April 20, 2008
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Pastor Anita Hill

Home

1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

What image does the word “home” evoke in your mind’s eye? Remember the first place you called home as a child? Do you feel the tender emotions related to knowing to whom you belonged in that home? Are you picturing the home of your dreams? 

Robert Frost wrote: “Home is the place, where when you go there, they have to take you in.” Some say home is where you hang your hat. Others say home is where the heart is. Home is where people build and share life together. Home is a place where we share the hopes and hurts, the joys and sorrows of life.  

Some of you may remember a song I first heard in college by Joe South. The chorus went like this: “Don’t it make you want to go home, now. Don’t it make you want to go home. All God’s children get weary when they roam. Now, don’t it make you want to go home.” 

Until I was six years old, my family home was an apartment above the clubhouse on the golf course at Querbes Park in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a long building and our apartment covered the entire length of it. There were six dormer windows on each side with bench seats and storage places. Very cozy for a little girl’s play and imagination as I looked out over the green clipped spaces of a golf course.  

Each of us has a cozy dwelling place in God’s house, however you want to think of it this morning. It could be church. It could be heaven. It could be the planet. Each of us has a unique window through which we can see God. Perhaps it will take every person sharing our view of God for us to gain a fuller picture of who God is and who we are. Then we will be at home with God wherever we are. 

Today’s gospel lesson (John 14:1-14) speaks directly to the longing of our human hearts to go home. Jesus says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe in me. . .I go to prepare a place for you . . .so that where I am, there you may also be.” 

This moves us to think about our heavenly home and is used so often at funerals that it seems out of place on a Sunday morning when most of us are not living the immediacy of grief and loss.  

Our Sunday School studied Earth Day themes this morning, as evidenced in their sharing of “Burma Shave” style slogans with us during the children’s sermon time. God created earth as our garden, our home. 

Humanity, it seems, has become restless in this home. With an economy in recession, the unemployment rate rising, and unscrupulous mortgage lending, many people are facing the loss of their homes. AIDS and epidemics are daily realities across the world. I was an adult before I realized the effects of fertilizers and pesticides used on the golf courses I love so much. The world’s oil resources are dwindling. We are using food to make fuel, which may perpetuate the style of transportation we’ve known it, but may increase starvation risks worldwide. 

Food costs are rising sharply. A public radio report on the starvation crisis in Haiti where most people live on less than $2 per day, says half that amount is spent each day on rice alone. A mother of six children said she “might as well be giving them bleach” because the meager ration of rice each child gets is enough only to scrub their stomachs.  

On my way to a breakfast meeting when I heard the report, I ate a guilty meal and pledged to follow the suggestion of our Saint Paul Area Bishop Peter Rogness, to tithe at 10% of the “economic stimulus check” I’ll be receiving to World Hunger. He noted that if every ELCA member assigned a tithe of these unexpected checks to the church, a whopping $100 million dollars would support the mission and ministry we all share. 

War is tearing apart the fragile balance of life. The psychological and spiritual costs mount even as the dead and wounded are counted. We are facing ecological crises, such as global warming, which could well bring an end to our earthly home as we know it. We are increasingly aliens facing homelessness on the planet.

It’s enough to make us long for the eternal dwelling places Jesus says await us in the afterlife. But it’s hard to take Jesus’ instruction not to let our hearts be troubled. These are troubling times. We want to ask Jesus: “What about now?” 

That question causes us to look at our gospel lesson again. It comes from a section of scripture called Jesus’ “Farewell Address.” He is preparing the disciples for a time when he will no longer be with them in the flesh. Jesus is preparing a way for us to be united with him forever, “so that where I am” he says, “there you may also be.” 

“Our true home is with God, and Jesus is preparing a place for us in God’s home, in God’s heart. Our true home is not ultimately a place. It is a relationship in the very heart of God. Even though the fullness of that relationship may be in the future, we can experience now a foretaste of our home in God.” (Pagano)  

When we live as Jesus commanded we live, loving one another as Christ loves us, God makes a home with us.. When the brokenhearted are comforted, God makes a home with us. When we see Christ in the hungry and homeless, God makes a home with us. When people lay down their lives for one another, God makes a home with us. When all of God’s children, without distinction, are invited to Christ’s table to share the feast to come, God makes a home with us. (Pagano) when we treat the earth as our mother, not just a place where we live, God makes a home with us. 

Friday evening, God made a home among the crowd gathered at UNITY Baptist Church amidst the soulful singing of the Shades of Praise Gospel Choir from New Orleans. We learned that most of the choir members lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina and they’ve learned to make home together as a result. People from three churches filled the sanctuary: UNITY, St. Clements Episcopal, and St. Paul-Reformation. The shades of God’s family gathered under one roof brought home to us the joy that comes when we cross boundaries and get together to sing God’s praises. Our churches call the same neighborhood home. We will share the many dwelling places in eternity with each other as surely as we dwell in community now.  

Jesus invites us into relationship not only with God, but with one another. Jesus may not be among us in the flesh, but Christ’s incarnation lives in us and among us. Remember the wonderful Joan Osborne song, “What if God was one of us?” We can feel at home with one another now as surely as we will be in God’s eternal home.  

Jesus is the way not only toward the heavenly home in the future, but also the way to bring us home now. Jesus’ ministry, throughout the Gospel of John, challenges the troubling conditions of his time with a life generating spirit dedicated to bringing wholeness where there is brokenness, hope where there is none. Jesus brought sight to the blind, clarity of mind to the ignorant, and life to the lifeless.  

But can we do such works as Jesus has done?  Jesus tells us that we can do even greater works than his. Our longing for heavenly home requires bringing God home here and now. Dedicating ourselves to serve God’s people and care for God’s creation brings heaven home. Jesus is not only focusing on heaven where troubles will be no more. Jesus invites us home as one human family here and now. 

Jesus was not just talking about the heavenly home of the future. We can’t recreate the homes of our childhoods. Parents make a space for their children to be at home. God prepared a home for us in this garden we call earth. Jesus invites us to find home now in God as we care for the earth and for each other.  

I’m not saying it will be easy. God knows people lose sight of the notion that we are here to share this earthly home, and to care for one another as Jesus cared for us. The problems of the world show us that. God knows it is going to be hard to care for our earthly home.  

Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, wrote an Earth Day message to the church. “A substantial part of the problem [of global warming] is our use of fossil fuels to run our homes, our churches, our cars, and our places of business. Those of us who live in the United States produce one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions, even though we are only five percent of the planet's human population. Although we are complicit in the evil that we see, we can repent of our own sinful misuse and abuse of the Earth, direct and indirect, when we confess our sins. We do this especially for the sake of the poor of the earth, working on their behalf even as we contend with entrenched political, economic, and social forces.” 

The ELCA’s (1993) social statement, Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice, urges us to accept responsibility for our sinful treatment of God's gift of the earth. As we prepare ourselves to come to Christ’s table this morning, let us pledge ourselves to action so that this earthly home will continue to be the blessing God intended for the generations to come.

Amen. 

Resources: The Rev. Dr. Joseph Pagano, “Worship That Works,” ECUSA, 2008; The Rev. Brian Blount, “Lectionary Homiletics,” 2008.