Christ Episcopal Church
May 5, 2013
6 Easter C
One of the great blessings of my childhood was that my grandmother still lived in the house she and my grandfather bought before my mother was born and where they raised her. And while my grandmother had so thoroughly rearranged the inside of the house after my mother left the nest that only her bedroom and bathroom were in the same place, so far as my siblings and I could tell, nothing ever changed in that house. The same old Readers Digest magazines were there every time we visited during our entire childhood. The same unopened bottles of salad dressing were in the cabinet year after year, until my sister and I threw them out in 1990. The furniture never moved. The same photos of us as little children were on the tables in the den long after we were all in our 20's. Not only did we love going back to the house where our mother grew up, and where everything stayed the same, we could also play with the children of the friends our mother had always known. My grandmother’s friends who came over every late afternoon, had come over late every afternoon for the last 50 or so years, and they had watched our mother grow up. Miss Minnie Lee, Mr. Ben, Miss Fannie Mae, and Mr. Jack were not characters a child was likely to forget. Not only were we in the same house where our mother grew up, we were also part of the very same community. Not much changes in Headland, Alabama even over a span of decades and no one else in our family had lived in a house that long, or been part of a stable community that long. While we enjoyed visiting other relatives in other places, we never experienced the sense of home that we did in Headland, Alabama.
I am reminded of my grandmother’s home and the sense of permanence the house and the community held for us because three of our four readings this morning mention "home" in one way or another. In the reading from Acts, we hear about the travels of Paul and his companions to exotic places like Troas, Samothrace, Neapolis, and finally Philippi, which was their destination. Paul and his companions stayed in Philippi for some days, where they met Lydia, who, with her whole household, was baptized. After they were baptized, Lydia said "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home." Which they did. After traveling a great distance by boat, which might have been the fastest form of transportation in that day, but was a far cry from a luxury cruise, what a gift to stay in someone’s home where there could be good, leisurely conversation over a warm meal, a comfortable place to sit and relax, and perhaps soft mats for sleeping. In response to the gift of baptism, of being welcomed into the household of God, Lydia offered the gift of hospitality, welcoming others into her home.
In the reading from Revelation, the writer has a vision of the new Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God. The physical temple in Jerusalem where the Hebrew people worshiped was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the people longed to once again be people of a place and a temple in which they could worship and know God’s presence. According to the writer of Revelation, in the new Jerusalem there will be no need for a temple, a particular place to call their spiritual home, where God is worshiped and known. In the new Jerusalem, the very presence of God and the Lamb will make the city a spiritual home for all people, as the nations and the kings will be drawn to it. The whole city will be a place of light and life where God’s presence is known.
Lastly, in the gospel reading, we hear Jesus say to his disciples "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." Then Jesus tells the disciples that the Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus has said to them. There was a great deal of tension in the late first century between the Jews and the Jewish Christians, and the Jewish Christians had been evicted from the synagogues. On the one hand, Jewish Christians did need a place to worship and know God. On the other hand, Jesus is telling his disciples that they will know God through the gathered community, not through any particular place or building. Together, the Father and Jesus will make their home in the midst of the gathered community and together the community will know and worship God where ever they might be gathered.
Each of these readings involves some kind of loss of place. Paul and his companions had left families, friends, faith communities, jobs, and no telling what else to take the gospel to the known world. In the reading from Revelation, the loss of Jerusalem and the temple were still fresh on the original readers’ minds. In the gospel, the disciples were about to lose Jesus, at least in the way that they had come to know him, and the first audience of this gospel had lost their place of worship in the synagogue. Nothing in the scriptures denies the reality or the pain of loss, whether of a person or a place. As a child, having a place where I belonged, that was always there, that never changed, and where I had roots was important to me. I think that is a common longing of both children and adults. What our readings this morning teach us, however, is that when those places that anchor us are gone, and when life is handing out changes more rapidly than we can swallow them, Jesus has made a home in the midst of those who love him. There we will find the belonging and stability that will help us belong anywhere and know permanence in the midst of change. Jesus has sent the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach us, to guide us, and to dwell within us richly, so that where ever two or three are gathered, Jesus has made a home. Where Jesus has made a home among us, we ourselves are home.
Amen.
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