The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 ~ Philippians 3:17-4:1 ~ Luke 13:31-35
Frederick Buechner, in his work entitled A Longing for Home, offers us a metaphor for home. It is a spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical place. It is a stirring up of rich and complex emotions – the notion of home. The idea of home, he suggests, is a place to which we have a sense of belonging and what we feel when we are in that place. It is a state of being that all will be well even when things are not going particularly well. Home!
Buechner suggests that to reflect on the idea of home often begs each of us to think back to our childhood, where an experience that was real or one that we dreamed about conjures up a state of being, that sees home as a place where we are safe, nurtured, cared for, where we can grow in stature and freedom. However, he says, that is not always the reality for everyone. Indeed, the idea of home, he suggests, is of that safety, of care, of nurture, of growth, of freedom in all of us.
Home is that state of being planted deep inside of us that he feels most of us spend our days longing for. That state of being that places us as belonging, as accepted, as secure with a certain level of hope and a level of certainty that all things are good, even when things are difficult. I believe this plays in our Old Testament story today. Abram, as the leader of a nomadic people, seems to be in negotiations with the God who created him and has claimed his people as his own.
Abram is seeking and searching for a place called home—a place where his descendants would taste life. In this particular case, a fixed place, a physical place. This comes in a promise of things unseen for Abram because God has made a promise to him, not only that he will have a place—a land—but also that he will have descendants that would be as many as the stars. At this point, Abram has yet to lay eye on either of these things.
It is what is inside of Abram that the idea of home for these nomadic people in these important ancient times gave him. Indeed, Abram would find the granting of land and what is in it with the promise of the stars, the potential for life for his people. It would be a place to grow, to be, to live and learn, to laugh, to eat of the fruits of the earth, to be sustained by the waters of life that flowed from it. It would be a place where his people would be safe and secure; a place where they could be. This is a big deal for nomadic people where Abram and his people were at this time. This would be a place to settle, to be a community to raise and care for their children, the sick and the aged, to find industry in the fruits of the earth. It is a big deal that is going on in the story. It is a place that Abraham could find home, his descendants would find purpose and the covenant they will make. Abraham would trust in God, he would be their God, and they would belong to God. That belonging would call them to their side of the covenant that would be to be God’s people in the world, to live and love in a radical way that they had never imagined or dreamed of. God would pitch a tent with them and they with God. They would indeed come home!
Lent—this is the second Sunday of Lent, by the way, for those of you who are keeping the calendar. Lent is a time to explore home, a time to explore the covenant that we have made and that God has made with us, to explore the home of our hearts where we long for God. We ask God once again, what is the purpose of our lives? How are we to be God’s people?
How many of you, if you could raise your hand, have lived and moved and had your being all of your days in the Lehigh Valley? Raise your hands high. Yes. Most of us, in the world in which we live today, find ourselves as a nomadic people. Few of us these days live and move and have our being in one place throughout all of our lives. Certainly we are connected, even in that nomadic lifestyle, in an unprecedented way. Although we do not live in community, the same community all of our lives, we do find ourselves now connected in a global community in unprecedented ways. Within minutes, we now read and see images of our connections to one another.
This past week, within minutes, I was connected with the pain and suffering and brought back home as my life-long best friend, childhood friend, lost his 22-year old son to a drug overdose. Within minutes I was connected by telephone to the person I could not touch, I could not embrace, and in whose heart I knew I needed to break with. Within minutes I was connected by, yes, dare I say it, Facebook, as I read his wife’s posting on her Facebook page declaring how brokenhearted she was. Within minutes I was connected to all of those from home as they reached out from across the country with prayers and heartfelt expressions of support.
Within minutes we witnessed the devastation of yet one more earthquake. (And I’m getting to the point where I might just be thinking God may be telling us something.) One earthquake was off the coast of Japan that did, indeed, affect the small islands of Japan and quickly went off the radar screen to the bigger earthquake that was in Chile yesterday. Within minutes we were seeing images, either on the Internet or on the news, of the brokenness and the devastation of our brothers and sisters in another time and in another place. Within minutes we heard and read about the possibility of a tsunami coming and hitting Hawaii, and within minutes I was reaching out to friends who live there, asking them if they were okay. Within minutes I was relieved as I watched and saw that, indeed, the surge was not one that would devastate. Within minutes, we are connected to one another. We stand not all that far from the distance of Ash Wednesday. In the midst of uncertainty and tragedy, as our bishop reminded us in a prayer he sent to us by email yesterday, we are reminded of the fragile nature of humankind. Yet in that fragile nature, we are called home. We are called home to find the spiritual promise that results in our purpose. When we go home, we are met in our longing for care and nurture, for grace and freedom. We are met by a God who stands firm with us, even when things are not going all that well—
especially when things are not going all that well. Somehow in that spiritual union—in our setting up tents and inviting God into our homes, we find the gumption to reach out and reach into the brokenness of others. It is what makes us God’s people. We find a God who makes a covenant with us, a covenant of presence and promise. We are called to work through the ashes of life. We are called to have the courage to dirty our hands and faces as we reach out and lift one another up. This is the sacred space of home. It is not a place we long for to hide or to retire, but a place that calls us to discover who it is that God made us to be—that is, desperate lovers of one another.
Amen.
