Have you ever heard the term smoltification?  This is the process that a salmon goes through as it prepares to move from life as a young freshwater fish living in a small stream to life as a saltwater fish braving the depths of the Pacific Ocean.  A number of bodily changes accompany this strange behaviour.  The fish becomes more streamlined, the colour of its scales changes to silver, and its gills adjust to allow for a greater tolerance of sodium and potassium. 

The salmon is preparing to do something very rare among freshwater creatures: switch to a saltwater environment.  Eventually, after spending several years dodging predators in the ocean, it will return to its home stream, flinging itself in great silvery arcs up the fish ladders and natural rapids, only to mate and die, no longer able to thrive in fresh water.

Like the salmon, we live in two worlds.  “Our citizenship is in heaven,” the Apostle Paul tells us, contrasting believers with people whose “mind is on earthly things.”  But at this point, the fish analogy breaks down.  Unlike the salmon, we must live in two different worlds simultaneously, like salt and fresh water at the same time!  Our citizenship is in heaven, but we also occupy bodies of skin, bone, fat, and muscle on a material planet.

It’s easy to remember that we live on this planet, isn’t it?  But do we always remember that we are also citizens of another world?  Citizens of heaven?

The British novelist and playwright David Lodge was watching one of his own theatre productions, a satirical comedy, the evening of November 22, 1963.  The theatre audience laughed as an actor in the play showed up for a job interview with a transistor radio pressed to his ear, demonstrating his character’s blasé indifference.  As he did in each night’s performance, the actor then set down the radio and tuned to a station, letting its news, music, or commercials play in the background while the play went on.  This night, however, a voice came on the radio with a live news bulletin:  “Today, the American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated…”

The audience gasped and the actor immediately switched off the radio, but too late.  In one sentence, the reality of the outside world had shattered the artificial world of the theatre production.  Suddenly, whatever action took place onstage seemed superficial and irrelevant.

Friends, we are living in two worlds at the same time.  The kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.  The risk is that we may feel completely at home on earth, unaware of the other world.  Like the people in the theatre, we live inside a reality here on earth that is so engaging, we can and do for a time forget about any other world – until the outside world abruptly intrudes.  Death breaks the spell for us, the same way it broke the spell for the theatre audience.  Death brings us from this world to the next.  It is when friends or family die that we are reminded most about the other world we live in.

But without that powerful reminder, do we often forget about the other world we live in?

There are many things that remind us of the other world we live in.  Perhaps Sunday mornings do that as we come before God in worship and listen to his Word.  Perhaps the time we spend in devotion to God in his Word and in prayer.  And perhaps even the times we get out into nature somewhere and see the beauty God created, reminding us of his transcendence…

Have you ever disengaged from modern culture?  Visited a foreign country or hiked into the wilderness?  When you return home, do you kind of experience a jolt of reentry, a psychic adjustment similar to what astronauts must go through when they return to earth?  You turn on the TV sitcom and listen to the innuendoes and sarcastic put-downs and the canned laughter that follows.  You watch the commercials promising sexual conquests if you drink a certain beer and professional esteem if you rent from a certain car company.  It shocks you a bit at first, but then by the next day your reactions moderate.  And a few days later, you are breathing in the air of lust, consumerism, selfishness, and ambition, and it seems normal.

Our Gospel verse says: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”  How do we lose our lives for Jesus?  We don’t live in monasteries.  We don’t experience real serious persecution because of our faith.  But it still applies, even if in less dramatic ways.  How about small acts of self-denial?  How about willingly giving up your own desires of those of your wife?  Or husband?  Or children?  How about uncomfortable acts like visiting that suffering person in the hospital?  How about spending time with emotionally needy people who want to ramble on while you want to get work done?  How about a constant scrutiny of the way you use your money, and how you prioritize it?

How about putting God first, others next, and yourself last?  That’s what losing our lives for Jesus means.  Letting go of life in this world, and clinging to your real life in the next world by trusting in Him alone.  Friends, the truth about us is that we often forget about our real life in the other world.  We often try to “save our lives” for the here and now.  We get so engaged in this life that it becomes our priority.  Why do we do that?  We’re sinful.  We need a saving God.  We need Jesus.  And when we give up our lives in this world for Him, He guarantees us of so much more life in the other world!

Christians sometimes describe their faith as a force that runs counter to culture.  I wonder if we have it backwards.  Perhaps the kingdom of God is the culture and the kingdom of this world is actually the counterculture!  Perhaps Jesus the “revolutionary” was actually setting out a normal pattern for life on this planet given by its Designer!  As believers in Jesus, and recipients of the salvation He won for us on the cross, we would be better off concentrating on the other world He saved us for and making that the priority in our lives!

A French cardinal said that saints live in such a way that their lives would not make sense if God did not exist.  The reverse also applies:  the true skeptic lives in such a way that life would not make sense if God does exist.  Let’s live our lives in such a way that would not make sense if God did not exist!  Because we know He does, and we know we belong to his kingdom!  Why?  Because His own Son Jesus lost his life for us to save us from this world and put us in the next!

During the days of the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s, Chairman Mao dismissed beauty as a bourgeois concept.  Red Guards closed flower shops and ordered people to destroy their goldfish.  Everyone dressed alike, in unisex, uni-colour uniforms.  China became a drab society, on the surface at least.  What actually happened was that beauty went underground.  Women cultivated flowers in their homes and wore brightly coloured blouses under their gray Mao jackets.  Children hid jars of goldfish under their beds.  Until government policy changed, bringing it back into the open, beauty existed as a kind of dangerous, hidden secret – another world hidden behind the one we could see.

Years ago in the slave plantations of the Caribbean, Africans lived in two alternate worlds: the white man’s world of the daylight and the African world of the night.  After dark, the slaves reclaimed the culture of their homeland, carrying chiefs and kings about on a litter and keeping their heritage alive.  Although slaveholders tolerated the night world as a kind of child’s world, to the African it was the true world, reestablishing what plantation life tried to destroy.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was trying to teach us about the Kingdom of God.  It is the real world that we live in.  Though it might not be as visible as our physical world, it is the true home we have and the one we will be living in forever.  And living like Jesus wants us to will only make sense if we share his view of the world; if we remember we live in two worlds.  Friends, you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven because of what Jesus has done for you! Live like it!

Our Galatians text today said about this other world we live in: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  All the divisions we see in this physical world we live in don’t exist in the world God has prepared for us.  We all live in this world, this kingdom, through Christ.  People from every nation of this physical world! 

Today, Canada Day, is a day we celebrate the formalization of one of the most unique countries of this physical world.  No where else on this planet is there such a diverse mingling of every nation, culture, and language.  That diversity exists for Canada as a nation, for Mississauga as a city, for Lisgar as a community, and for Cross of Life as a congregation.  I wonder if there is a better reminder on this earth of the wonderful plans God has in store for us in the eternal world we live in.  Where people from every nation and language are one in Jesus Christ.  Forever.  Let’s celebrate that today!  As we live in this world as ambassadors of God’s kingdom, let’s never forget that other world which is our real home!   Amen.