Oct 22 | Resistance Lectionary Part 17: Citizens of God

Today’s citation: Ephesians 2:19-22, 3:7-13

If I ever have cause to explain how it was that I became radicalized, I’ll say, “Blame seminary and Twitter. Oh, and my mother.”

My mother’s work among the marginalized, particularly when she was employed at the Dr. Peter Centre, primed the pump for my discovery that society was far less than perfect.

Seminary started the pump in earnest when I took a course on Canadian history and my class read the Bryce Report, which laid out in horrific detail the abuses of the residential school system. Although I had considered myself slightly more educated about the residential schools than the average population at the time, there was still so much I didn’t know.

Forced starvation experiments. Dental surgery without anesthetic on cafeteria tables. The unmarked graves of the children who never came home, many of whom are still lost to their families.

I stopped singing the National Anthem for about a year. I couldn’t do it. Everything I had thought my country stood for was a lie.

Other folks criticized my position for a number of reasons. None of their criticisms rang true for me. For me it was simple: I would no longer take part in what I now saw as an idolatrous practice.

Eventually I got into an argument with someone over whether there was a difference between “nationalism” and “patriotism.” To me, there was no longer.  The whole idea of nationhood is a joke when it comes about through one group arriving uninvited and simply staking a claim to land on the bones of millions of dead indigenous peoples and broken promises.

Christianity was given an amazing opportunity when it gained entrance to the halls of the Empire. That opportunity was squandered once we got that taste of power. Like any human, we grasped and held and conquered, seeking our own glory before God’s.

If Christians talked about personal power the way we talked about sex, we’d be in a very different place in history right now.

Maybe the first step is recognizing our status as citizens of God’s kingdom before any other kingdom.

What matters isn’t the label on our passport. What matters is the sign on our hearts.