What about your heart? Commenting on the poll I referenced, popular culture expert and professor at Northern Michigan University, Michael Marsden, said, "Maybe when you scratch the surface — what are you at the core — 'American' is what it is." But as followers of Jesus Christ we may be a lot of different things on the surface but what we are at the core is Christian and as Christians our deepest and truest citizenship is not found in any place on the planet. The apostle Paul put it well when he said in our New Testament text, "Our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20).

This kind of language is used on a number of occasions in scripture, like when Paul said to the Ephesians that God "raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ" (2:6). Or the statement in the book of Hebrews declaring that "here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come" (13:14). Or the admonition in 1 Peter: "Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul" (2:11).

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"Aliens and exiles." That's striking imagery. As Christians we are never truly at home, never truly where we belong. We are strangers and sojourners, displaced in every land in which we are found. We exist as resident aliens who have roots that are planted elsewhere. Our visions, our values, our sense of identity reflect a citizenship that is not of this world and which is not comfortably compatible with places and powers of this world. This should not surprise us since we follow One who, scripture tells us, had "nowhere to lay his head" (Luke 9:58).

Who are you? The apostle Paul spoke to that question when he wrote, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth . . . seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourself with the new self . . . In that renewal there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all" (Col 2:2, 9b-11). So who are you? A new self, not defined by earthly relations or social stations or race or national origins but by Christ.

But I can just imagine some Greek raising a protest as he hears these words from the apostle. On his chariot he has a bumper sticker that boldly declares, "Proud to be a Greek!" "And why shouldn't I be?" he asks. "After all, Greece was the birth place of democracy. The literature of Greece is remarkable in its creative richness. The architecture of Greece is breathtaking. The same can be said of its sculptures. The philosophers of Greece have stimulated great minds for countless generations. The stories of Greek heros continue to inspire courage. The Greek language itself is virtually the universal language of the civilized world. Yet you dare to say that the old self is stripped off for the new self in which there is no longer Greek?!" And Paul would say, "Yes, because Christ is all!" On another occasion this same apostle wrote, "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world . . .[A] new creation is everything!" (Galatians 6:14-15).