On September 20, 31 years after we were married and 28 years after she was eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship, my wife Helen became a citizen at a ceremony in Peoria, Illinois. (For those who might not know, Helen was born and raised in England.) If you have never attended a naturalization ceremony – I never had – you may not be aware of just how it works. Like other ceremonies, there are speeches and a little pomp and circumstance, but at the heart of the ceremony is the oath of citizenship and the circuit judge’s pronouncement that those who have sworn the oath are now citizens. And at the heart of the oath is a two-fold promise: 1. the renunciation of allegiance to all other states (countries) and rulers, and 2. a declaration of allegiance to the United States and its constitution. Now that Helen is a citizen, she can do things she couldn’t do before. She can vote in national, state, and local elections. She can serve on a jury. (In 31 years she has been summoned for jury duty at least three times and couldn’t serve. I on the other hand, an eligible citizen, have never been summoned. Go figure!) She could, with the proper training, now teach U.S. history to high school students. And she can now use the fast lane at immigration even when she’s traveling without me. In addition to these rights she now also has new responsibilities. She can be called up to serve in the military (however unlikely) or to perform non-combatant service in the Armed Forces or “work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law” – all of those are part of the citizenship oath. Aside from these rights and responsibilities, on a more symbolic level she has claimed this country as her own, and this country has claimed her as its own.

            Experiencing this event and thinking about what it means led me to obvious comparisons with being naturalized as citizens of the reign of God, which is what happens to each of us in Holy Baptism. In each of the first three Gospels, among the very first things Jesus does publicly is to announce the nearness of God’s kingdom and to call for a change of heart and mind. In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously tells Pontius Pilate, “my kingdom is not of this world.” That, together with the fact that the Gospel according to Matthew repeatedly refers to the Kingdom of Heaven, has sometimes led Christians to imagine that Jesus is talking about the place we will go when we die, the place where God lives. But the Kingdom of Heaven (Kingdom of God in Mark and Luke) is not really about a particular geographic location. It is really about the reign of God breaking into the kingdom of this world and reclaiming the world as God’s. Presumably God could do that in the conventional way, by sending in an army and taking it by force, you know, the way we humans usually operate (see John 18:36). But God’s ways are not our ways. God does not wish to rule by violence and threat. God wants genuine, heartfelt allegiance.

            In a recovery of ancient Christian practice, the rite of Holy Baptism in our current hymnal has those being baptized doing something similar to what Helen did at her naturalization ceremony. They first renounce their allegiance to all other powers aside from God, and they then declare their faith in God using the words of the Apostles Creed. We should see this as a monumental step in a person’s life, for surely it is much more significant than moving one’s citizenship from one earthly kingdom to another. Those of us who have been baptized into Christ have claimed him as our own. We have switched our allegiance from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of Heaven. But what make this a reality, like the judge’s declaration of Helen’s citizenship, is that in Holy Baptism Jesus Christ has claimed us as his own. It is God’s action in this sacrament that connects us to Christ’s life-giving death and resurrection that makes the crucial difference in our lives. May we rejoice and celebrate our status as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and may God continue to strengthen our allegiance.

☩ Pastor Repp

            I just spent two days in St. Louis attending the annual board meeting of Crossings, which I have served on for more than a decade now. What is Crossings, you ask? It is an organization of Lutheran lay people and pastors devoted to the central affirmations of the Lutheran Reformation that we are commemorating this year. Our specific focus is on the unique task of the church, which is to communicate the Gospel so that it is heard as the really good news that it is meant to be. Following Martin Luther’s insights, we proceed from the conviction that that good news cannot truly be heard and appreciated until we are honest about the really bad news that the Gospel addresses, namely both our captivity to and our complicity with the powers of sin, death, and evil. We take seriously Paul’s claim in Romans 5:10 that it was while we were God’s enemies that we were reconciled to God through Jesus’ death. As our brief order of confession and forgiveness says, we really are “in captivity to sin and cannot free ourselves.” And it’s even worse than that. On our good days we might actually want to be free from the powers of sin, death, and evil, but on many other days we are quite happy to be in their grip, to aid and abet them for our own personal or tribal benefit.

