St. Paul wrote the Letter to the Philippians to a small group of Christians who made up the church in that place: a Roman colony set up in Greece, in a city that had been conquered not long before. The Roman Empire was the most extensive political entity the world had ever seen, and part of the way it ruled was by planting colonies of Roman citizens throughout its territory. These colonies provided stitching that bound together an empire made up of many different peoples.
These colonists owed their primary loyalty to the city of Rome. Often they were recently discharged soldiers and their families, glad to get a grant of land and the promise of a home after years of military service. If there was ever a rebellion, the former soldiers were a ready reserve to put down trouble. As citizens of Rome, they would have a privileged place in local affairs, and dominate over the original inhabitants.
Philippi was just such a place: an ancient city colonized by veterans of the XXVIII legion in the time of Mark Anthony and Octavian, who together won a great victory nearby. Octavian later became Caesar Augustus, and reorganized the city on Roman lines. Some decades later, the Acts of the Apostles tells us, St. Paul came to Philippi to preach the Gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the forgiveness of sins through his name. There Paul baptized Lydia and her family, and others, who became the nucleus of the church in that place. “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31).
It’s to the church in this city that Paul writes, as we heard in our second reading today, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). This word, “citizenship,” is not one that St. Paul uses much; in fact, this is the only time it appears in the whole New Testament. He may be quoting an early Christian hymn; in any case, he is certainly using the word advisedly. “Citizenship” was a concept that the inhabitants of the Roman colony in Philippi would understand, dependent as they were on their own privileged status as Roman citizens. So he frames his message accordingly.
Christians are colonists of a different sort. According to Paul, we are citizens of a heavenly empire. The church is an outpost planted in this world, the outer works of a different kind of commonwealth. That commonwealth was what St. Augustine called much later “the city of God”: a polity planted by Jesus Christ that would only be perfectly present in the kingdom of heaven. Still, we can catch a glimpse of it here on earth, in the lives of Christians in the tiny churches founded by St. Paul and others.
The letter to the Philippians also borrows from the political vocabulary of ancient Rome in the balance of our reading. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Again, “Savior’ is a rare word in St. Paul’s letters and in the New Testament as a whole. The Roman Emperor was often designated as “savior” and “lord” in documents and inscriptions; crowds greeted him with shouts of “savior” and “lord” when the Emperor made his official entrance into a city.
We can see again how St. Paul is using this framework. Christians are citizens of the heavenly commonwealth; they are expecting a Savior from above, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians’ real loyalty is not to any earthly empire, but to the true king who will come from heaven. We are colonists planted in this world, an outpost of a mighty movement set in motion long ago.
These are days of political uncertainty, when we can perhaps be conscious in a new way that our citizenship is in heaven. That membership transcends all other ties. We are the baptized People of God, and our program and agenda is bound up in the Church.
As we say in at the end of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” We are citizens of heaven, part of the stitching that holds the world together. That is the Church’s political platform, which hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Nor will it change in the future. In fact, it is the foundation of the future, of the life everlasting, as we look for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior who indeed will save us from our sins.