Lent 2A – George Yandell
Who said these words?
“There’s no place like home.” Dorothy in Wizard of Oz
“Home is where the heart is.” Pliny the Elder – (CE 23- 79), Como, Italy
“Home sweet home.” Irving Berlin in “America”
“Home is the where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Robert Frost
“I wish I were homeward bound.” Paul Simon
“You can’t go home again.” Thomas Wolfe
“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.’” I wonder – if you and I had been Abram, Sara and Lot, would we have answered Yahweh and followed that command? Who was this God Yahweh anyway, to be giving them such instructions?
Abram had the same fondness for home we have, I’d imagine. And yet he left everything and followed his Lord’s whimsy. Yet we never hear of Abram wishing to go back home. He went so far from home to get to Canaan, it would be like us flying to Mars and burning the spaceship when we got there. His relationship with Yahweh was founded on a two-way covenant, and depended on trust supreme. Yahweh promised to make of Abram a great nation.
I want to do a thought experiment with you. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and picture your home. The place that’s more home for you than anywhere else. It could be your parents’ home when you were a child, a house you once had, the dwelling you now inhabit. Picture in your mind’s eye your home of homes. What do you most cherish about that place?
Leaving home has meant jarring, difficult moves for many of us. We often leave behind more that we knew at the time. We’ve sometimes pined away for the homes we’ve left, the security, the love that the home held for us. I hear the lessons for today talking about a new home, one that God builds for us.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. You must be born of the Spirit.” To be at home in God, we must be born into the domain of God- it becomes home for us.
The Jesus Seminar translates this passage: “No one can experience God’s imperial rule without being reborn from above.” They substitute “God’s imperial rule” for the words ‘kingdom of God” and “RE-born from above” for “born from above.” Why is that? The theme of the necessity of rebirth as the condition for entering God’s domain recurs frequently in the gospels. It appears here and in the Gospel of Thomas 22:1-2, where the subject is nursing babies: “Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing babies are like those enter the <Father’s> domain.” The disciples responded, “Then shall we enter the <Father’s> domain as babies?” [From The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, 1993, pp. 407,486.] Being reborn into God’s domain means being nurtured into fullness by God. God’s rule is above all other powers – beyond country, beyond other allegiances.
All of us have seen the sign countless times: John 3:16. The sign stands out, posted on a roadside. A sign held up at a baseball game, a sign painted on the side of a building. These are only three places out of countless others—and it always says the same thing: John 3:16.
We all know by heart, even those of us who weren’t brought up memorizing Bible verses, that it refers to the verse in the gospel for today, from the Jesus Seminar translation: “This is how God loved the world: God gave up an only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not be lost but have real life.”
It’s a powerful statement and true, but unfortunately, too many people stop there. We are convinced that all we have to do is believe that statement— that there is no response of “So what?” Now, to say that there is more may seem like blasphemy, but there IS more. The ‘so what’ is that we must take the knowledge of God’s love for us and act on it. We have to read the whole of chapter 3—understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus about being born from above and then act on what Jesus says about taking on his mission- that the whole world might be saved through him.
“God sent this son into the world not to condemn the world but to rescue the world through him.” [3 paragraphs above adapted from “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, March issue.]
This is the content of being reborn from above: accepting the mission Jesus chose, and working with him to its fulfillment. It means we’re converted from pilgrims into missioners. And it’s not a one-time event. It’s a process of finding home in community with those who’re also being converted.
Richard Rohr wrote [in The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (N. Y.: Crossroad, 2013)]: “I have often been puzzled by the common view that conversion is a one-time event. This view does not match my observation of myself or others. Yet such conversion is described in so many stories from all of the world religions. Finally, it became clearer to me what the stories were trying to say. When your ‘program’ changes, you will indeed speak of your conversion as a momentary event, something that happens in an instant. But if you examine the accounts of people’s great moments of breakthrough, they usually are not referring to what they see as much as how they see. Such renewed sight is indeed like being born again-‘once I was blind, and now I see.’ … That’s what true conversion feels like.”
A wise man, Henry Nouwen, said, “There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.” [Henri Nouwen, quoted in “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, March issue.]
Of all those truisms about home, I think Pliny the Elder and Thomas Wolfe combined have it right, “Home is where the heart is, and you can’t go home again.” St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”