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How many of you have ever had to take a citizenship test? Whether here or in another country? I was 21 years old when I took the Canadian citizenship test. I had British and South African citizenship up until that point. I don’t know if they’re still doing it like this, but when I took the test, it was right before your citizenship ceremony. So, if you passed, you got to participate in the ceremony and become a citizen, and if you failed you had to return to Start, do not pass Go, do not collect $200—that kind of a thing. 

The pressure was on! Thankfully, my brother and I passed that day as did the rest of the people taking the test and we were all sworn in together. Now, fast forward to this past week. I decided to look up what a citizenship test looks like today. The Canadian government has some practice tests online. I have to tell you, I did not do as well 16 years on! There were some really tough questions. Okay, here’s a couple that I stumbled on; let’s see if you know the answer.

What is a minority government?
A. The party in power holds less than half of the seats in the House of Commons
B. The party in power holds less than half of the seats in the House of Commons and the Senate

Who appoints the judges in the Supreme Court of Canada?
A. The Governor General
B. The Prime Minister 
C. Other judges
D. The people

You might have guessed it: the theme for today’s sermon is citizenship. In our second reading, Paul is writing to a small, but important church in a place called Philippi. This was a congregation that was consistently punching above its weight (I got that expression from priest and friend of St Clement’s, Laurel Dykstra). I don’t know—maybe you know a smaller congregation that’s consistently punching above its weight? Philippi was a significant city in the ancient world, a “proud Roman colony on the main east-west road between Byzantium and Rome.” The church in Philippi was full of people who were struggling to pass their Christian citizenship exam. They were really used to being a colony of Rome and enjoying the benefits—however few—they reaped from that. Paul, as we know, was a Roman citizen, so he’s writing to them to say, “Hey, I know it’s a lot to give up, but here’s the deal, if you want to become citizens of Jesus’ kingdom there are some things you need to know.” 

First on Paul’s citizenship test is this: Who is the Sovereign in Jesus’ kingdom?
A. Is it . . . You?
B. Is it . . . The candidate who gets the most votes, no matter how they get those votes?
C. Or, is it Jesus, who, as Paul says earlier in the letter to the Philippians, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped (some translations say “exploited” or “used to his own advantage”), but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross?

The life of a citizen in Jesus’ kingdom is one of “eschewing privilege and power in order to woo others by and for God’s love.” That’s how a scholar named Sarah Heinrich puts it. I thought that was pretty good.

There’s another really important question on Paul’s citizenship test for the Philippians: Who is your neighbour? If you had to rank the people around you, say, as most likely to be your neighbour to least likely?  What would you say? Is it your family, and then the people you like in your community, and then the people who you maybe don’t necessarily know but who vote the same way as you, and then after that if you’ve got time, you might get to your neighbour the homeless and the orphan and the refugee? 

We didn’t have this gospel reading today, but I’ve always loved the story of the Good Samaritan. That’s where we get this question, ‘who is your neighbour?’ You know the story well: A man while traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem is attacked and robbed on the way. He is left in the middle of the road in need of help. Two leaders in the community who had the capacity and the means to stop pass him by. A person who has neither capacity nor means and is also considered an outsider stops to help. They are called the Good Samaritan.

I recently read an interesting take on this story. The commentator I was reading pointed out that the man who was left on the side of the road had been stripped naked and all of his belongings taken. So, he wouldn’t have had any clothing or other items identifying his nationality, his religion, whether he was a soldier or a common citizen, whether he was rich or poor. This, the commentator said, was why the first two passed him by—not because they were too busy or too preoccupied, but because they couldn’t identify whether or not they considered him to be their neighbour and therefore worthy of their help.

Interesting take, eh? We tend to help those we recognize as our own. But in Jesus’s kingdom, it’s different. You simply help ‘the one’ who is naked, ‘the one’ who is hungry, ‘the one’ who is in need of shelter. 

“But our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul says, “and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As followers of Jesus, our citizenship is in heaven. This isn’t a citizenship that’s only waiting for us when we die, but literally a citizenship that has its source in heaven. As citizens of Jesus’s kingdom, we’re not expected to live Jesus’ way on our own human strength, with our own earthly means. The citizens of Jesus’ kingdom draw on God for strength to honour Christ’s way of love, Christ’s way of servanthood on earth as it is in heaven. And, our crown, our reward, is not like that of the crowns that sit on rulers’ brows, or the treasures that fill the billionaire’s stores. Our reward is simply knowing that we loved our neighbour, that we stopped to care for the one who is poor, knowing that it is more often than not a countercultural choice that we make when doing so.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I think this is what Paul was getting at in his letter to the Philippians. It might be that as Christians we need to revisit our citizenship test every now and again, to see what it is that makes us citizens of heaven, to remind ourselves who it is that is our Sovereign and who it is that is our neighbour. Amen.