Christ the King and Dual Citizenship
Pastor Mathew Magera – 11/25/18 – Sermon 313
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
What is it like to be a
citizen of nowhere? A man known to the public as Sir Alfred, lived this very
unique experience. He had his Iranian citizenship revoked in the 1980s and he
became a citizen of nowhere. Belgium eventually granted him refugee status so
he moved there. Upon the death of his father and learning that his mother was
not his mother but that he was the illegitimate child of an affair his father
had with a Scottish nurse, he learned could technically apply for citizenship
in the United Kingdom. In 1988, he hopped on a flight that went through Paris
but when he landed in London, he had lost his refugee papers. Without proper
documentation and because his connecting flight came from France, he was
quickly put on the next flight back to Paris. Upon arriving back in Paris, he
had no ticket back to Belgium, he had no passport or refugee papers either which
means he could not leave the airport. So, he set up shop on a bench in the main
terminal. Belgium was willing to re-issue his refugee papers but he would have
to be in Belgium to get them, but because he didn't have them, he couldn't
leave Paris. After about 10 years, France agreed to grant him residency but Sir
Alfred declined because the residency papers would claim him as a citizen of
Iran, a place of which he did not want to be associated with. After a total of
18 years, he finally left the airport having to be hospitalized for a medical
condition.
This is the story of a man
who lived an imprisoned life of sorts having become a citizen of nowhere. Steven
Spielberg loosely used this story in his 2004 movie, The Terminal, about a man
who got stuck in New York’s JFK airport. The idea of being a citizen of nowhere
is so foreign to us we probably don’t even understand it fully. We are
fortunate today to all have citizenship with some country. We are a citizen of
somewhere. Whether you have a valid passport, a valid driver's license or just
a valid ID, you are a citizen of somewhere. You are recognized. You belong. You
matter.
Like many Sundays when we gather
for worship, we are here because we do belong somewhere. We are citizens under
Christ's royal reign. We are not citizens of nowhere. We are recognized. We
belong. This good news drives us to thoughts of heavenly peace and serenity,
hopeful for the day of Christ’s return and also living into the reality of
heaven right now. But, while the goal of Christ the King Sunday is to remind us
of our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, Christ the King Sunday also must
remind us that we have dual citizenship. We are citizens of another kingdom
too.
It’s easy for us to talk
about the world in which we live as our temporary home, saying that our true
home is in heaven with Jesus. There is some truth to that statement. This world
is temporary and Scripture is clear on this but it is nonetheless our home. We
are citizens of this world just as much as we are citizens of heaven. We are
meant to be here and Jesus is king of this world just as much as he is king of
heaven.
When I say we are citizens
of the world, I’m not talking about our nationality. I’m talking about our
existence in the physical world. This is the kingdom of the world, everything
around us that we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch. We’re human beings. We
belong to the world. Our families, our leadership, even our church is part of
the kingdom of the world and Christ is king. In the kingdom that we can see, we
are governed by the laws and rules and morals of this world. We obey traffic
laws, we elect leaders to govern us, we pay our taxes, we buy and sell things. All
of this is under the reign of Christ but you might be wondering, how, exactly?
Jesus doesn’t write the laws. Jesus doesn’t set the tax rates or invent the
infamous Michigan left that still makes no sense to me. No, but he entrusts leaders
from among us to do the work to keep this world organized and ordered so it
doesn’t unravel into chaos. There are people in place to write laws, settle
conflict, and enforce punishment and consequences all to bring order to our
nation and our world. This is God’s way of reigning in this world.
Perhaps the biggest reason we
don’t tend to see Jesus’ reign in this world is because when we break a law, we
get punished. We pay fines, we serve jail time, we are issued restraining
orders, we have to do community service and pay money. If we break the rules or
defy the order that is put into place, we suffer. It’s tough but it’s reality
and it’s how the world is operated, to keep order. Order is the goal. Grace is
not a given. It’s oftentimes not even on the table.
