Living as Kingdom Citizens: an encouragement from Paul
Hi COTC,
This week's e-news reflection is from Rev Jonathan Kindberg. We are so thankful to have Jonathan at COTC both as a parishioner and resident clergy. If you haven't yet, be sure to follow the diaspora network and subscribe to their newsletter to learn about the work Jonathan is doing in our diocese and Austin.
There's a lot of info in today's e-news, including a new staff announcement, Creation Care Camp registration, and summer pods info, so be sure to read to the bottom. Also, if you prepared shower kits for the border trip, don't forget to bring the Sunday 5/22. You can put them on the table in the lobby where the lost and found is located.
With joy and affection,
Kimberly+
Recently on a Sunday morning at COTC I found myself sitting in a group of rows with people from a diversity of different cultural and national backgrounds. During the peace I saw greetings exchanged between folks from Honduran, Taiwanese, Nigerian, Mexican, Puerto Rican and White American backgrounds. As someone who was born and grew up in Latin America, it is in these types of contexts that I feel the deepest sense of belonging and most at home.
As we study Philippians together this summer, we can see that Paul brings up similar themes of identity and belonging throughout his letter. The Philippians' identity was to be rooted in their “heavenly citizenship” (3:20) and this identity was to determine how they were to live: in this world, but as outsiders, following the culture and norms of another.
This would have come as a difficult truth and reminder to the Philippians. Residents of Philippi were very proud of their status as Roman citizens, a special honor given to their city by Julius Caesar after help in a particular set of battles. Paul is warning them of the dangers of a kind of over-identification with privilege which can lead to idolatrous patriotism. He challenges them to live not as Roman Citizens first, but rather as foreigners, as citizens of a different kingdom, and to give up, for the sake of others, their privileges as Jesus modeled in his own downward migration (2:7). This is radical stuff!
There is a kind of identity confusion and forgetfulness that creeps in in contexts of sameness and privilege. Immigrants and diaspora people are powerful reminders of who we really are as the Church. We are all “foreigners and strangers’ (1 Peter 2:11) and citizens of a foreign country called the Kingdom of God. And this, of course, has immense implications for how we are to live in a city like Austin and a country like the United States where we should actually feel quite strange and out of place.
As a church we are seeking ways to more deeply engage with the immigrant and diaspora community, in part, because we need the kinds of reminders Paul talks about. Just within a mile radius of our newly purchased building are thriving immigrant communities from Central America and Mexico. There are also growing diaspora churches such as International Restoration Church (a Nepali Bhutanese congregation) and Roca Eterna across the street from us whom we are beginning to develop relationships with. This past month a team from the church helped set up an apartment for a newly arrived refugee family from Afghanistan. And this next week we are sending a team on a Border Immersion Trip next week to the Reynosa/MCallen border where there are thousands of asylum seekers from Haiti, Cuba and Central America.
As we read Philippians together this summer, let's be challenged and reminded of who we really are and how we can live more as citizens of heaven.
Rev. Jonathan Kindebrg
Resident Clergy at COTC and Diaspora Mobilizer for the Diaspora Network