outside human society. And this is just one of many examples of how the Jewish faith attempted to live by a heavenly rule, to assert a different value system than those asserted by the “scratchmy-back I’ll-scratch-yours” systems. The material forces in the world can have a dehumanizing effect, and the spirit in us resists this.
The Jews were wary of the patronage system, which is the institutionalization of mutual back-scratching. The patronage system was largely an unwritten law about returning favors, forming selfish alliances, and trying to get people to owe you something. It’s all about climbing one’s way to the top, forming factions to gain power, and doing favors with a view to being paid back. Jesus attacked this system, when he said, “when you give a luncheon or a dinner . . . invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14:12-14).
The patronage system always involves doing things for which you expect a payback, as in giving a dinner because you hope to make powerful alliances or increase your social standing. The biblical tradition continually resists this way of thinking, nowhere more

2 clearly than in the teachings of Jesus, but also sometimes in the Old Testament. This psalm does not say anything about patronage, but it does speak of getting one’s help from God, not from humans who want repayment. You can’t repay God. God doesn’t want payment, but wants what’s best for you.
Of course, many Christians and Jews have thought of God as a big patron who gives favor only if he is shown honor, but Jesus punctured this with parables about the astounding generosity of God, who is not ruled by our concepts of payback. But Jesus’ teaching is very counterintuitive, for earthlings. Even this psalm has a suggestion of payback, hinting that God is defending the psalmist because the psalmist shows honor.
After saying he will offer sacrifices, he asks God to hear him (27:6-7), implying a link between the two. It is actually very difficult for us to think in nonpatronal ways, to think of a system that works differently than earthly systems. It is not easy to think in heavenly terms.
Knowing that it will be difficult, let’s try it, beginning with the Philippians statement, “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a
Savior” (3:20). What is citizenship? It is a relationship between individuals and a group that confers rights and obligations upon one. Citizenship in heaven confers the right of eternal life as a child in the family of God. It also carries the obligation of loving others in the family, even those who resist accepting that they are, at least in potential , part of this family. Another part of citizenship is that the social entity asserts certain values. Our citizenship in heaven promotes a different value system than the selfish and backscratching values that still exist in earthly systems, even in ones that have been partly uplifted by spiritual values. Heavenly values can permeate the earthly level, and gradually change it.
Rejoice! We have the opportunity to serve God by making this earthly place more heavenly. We all benefit by helping one another. So, even though we are talking about

3 citizenship in heaven, this is something very useful in this life. Having citizenship in heaven can be put to good use on earth. But one nee
ural: “ our citizenship is in heaven.” It is really Jesus who effects the transformation, as he makes clear in the next verse: “He will transform the body of our humiliation so 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” (3:21). This is the resurrection body, the “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44), but today I want to highlight the statement that this transformation is done by the same power that enables Jesus to make all things subject to himself.
Obviously, he has not fully exercised this power yet—because it is the power of love, and it accepts only voluntary submission. Jesus does not force this power upon us.
Here is another way in which heaven’s power differs from earth’s power, though
Christians have not always understood this. With so much of the human race clinging to selfishness, not submitting to the controlling power of love, it will take a long time for the tide to turn, for the human race to begin to change.
In the meantime, we live as people with dual citizenship, loyal to an earthly realm and abiding by its laws, but supremely loyal to the heavenly kingdom and its laws. This results in continual experimentation, our trying to find just how to live loyally in both realms. The church should be a place for constructive experimenting with how to live in the heavenly kingdom while also living in the harsh reality of the earthly realm. The world is not always fair, and nature and chance are definitely not fair. Some people don’t get the benefit of good parenting; some did not grow up in a healthy environment. A natural response of many Christians is to seek to find ways to help others who are struggling. We have a serious homelessness problem in Providence, so some Christians are working to help people find housing. >

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One can hardly think about heavenly citizenship when one’s earthly citizenship does not even secure one a roof overhead. And so, we who believe in heavenly citizenship have to work on redressing the failures of earthly society. There are different ways to practice the heavenly principles.
For this church to survive, we need to have a number of different approaches being tried out here. We no longer have a generation of parents who will compel their children to go to church. Church has to become far more creative in drawing people in. We need a number of different endeavors, a number of different entry points, where people can come to learn, to serve, to worship, to create, to find God. We need to appeal to a wider variety of people than ever before. And sometimes we need to give a dinner for people who have no way of repaying us.
There is some pleasant and some shocking irony here: our all having the same citizenship in heaven leads to a wide variety in our approaches to heavenly service. Let us foster and encourage these diverse approaches to serving the one God. We can all benefit from observing the diversity. We can practice love on each other. Sometimes it will be clumsy and we will need encouragement. I hope I can help offer that to you, and that you can offer it to me.