When we fail this world or
when this world fails us, that’s when we need something different. We realize
we’re never going to keep up. We have too much of a sinful self-serving nature
within us that even with rules and laws, expectations and standards, we’re
never going to live up to it. That’s where our citizenship in God’s other
kingdom takes shape, in the kingdom we cannot see, the kingdom of Heaven. Where
the kingdom of the world is structured on order and laws and consequences, the
kingdom of Heaven is structured on grace and forgiveness because Jesus took our
place and gave us his undeserved righteousness. The purpose of the kingdom of
the world is to prevent chaos. Chaos is bad. So, order is created. Order is
good. The purpose of the kingdom of heaven is to address sin. Sin is bad. So,
forgiveness is offered. Forgiveness is good.
As Christians, we live in
both of these kingdoms at the exact same time and we need them. The Lord knows
I need order in my life. I need a calendar, I need a schedule, I need
organization. I need to know the rules before I play the game, I need to know
the laws before I try something. We need order. But, we also need forgiveness. We
need grace. The kingdom of heaven offers us what we cannot get in the world.
In addition to needing both
of these kingdoms, these kingdoms are so distinct, they can never combine. I
mean, can you imagine a world that is operated on pure grace and forgiveness?
Forget to pay your taxes? Don’t worry about it. Did you turn left at the
intersection without driving past it to turn around and turn right? No harm no
foul. If the world operated by grace, people would do whatever they wanted and
it would be incredibly chaotic. On the other hand, can you imagine a world
where the government infiltrates and operates the church? The government
decides whether you are a Christian or not and tells you how to live like one
or even worse tells you if you are saved or what you need to do to achieve
salvation? It would never work.
We need both of these
kingdoms. We need the world because when we hear God’s forgiveness of our sins,
the Holy Spirit calls us to respond in faith by doing good works, by being
upstanding citizens, serving our neighbor and supporting those in leadership.
We can’t do this without the order the world provides. We can also operate in
this world by sharing the Gospel with those who have not heard it and don’t
know there is a kingdom based on grace that we are a part of because of Jesus’s
death on the cross. Even Jesus didn’t downplay our role in the world. Remember
when people came to Jesus and asked him if they should pay taxes, what did
Jesus say to them? Give to Caesar what is Caesars but give to God what is
God's. There is a place for leadership and authority in the world. Remember
when Jesus said that he came to this world not to abolish the law but fulfill
it? Yes, he knew that getting rid of the law would not make this world an ounce
better. Instead, he had come to fulfill the law, to be the only one to follow
it, to be the one sacrifice for all so that God's kingdom could be given to us
through Jesus who through his death gave us the reward we did not deserve.
There’s much more that can
be said on this but on Christ the King Sunday, we are called to remember who
our true king is. Jesus is our king; he offers us forgiveness of sins. But,
Jesus also calls us to the order of the world. He gives us a planet built on
laws. He gives us government and leaders to promote order and peace. He gives
us the responsibility to uplift and uphold this order so that we can be a light
in the world.
So, anytime you hear about
how God has forgiven you, think about how God is also empowering you to live
rightly out in the world. It can be a balancing act at times, it can be a
tension. But, it is far better to live with the balancing act of dual
citizenship than to live with the prospect of no citizenship at all by not
knowing Christ and perishing with this temporary world. We heard the words from
the prophet Isaiah this morning who told us that God's justice will be a light
to the nations. We hear of the coming salvation, the coming end to this
temporal world and we rejoice at the fact that our dual citizenship will grant
us salvation and that it will motivate us by that good news to go into the
world with the goal of building the kingdom of heaven piece by piece, one by
one, all for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, our King. That is
our calling today, to praise Christ our king, the king of heaven and the king
of the world and to rejoice that we belong, that we matter and that God has
granted us citizenship in both of these distinct and beneficial kingdoms. To
God be the glory, now and always. Amen.