            That’s not a comfortable thing to hear. It’s not a popular message. Most people (like me… and maybe you?) want to believe that they are the good guys, and that they can take some of the credit for that because they have made the right choices, obeyed the rules, and behaved civilly – and when it comes right down to it, because they are on God’s side. And they back up that narrative by pointing out how at least they’re not as bad as other people, the ones who have made bad choices, flaunted the rules and the norms of behavior, and even rejected God. So it’s no surprise, then, that churches shy away from talking about how wrapped up in sin our lives really are. And that is true not just in talking about our behaviors – the things that we do or don’t do, but also when considering our attitudes and allegiances, where we place our hope and trust. Facing up to the unpleasant truth about ourselves is not fun, but it is necessary. You could compare our situation to being diagnosed with a serious illness. It is not pleasant to receive that kind of news from your doctor, but it is the first necessary step to treating the illness and getting healthy again. Refusing to hear such a diagnosis at all could be disastrous.

            This is why Martin Luther sought to reform the church. His 95 theses, which got the Reformation started 500 years ago, together with his other writings, were not so much about exposing corruption in the church as they were about the church’s failure to both properly diagnose our human condition and to offer God’s saving remedy, namely message of the astounding love and mercy of God for us and for all people through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is given to us purely as a gift, without our deserving or earning it. A fitting commemoration of the Reformation, then, would include rededicating ourselves to this central and defining task of the church: communicating, celebrating, and treasuring God’s love for us and for all people, so that by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit we would come to place our ultimate trust in Christ alone and live out the calling of our baptism to be agents of God’s reconciling love in the world around us.

            We have a number of events planned for this fall to help us have such a fitting commemoration. I invite you to take advantage of as many of them as you can. May God bless us as we mark this significant milestone, and continue to reform the church for the sake of the world.

☩ Pastor Repp

            It took me a long time to decide what to write about for this month’s newsletter lead. One of the things that is on my mind right now is all the planning we’ve been doing for the fall, and especially the special events that will be part of our commemoration of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. But I want to save that for next month. The other thing that’s on my mind is my vacation next week. Helen, James, and I are driving out to Denver to visit Andrew and see the place where he has spent the past two years in graduate school, and particularly the natural wonders of that part of the world that were no small part in Andrew’s decision to study there rather than Washington, D.C., where most of his other prospective schools were located. But I’m not going to write about my vacation for the newsletter, especially before I’ve taken it! What is worth a few words, though, is the reality of being caught between the “already” and the “not yet,” something that we all experience in various ways in our daily lives, but something that also describes the nature of the life of faith in the here and now. For me, the events of this fall already need attention and planning and in some cases coordinating with other churches and venues. But the fall is still a month away, and I have some relaxing to do as well. I need to get away from the daily routine and spend some quality time with my family.

            Jesus began his earthly ministry by announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, and in the readings we’re right in the middle of now Jesus spends a lot of time talking about what the Kingdom of Heaven is. It’s like a mustard seed. It’s like yeast. It’s like a fishing net. It’s like a field of wheat and weeds. It’s like a treasure buried in field that someone sells his life savings to acquire. The Kingdom of Heaven, which you could also think of as the “reign of God,” is something that is unfolding in the life of the church throughout history and in our lives right now. It’s not just the place you go to when you die, though life beyond death is certainly part of what it entails. It is the redemption of God’s fallen creation – us included – and its transformation into the good creation that God has intended all along. And God is at work to bring that about, right here and right now in our community of faith at Grace, and in communities of faith throughout the world that are centered in the life-giving good news of God’s love and forgiveness in and through Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is already here, in our midst. And yet God is still working on it – and on us. The Kingdom of Heaven is not yet what God will ultimately make of it.

            I’m finishing up this final draft of my newsletter article on the morning following the concert of the German youth choir Tookula held here at Grace. I hope you were in the audience for that. It was a very enjoyable evening. They sang songs from many different countries, and by composers from the Reformation to the present. The program including a jazzed up rendition of Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress,” a German translation of a John Rutter piece, a Beach Boys medley, folk tunes from Finland, Latvia, and Ireland, and several American spirituals. One of the last songs they sang was “From a Distance.” The harmonies of the arrangement were lovely, and it was very well sung. But I’ve long thought the words of that song need some editing, particularly the refrain from which the title is taken: “God is watching us from a distance.” That thought strikes me as being at odds with a foundational affirmation of the Christian faith, the affirmation that bookends the gospel according to Matthew that we are reading this year, that God is not “out there” somewhere looking down on us, but rather that God is with us in Jesus Christ (that’s what Emmanuel means!) Jesus’ very last word in Matthew are “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” My prayer is that we would live our lives and practice our faith as though Jesus really meant that. (Because I think he did!)

☩ Pastor Repp