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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 his own and his own knew Him not” (Jn 1:11) and that did not have a place to lay his head whereas the foxes and birds which He created had their own lodging. Paul as well, Roman citizen that he was, suggested to his audience that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20) and that he could claim to be “an ambassador in chains” not for Rome, but for another commonwealth. Although he does not use the word ‘liminal’ Lane in his commentary on Hebrews certainly alludes to its substance. He describes the fact that “Christians are the people of God who, like the generation in the desert, experience the tensions of an interim existence between redemption and rest, between promise and fulfillment" as “a major theme” in the book 90 A fast forward to some of the early church writings will reveal acknowledgement of this liminal state as well. The Epistle to Diognetus dating from around the late 2nd century describes the life of believers living as citizens and non-­‐citizens due to their citizenship in another realm: Christians live in both Greek and barbarian cities, according as each obtained his lot, and follow local customs, both in clothing and food and in the rest of life, they show forth the wonderful and confessedly strange character of the constitution of their own commonwealth [politeias]. They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country (5.4-­‐8) The church father John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople (ca. 347–407) reflects on John 16:33 as it applied to his audience at the time and offered words of encouragement to embrace their identity as sojourners: 90 William L. Lane. Hebrews. 1-8. v. 47a (Dallas, Tex: Word Books, 1991), pp. 89-­‐90. 229