Citizens of Heaven

1992 (Year C) 15 November / Pentecost 23

St Peter de Beauvoir and St Anne’s Hoxton

 In the beginning when God created the world behold it was very good. God created Man and Woman. They lived together in that glorious garden until it all went wrong and they were cast out. Sent into Exile. And ever since then our religious history has been of tales of whole hosts of people trying desperately to climb back over the wall. Back into the garden, which we believe, really deep down to be so wonderful.

This hugely important religious exile finds echoes in all our lives. They are tremendously significant times, and we all have them. Martha Hughes and Lena Macdowall are to end their own particular exiles in a couple of weeks when they will return to live in Antigua and St Vincent. And they aren’t the only ones who have endured exile. Our lives are peppered with them. It may be a relationship which we’re cast out from – the death of a husband or a father. A home which we loved and can no longer return to because it’s not the family home anymore. A group which no longer welcomes or acknowledges us. A job we no longer have. All our personal. Some are secret. Some unacknowledged. They’re all parables and they remind us – often unconsciously, of the great parable – the garden. Our exile from God.

And if we think about them, they all contain the same qualities. They are all painful because they evoke memories of those loved and longed for. Any exile begins to make us look backwards, to remember fondly. We remember what it was like to be there. To be with the ones we loved so much. And when we remember, the past becomes present again. We see friends that we once knew, we walk where we used to walk and it’s all so delightful. We are the same age we always were and we long to return. It will be interesting to see how Martha and Lena deal with the return from their exile – whether it all measures up to what it still is in their minds.

As exiles we inhabit the land of nostalgia. Parts of us live in the past. It fits very neatly with this view of creation. The world of Genesis. The Garden where our ancestors lived at one with God and to which we, really deep down we want to return. The church has emphasised this vision. It has taught us that we are divorced from God by our sin. We needed Jesus to come and save us – to make it possible for us to enter the Kingdom. And we were to re-enter the garden, go back and enjoy our citizenship. We see things very clearly, constantly aware of the difference between then and now. We see heaven and earth as being separate - and heaven is where we were, earth is where we are temporally exiled.

The Jews knew all about this when they were taken off into exile in Babylon. They longed to return. The prophets and diviners encouraged them to keep themselves separate from those they lived amongst. It all helped to emphasise the enormity of the exile. Yet into this came the voice of a new and radical prophet. He was driven by the word of God but he had a very different message. ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.’

This is a vastly different picture. Do not keep yourselves separate – your destinies are entwined – ‘for in its welfare you will find your welfare.’ So it is. Now there is room for hope in the short term. Now those in exile can turn and face outwards. They can face their exile knowing that God is with them, not left behind. This is an amazing alternative, to face the exile where God will meet his people afresh, perhaps even with manna from heaven.

In this vision even though there is still a sense of separation, still a notion of exile. Still two worlds. The two worlds meet. The picture is not of Heaven up here and earth down here. The truth is that Heaven embraces earth, and when it does so we discover that we are already fellow – citizens with the Saints in glory

This has tremendous implications for us. We are not to keep ourselves separate from the world in which we feel ourselves temporally exiled. We are rather to immerse ourselves in it. Just think of your own exiles. In all the pain and separation God is already there waiting to be discovered and named. God is already waiting to feed you. Look forward not back and like the Jews in the salvation of the new world we will find our own.

This embraced world, passionately loved by God is a place when spirit touches spirit. It is a place where the citizens can know whatever is opened to them by God’s will and permission. It is a world where he is present and visible. A world filled with hope and the hope is that wherever we go, whatever we do, we will never be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. AMEN