At Home in the Lord

Christ Church Cathedral in Houston will always be my "home" parish. I haven’t been there in quite a few years, but I can picture it very clearly, and if I were to walk in the doors tomorrow or next year, I would feel like I had come home. It isn’t necessarily the most significant parish in my ongoing life history as an Episcopalian, but it will always be my "home" parish. It was the congregation that sponsored me for ordination, but even more important, I think, is the fact that I felt at home as a parishioner there.

Home and feeling at home are themes this morning.  If you were to ask me what place feels like home outside my parish life… that is a harder question to answer. I have lived in many different places. So my childhood sense of home has more to do with people, with family, with my parents, than it does with a building or geography. I expect that is true for most people. Home is where your parents are. To visit your parents is always to go home. To live with your parents is to live at home. No matter what your age may be. I have had several people tell me over the years how very hard it is to come to that point in your life when you realize that your parents’ home is no longer there for you. Whether you have lost the people or the place or both… Whether you have lost what feels like home through death or divorce or flood or urban renewal… The feeling of losing your home is a huge loss.

"Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’" Would you have gone? Left everything that felt like home?  Would you have freely chosen to walk away, to cut yourself off from country and kindred?

Some people always have, of course.  Human beings have set out on journeys of immigration for thousands of years. Many of them have left because their homelands seemed filled only with death or hopelessness or because their families were sources of hurt and destruction rather than comfort and security. For these people even a journey into homelessness is preferable to staying put. There is no evidence in Scripture that Abram wanted or needed to leave his home. He chose to leave a good home. Because God told him to.

Human history is also full of stories of individuals who have left home in a spirit of adventure. Freedom is more valuable to them that familiarity. (They couldn’t have been Episcopalians.) As a girl I was fascinated by the stories of the mountain men of the Rocky Mountains in the early history of the Anglo expansion into the American West. The piece of their story that still grips me is the awareness that they had no homes. Anywhere. Most set out alone to trap beaver. They set out with no provisions, no destination, and little shelter. They slept wherever they happened to be, ate whatever they could find. They had no connections to people or place. There is no evidence that Abram was this sort of lone adventurer, yearning for isolation or freedom. In fact, Genesis tells us he took absolutely everything with him he possibly could—his wife, his brother, and their slaves and all their possessions. He was not seeking to be unencumbered.  But still he left home. Abram left his country; he left his connection to his ancestors and his kindred. He turned away from his heritage, from his parents’ home.

Home.  What is it really, this sense of home?  At its best, what is home for us?

Do you remember the movie ET? It’s all about home… for the boys and for ET. In the movie ET doesn’t say much, but one of the words he says is "home" as he points to the stars. There’s a poignancy in his extraterrestrial voice, but also conviction. Regardless of anything else, home was where he belonged. Despite his travels, his adventures, the boys who cared for him, he belonged at home.  Belonging. Being home gives us a sense of belonging. We belong there. We know, we feel, that we have a place there. We have a role that is ours to play.  We are part of the story.

Robert Frost gives us another wonderful description of home.  He, he writes, is "the place that when you have to go there, they have to let you in." Home offers security and safety. If absolutely everything else in your life falls apart, home is still a place of security and safety and shelter. And acceptance and comfort. Having a home brings the assurance that a safe harbor always awaits us. Home is a place where we are always welcome; where we will always be welcomed in.

Home. Feeling at home.  Whether it is a parish, an ancestral community, or a current relationship, home offers us a sense of belonging… at home we always have a place and a role to play. Home is a place of security and safety. A place where we may depend upon being welcomed and accepted.

When Abram, at the age of seventy-five left his home in Haran, he left all this. Or did he?

Did he leave his home behind?  Over and over again, Abram is described as a man of faith. Perhaps, as a man of faith, he carried his home with him where ever he went, like a turtle carrying its home upon its back. As a man of faith, Abram's home was in the Lord.  His sense of belonging and identity came as a child of God. He had the confidence that the story he was living, wherever it took him, was part of God’s story. He had a part, a role.  Abram had the comfort of an established relationship with God, built upon years of worship and the study of God’s word. He was confident that he was always guided and protected, loved and accepted, by God.

All of the other ways in which we feel at home are reflections of our true home in the Lord. In Second Corinthians Paul speaks of being at home in the Lord as a gift deeper, more stronger than even death; our home in the Lord transcends even our mortal bodies. To be at home in the Lord is to know ourselves to be God’s people. For us, in our mortal lives, it is to know that we are valued, that we have a place and a role within the Body of Christ. To be at home in the Lord is to be a part of an indestructible relationship with God built up through prayer, worship and sharing the family stories of the people of God. The presence of God is the setting for all of our lives, all of our memories. To be aware of God's presence, then, is to always be surrounded by the familiar. And God is a source of security, safety, strength, hope, love, comfort, forgiveness and acceptance… Always available, always welcoming. No matter what.

Nicodemus asks Jesus how it is that a person can be born again after having already been born once from the womb. So if you’ve always been puzzled or confused by contemporary Christians who speak of being "born again," Nicodemus was confused, too. Maybe one way to think of being "born again" is to consider it as an opportunity… an opportunity to adopt ourselves into the household of God. We have the choice to offer ourselves up for adoption to be children of God. To be born again is to choose to make the Lord our home.

God always holds the door open, but if we are to really feel at home in the Lord, we must do our part. To be integrated into the household of God, we must participate as members of God’s family. By being regular and faithful in worship. By celebrating and sharing the stories of God’s family as they are told in Scripture. They are our family stories. And we must nurture our own relationship with God through prayer, devotion, repentance and renewal.

Adopted by grace, born again through the Spirit, we are all children of God. And, as children of God, no matter where we are, no matter what may happen, we will always have a home. We will always be at home in the Lord.

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