Citizens of Heaven

1989 (Year C), 19 November /
Pentecost 27

St Peter de Beauvoir Town 

A story in the newspapers this week tells most movingly of a mother whose son having been declared dead, although still on a ventilator, took the decision to have parts of his body donated to other sick people. The document she had to sign, after she had said goodbye to her son for the last time, said that his organs would be harvested. She was pleased to be able to think, she said, that though this gift, this harvesting, other people, who she would never know, would lead greatly enriched lives.

Now it’s impossible to imagine that woman’s feelings as she made these decisions which would live with her for the rest of her life. Hopefully we will never be called on to face such a time. But through the telling of her story she transforms our lives because she gives us new perspectives, new horizons. Maybe through her story, what she does is restore and give back to us, something we’ve lost and we begin again to see our own lives in proportion. Whatever it is, we can see her story for what it really is – a glimpse of heaven.

And heaven according to the readings and the theme today is what we are Citizens of. Citizens of a holy place. A place filled with God and those who are loved by him. This citizenship is a gift bestowed freely on us, and the gift means that we are no longer trapped by the confines of this world. We can lift up our eyes and set them on a much more glorious place. A place not limited by the values of this world, but illuminated with the vision of God. Citizenship brings a new dimension to our lives for we see things now through the eyes of God. We are given new balance to our lives and as we look out from heaven things take on a different shape, they are transformed, they are redeemed.

I guess all of us allow everyday things to take us over. Sometimes it feels as if we have no choice – we are forced into doing and saying things in our heart of hearts we would rather not do. I feel that this last week has been one of the most horrendous of my life. I’ve been just careering madly from one thing to another, feeling out of control, completely drained with people being ungenerous and horrid. Maybe it’s been no different from your week and now we’ve just come together to flop down and have a rest with God. But when these feelings of being overwhelmed happen the danger is that our vision of God and the possibilities open to us because we are Citizens of Heaven pass forgotten or unnoticed.

We need to be brought up with a jolt. Sometimes God does it himself – in another part of the Bible Jacob set out on a great journey. One evening he settled down to sleep and dream and before Jacob had his dream he had assumed that he travelled alone survival being his only purpose. But he dreamed he wrestled with God and after he woke he knew that he was not along and that the earth was a place of possibilities because it has not been and never will be cut off from heaven and the sustaining role of God. The place where he dreamt, he declares, is a place transformed by God – a holy place – this is now the gate of heaven.

At times God has used the bible to reach out and enrich our vision, at others he has used the stories of apparently very insignificant people to remind us of our gift of citizenship. What is certain is that he will never leave us, for our citizenship of heaven doesn’t begin at death it extends to us now. Emmanuel – God is with his people.

So it’s not at all like that silly Cliff Richard song which says that ‘from a distance, God is watching’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

God is not like any other. And his strangeness is in this. He is with his people. He is for his people. His goodness is not in his great transcendental power nor in his majestic remoteness nor in his demanding toughness but in his readiness to be with his people. And this being with and for his people is because he wills it to be so. He is not by himself. He is for others.

And our citizenship is defined not in terms of who is in and who is out, but in communion with God in collaboration with God. It is not the vision of this world and it calls us to make decisions which maybe we would rather not make. Our central human vocation is to be with and for our sisters and brothers, in communion and citizenship with God. That is who we are called to be, expected to be, promised to be. AMEN