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The promised Reign of God often lives more fully in our hopes and prayers than in our current lives. Paul suggests in Philippians 3 (this Sunday’s Epistle) that we are something like the ambassadors who serve on behalf of their homelands here in DC. Our citizenship is with Christ in heaven. We represent the values and priorities of that land here in our temporary home.
Today’s Esther reading reminds me of the Bible stories of my youth. Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, and Esther in Persia—they were our heroes. They were true to God even in a hostile environment. They carried out their duties in their hostile time and place on behalf of their true home.
There is some tricky theology at stake in those images.
I have come to be suspicious of one of the songs of my youth:
This world is not my home, I’m just a’passing through,
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from heaven’s golden shore,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
I associate that theology with the dangers of “world flight” and what some say to poke fun of Christianity: “pie in the sky bye and bye.”
We are called, I believe, to be powerfully present in this world as the leaven that will transform everything, as the voice and embodiment of God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”
And yet, somehow to be “in the world and not of the world.” Like ambassadors, to be attuned to our native land in a noisy context that easily distracts us. To be like Joseph and Daniel and Esther. As Paul wrote: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore…stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”
Prayer
Strengthen us, O Lord, by your grace, that in your might we may overcome all spiritual enemies, and with pure hearts serve you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Jack Reiffer
Pathways Editor
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