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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Better than Being an American |
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Philippians
3:20 Fourth
Sunday after Trinity July
5, 2009 Most people are proud of their culture and their country, and Americans are no exception. I sometimes think we do not realize how blessed we are to live in America. We are rich in comparison to the average person in many other countries. Even our poor enjoy material luxuries undreamed of by royalty in other times. We live houses with air-conditioning and heat. We are more concerned about loosing weight than getting enough to eat. We enjoy all the benefits of science and technology and medicine, and our government has been generally benign, so we can go about our daily business unhampered. We are truly blessed. The foundation of our blessings is the Bible. From the Bible we gained the belief that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Our founders always believed America was to be a Christian nation. I do not say they all shared orthodox Christian beliefs. I do say they believed the God of the Bible should be the God of this nation, His Law should be our law, and His religion should be our religion. They never envisioned a nation in which Christianity was excluded from the policy making process. Just the opposite, they always intended Christianity to be the foundation of that process. They did not want a state church, as the European nations had. They did not want the government to have the power to dictate to the people what denomination of Christians we would be. But they always wanted us to be a Christian nation, and this country and its laws and social fabric were intentionally built on the foundation of Christianity. I would go so far as to say America would be impossible without Christianity. If you do not believe human beings are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, the entire doctrine of human rights crumbles to dust in your hands. No other religion teaches any such doctrine as fully as Christianity. Most teach fate, or karma, or a variation of the divine right of kings. Humanism offers no such doctrine, except that which it has taken from Christianity, and it has perverted that almost beyond recognition. Humanism itself could never have produced the idea of human rights. It is impossible to begin with the premise that we are accidents of nature and that right and wrong and truth and justice are only figments of our imaginations, and draw from that premise the conclusion that all people have rights. Only the Bible offers the foundation for human rights because it alone teaches that we are created in the image of God and have worth and value and rights simply because we exist. It alone teaches that we must be free because we must be allowed to follow the leadership of God, whose authority is absolute and final. The erosion of this view is leading us into a moral swamp of eugenics, euthanasia (including abortion) and intellectual oppression that could someday parallel that of pagan Rome and Nazi Germany. God have mercy upon us. On the foundation of Christianity, we have built one of the greatest civilizations this world has ever known. I do not say it has ever been perfect. It has always had terrible moral blind spots and social injustices. But it was and still is one of the bright spots on this planet. That is why people are willing to risk everything, including their lives, to come to America. But, great as America is there is a greater “Nation” of which we are citizens, if we are in Christ through biblical faith. I am talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. The day will come when God’s people will be with Him in a place so wonderful we can only imagine its beauty. We see it now only through a darkened glass, shimmering in the distance on the far horizon. We talk about streets of gold and a land without violence or evil of any kind, a land of eternal joy where we will walk with God in unbroken fellowship forever. We have never been to that Land, yet we are citizens of it just as the child of an American citizen is also an American citizen, even if born in a foreign land never having seen this country. But we do have a foretaste of that Land, because we are a part of a colony of that Kingdom right here on earth. The Church is a colony of Heaven. At least that is God’s intention for us. We seldom live up to that ideal, and yet, here, in this colony we have fellowship with other Citizens. We talk about Heaven and participate in its culture and values and ideals. We read and study letters and edicts from our King. We eat Heavenly food. Heaven’s King is our King and Heaven’s law is our law. We basically try to live and act like those who actually live in Heaven. Guides in Williamsburg tell us that in the early days the people of Williamsburg considered their town a suburb of London and themselves English. They made a conscientious effort to preserve their Englishness. When St. Paul wrote the letter we call the Book of Philippians, Philippi was a colony of Rome, and the Philippians made a conscientious effort to be Roman. As historian and Bible scholar, William Barclay, wrote: “Wherever
they were, these colonies were little fragments of Rome and their pride in
their Roman citizenship was their dominating characteristic.
The Roman language was spoken; Roman dress was worn; Roman customs
were observed; their magistrates had Roman titles, and carried out the
same ceremonies as were carried out in Rome itself.
They were stubbornly and unalterably Roman and would never have
dreamed of becoming assimilated to the people amidst whom they were
set.” (The Letter to the
Philippians, p. 5). St Paul
used the ethos of the Roman colony to communicate spiritual truth to the
Church when he wrote in Philippians 3:20, “our
conversation is in heaven.” The
Greek in this verse could be translated, “our citizenship is in
heaven” and it means we are a colony of Heaven as surely as Philippi was
a colony of Rome. Quoting Dr. Barclay again, “Just as the Romans never
forget that they belong to Rome, you must never forget that you are
citizens of heaven; and your conduct must match your citizenship” (Philippians, p.69). We are
justly proud of being Americans. But,
being a citizen of Heaven is immeasurably better. Being a member of a colony of Heaven right here on earth,
knowing that our sins are forgiven because Christ paid the price for them
on the cross, knowing that all the blessings of God are ours as the free
gift of His grace is immeasurably better. Nothing on earth can compare
with this. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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