The Letter to the Hebrews was written at a time of persecution for believers. Written to those who were Hebrew believers who were considering returning to the Jewish faith to avoid continued persecution, it is offered as both encouragement and challenge. Today's text (see Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16) raises up some of those who have gone before us in faith to encourage us along the way. But it also leaves us with a question: What do earthly authorities and earthly borders mean to those who are citizens of God's kingdom?
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Over the last few weeks, we have explored some of the ways that God reaches into our lives and challenges our assumptions. As Jesus was traveling the countryside teaching and healing people, he was also constantly reaching beyond the boundaries and barriers that people had erected between each other.
Every time we assume God is on our side and everyone else is wrong, we find an example to go against it. In the Old Testament, we found a general of a foreign nation that is openly hostile to Israel who is healed by God.
In the gospels, Jesus refuses to put a limit on those we are called to love. He centers a foreigner as the perfect example of a loving neighbor.
When we complain that other people are not acting like us, are not doing faith the way we are, Jesus points out that not all faith looks the same.
When we seek to know how to speak to God, when his disciples ask them how they should pray, Jesus shows us that God is neither a distant despot nor a cosmic butler. Instead, God is as close to us as family.
Today, our text offers us another challenge related to borders. In this letter written to a group of Hebrew believers, we are pointed toward the unseen and unknown. God rarely steps out in front of us and yells “here I am!” But we have faith and trust in those things that have been passed on to us. We have faith and trust in the stories of those that have come before. We have faith and trust in the word of God that came down to live among us. We have faith and trust in the evidence we see of God still working in the world today.
In our text today, we are both encouraged and challenged in the face of uncertainty in the world. We are encouraged by the stories of God’s faithfulness through the ages. We hear examples of times when people trusted in God, even when God’s promises seemed laughable. Abraham and Sarah are lifted up as the ultimate examples of those who trusted in God’s faithfulness. They moved to a distant land. They endured famines and calamities. They welcomed strangers into their home. And they ultimately had children well beyond the age most people live in modern times.
When we face times of uncertainty and pain, it helps to be reminded of God’s faithfulness. God’s faithfulness is not like our faith. It does not falter; it does not fail. God remains faithful even after we have forgotten all about the promises that have been made.
As I was reading the text in worship this morning, I was reminded of a line in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In one of the main plot lines of the movie the few remaining Resistance ships are being pursued by a First Order fleet. Their base has been destroyed. They are running out of fuel. Things seem hopeless. In a conversation between the Admiral and one of her commanders, she says that "hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you will never make it through the night."
This is the type of faith that the writer is talking about. This is the type of faith being lifted up. Even when we cannot see God, we can know that God is still there, still working for good in the world.
And while the bulk of today’s text focuses on this type of encouragement, it ends with a bit of a challenge. “They confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth” (Hebrews 11:13b, CEB).
On the one hand this can potentially be seen as encouragement as well. Just as Jesus tells Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world, our citizenship is not of this world. We have been adopted into the body of Christ. When viewed this way, what are the inconveniences of this world to us? This is not our true home.
This is part of what the text is saying here about Abraham and Sarah and the others that went before us in the faith. They had the kingdom of God to look forward to, to sustain them through it all. They were going forward toward something better.
But this also serves as a bit of a challenge as well. For if our citizenship is in God’s kingdom, what are earthly nations to us?
For the Hebrew people, much of their early relationship with God was about setting out the boundaries of what it means to be God’s people. Do this. Don’t do that. Don’t mix with “those people” over there. Maybe this is starting to sound a little familiar to you.
In today’s text, we heard about Abraham going to a new land, a place he had never been. He was not native to that land. He was not a citizen of that land, but he went there anyway, trusting in God’s promise that it would be a land of welcome, a land filled with good things for him and his descendants.
He traveled a great distance across other lands to reach a place where he expected to find a better life for himself and ultimately for his family. He trusted in God’s promises to see him through. But he also knew that in the lands he passed through and even in the land where he ultimately settled, he was a foreigner, an immigrant, a sojourner. He would be there for a time, but ultimately his place was with God. The physical location didn’t matter as long as he knew God’s love for him.
When we look at the relationships that Jesus modeled for us, when we consider that the kingdom of God is not like earthly kingdoms, this begins to make more sense. Jesus tells us that he came to reconcile the world to God. He included not only the Jews in his words, but also foreigners. He spoke to Samaritans and Romans in addition to the Jewish leaders. God’s kingdom is not limited to just certain people.
As we look around our world today, we see that there are those following Jesus all over the globe. Through Jesus we are all sisters and brothers. We are united in faith and united in mission. As those that follow Jesus, our citizenship is first and foremost in the kingdom of God.
In the days of Jesus, this is why it was such a big deal to call Jesus “Lord.” In that part of the world at that time, only the emperor could be called Lord. It was a title not only of a leader but of divinity. It was a claim not only that the emperor was the ruler, but also a god. By using that title for Jesus, people were showing that their allegiance was to Jesus first before all others.
What does it mean to us today to claim Jesus as Lord? What does it mean to us today to consider that our primary citizenship is to God’s kingdom? What does it mean to consider that unlike earthly kingdoms, God’s kingdom has no geographical boundaries? Does it change the way we look at the world around us?
Like Abraham in the lands he went to, we are foreigners and immigrants in this place. We reside in a place that is ultimately not our true home. Our first allegiance, our primary citizenship, is to the kingdom of God.
This kingdom has no geographical borders. There is no citizenship test, no passport, no flag. It’s citizens speak countless languages and come in multiple skin colors. But they all have in common the same goal - to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves. That’s it.
This is what Jesus meant when he said that his kingdom was not of this earth. And this is what the writer of Hebrews means when he says that those who trust in God are immigrants and foreigners on this earth. What earthly nation has ever had love as its primary reason for being?
And yet, this earth is where we currently live. Do we ignore the pain and hardships that exist in this world simply because we are just passing through? If the citizens of God’s kingdom are those who love their neighbors and there are no limits on who our neighbors are, does it matter where we are residing now? Wherever we are, that is the place that we are called to love God and love our neighbors.
As we have seen over the last few weeks, God’s kingdom does not look like the kingdoms that we have experienced here on earth. There are no divisions between the members of God’s kingdom. But while we may be citizens of that kingdom first, we still live here in this world today. We may be strangers in this land, but we are still called to love those that we encounter along the way.
Like Abraham, we have followed God’s call to this place. We may be sojourners and strangers in this place, but Jesus still teaches us to love those we encounter along the way.
May we continue to live our lives in such a way that people will never doubt our citizenship in God’s kingdom.
May we continue to show others the mercy and love we have received from God.
May the world know we are followers of Jesus by our love for others.