Sermon Citizens of Heaven

Lent 2 Year C 2/28/2010
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
Citizens of Heaven
By Rich Gamble

If there is one overarching theme in the lectionary readings for today it is conflict. For any of us who believe that participating in a life of faith is all about avoiding conflict, the passages today help set us straight.

In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is warned by the Pharisees, a religious class with whom he has had many conflicts, that Herod, a political leader is out to kill him. Is it that the Pharisees are truly interested in Jesus’ safety or are they just trying to scare him out of town? In either case there are layers of conflict here.

Jesus isn’t troubled by Herod. He is on the move towards Jerusalem and Herod isn’t going to slow him down. In Jerusalem he expects even greater conflict. He is going as a prophet to the city that he describes as the place that murders prophets.

So why is he going? Often our faith gets all mystical here but I hold to a more direct understanding of Jesus’ motivation. Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish world. It is the place where the Temple sits, the heart of their religion. It is the capitol city of the nation, the heart of their political identity. It is the seat of commerce, the center of learning, the storehouse of records, and the upper rung of the judicial system.

Jerusalem is Israel’s heart and Israel’s heart is firmly in the hands of the Domination System, that system of values and beliefs opposed to God’s domination free order. The center of the liberating faith of Moses has been consumed by the forces of greed and fear and violence. The leaders have led the people in the wrong direction, a direction which will eventually lead them to their doom. And so Jesus is heading towards the heart of darkness, the center of his world, the place where the forces arrayed against the will of God are most concentrated and potent.

In the passage from Philippians, Paul lays out the conflict:
“For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The conflict is between those whose minds are set on earthly things and those whose citizenship is in heaven. These two parties are so divergent in their understanding of reality that Paul says of the opposition that their glory is their shame. The thing that they are most proud of is the thing that should be most embarrassing for them.

This conflict isn’t between two parties vying for the same goals but it is a conflict so profound that they have utterly and completely divergent value systems.

In the movie the Matrix, there is this wonderful scene in which the hero awakens to reality. He thought that he was living a normal life as a computer programmer but then he falls in with a renegade group. The leader of this group offered him a choice, two pills take the blue pill and go back to way things were, take the red pill and see things as they really are. The hero chooses the red pill and becomes aware of the true nature of reality. That true nature was that he was being deceived. The world as he knew it was a giant fabrication and in truth he was nothing more than a source of energy for a world run by machines.

In the movie, the moment that he became aware of this reality he ceased to be useful to the machines and so he is disconnected and flushed down the drain. But waiting there on the other side are others who have awakened and to them he is not waste product to be flushed but a new life. The imagery shifts from toilet to baptism.

In the evocative imagery of the movie maker’s art, we are shown two worlds sharing the same planet. Humans live in each. But these two worlds are diametrically opposed to each other. They are in conflict in such a fundamental way that there cannot be any middle ground between them.

This is what Paul is getting at in this passage from Philippians.

Paul speaks of one group as being focused on “earthly” things and the other as being citizens of heaven.

Often the church has painted heaven as that place with God arrived at by the faithful departed. But note here that Paul speaks of heaven as the place from which their savior is to come.

Ok so what does all of this mean for us?

Well one thing that these texts tell us is that conflict is part of the nature of living a life faithful to this particular God. Moses was led into conflict with Pharaoh, the prophets were led into conflict with political and economic elite of their day, Jesus was in conflict with religious leaders and political leaders and economic leaders. He was in conflict with the Jewish leadership and he was ultimately tried and executed by the Roman Empire. Paul’s churches were in conflict with unbelievers and those who believed in a different interpretation of what it meant to be Christian, and Paul too is eventually put to death by the empire of Rome.

Our conflict is ultimately with the domination system but since that system governs human civilization it means that we are called to be in conflict with our fellow human beings on a whole host of issues.

Politics, economics, social systems, religion, everywhere we turn, we run into human beings who are operating under the influence of the Domination System.

And the things the System values: wealth, the power to dominate, fame these things are not only things which believers do not seek but they are sources of shame.

What are we to do with this understanding?

We have two choices:
1. We can choose the blue pill and accept the fundamental values of the world around us. Within that choice we can be conservatives or liberals. We can be fundamentalists or atheists or anything in between. But fundamentally we stay rooted in the desires and dreams of the world around us. Or…
2. We can take the red pill and enter into a world in which there is no desire to dominate, no dream of wealth, no longing for luxury, and no willingness to sacrifice others for our security or ease.

The red pill world for us places us in profound opposition to most of the leaders of our religion, virtually all of the leaders of our government and economy, with our families, co-workers, teachers, and friends. This choice will place us in conflict with the dreams and desires planted in us as children and nurtured in us for most of our lives.

Conflict? Yes we enter conflict when we truly choose the path of Christ.

But this conflict is good for us and the world. This conflict helps us chart a path of liberation for ourselves and it helps show others that there is a real alternative.

It is in the very heart of this conflict that we find our hope.

As we have seen in the meltdown, the logic of our economic system holds the germ of its own destruction. As we have seen in our nation’s inability check the power of banks, or insurance companies, or defense contractors our political system suffers from the same terminal weakness.

Paul’s words: “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.” seems more visible today then they did a decade ago.

But in our faith, Paul’s words were a call to a hope filled path. Jesus’ path though it led to Jerusalem and death was also the path of life and hope.

Conflict with the forces of violence and greed are part of the path of our faith but in the choice to live in a different reality the victory is already won. And that is good news.