This is the audio (12:39, 11.6 MB) of a short homily delivered at LCC’s International Christian Fellowship on April 22 entitled, “Apostles and Exiles.” The text was Ezekiel 11:14-17.

At this service we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, as we usually do. But we also said goodbye to our graduating seniors, some of whom shared briefly earlier in the service. The sermon itself has a “graduation” theme, but hopefully will be applicable to a wider audience.

Here is an excerpt:

As we send you out to change the world, you are both apostles and exiles. You are sent out (that’s what “apostle” means, “one who has been sent”), having been equipped with skills and training that God will use for his glory. But you also may never quite feel as though you fit in, wherever you go. If you go “home,” you will find that you have been shaped by your time here at LCC, and nothing will have stayed the same back home. Even in your native country, you may feel most “at home” among folks who have lived somewhere else, also—foreigners or natives—people who don’t completely fit in anywhere!

And anyway, because our citizenship, our identity, is derived from the one who currently sits at the Father’s right hand in heaven, we will feel like exiles wherever we go in this earth. Until Christ returns to judge and to save, and to re-create his world and his redeemed people, we will never quite feel like we are at home.

Audio and text: ©2018 by Benjamin D. Giffone. Reproduction and distribution are permitted, providing that the author is properly credited and that no fee is charged.