Seeking A Homeland
by Jim Westmoreland
Timothy Merrilll, Executive Editor for Homiletics magazine, writes, “I was in San Francisco not long ago and boarded a bus on Market Street, and when I got up to get off, the rear door didn't open.
Afraid that the driver would sail off before I could get off, I yelled out, "Back door!"
At that point, all sorts of people chimed in that I needed to "step down" and the door would open.
Well, I had been on buses like that before, so it was sort of embarrassing. But I started to think about the experience. I'll bet a lot of doors don't open for people because they don't "step out" and they're not willing to "step down."
Stepping down isn't always easy. But sometimes, taking a step
out, or a step back, or even a step down can be the only way to
open doors, get to the destination you're truly seeking.
God has called us to a destination, a place where He is leading us personally, spiritually, eternally. He is leading not only us as individuals, but us as a church to a place that he has for us, a place of service, a place of inclusion, outreach, evangelism, celebration. What is keeping us from finding our place, or as the writer of Hebrews wrote, our “homeland.?”
God’s word for us today begins, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The writer of Hebrews believed in a parallel universe where God’s world and ours exist side by side--even when there is only visible evidence of the worldly homes. For most of us, a homeland in sight is better than an invisible one down the road. We are more comfortable with what we are used to, to the familiar, than to something that is yet to be.
How do we live in this world and do all that God calls us to and also be seeking a homeland out of our faith and hope that there is more to faith and more for me to experience than what I have already received?
We live in a culture that acts as if there is no God. We have moved in practical ways toward the atheism attributed to Yuri Gagorin, the first Soviet cosmonaut, who was the first human to fly in space, who reported that while in space that he didn’t see God. Often, we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we see and embrace what is really visible. But in truth, we only embrace the reality that inflates our false illusions of greatness, success, stability. Our homes, our cities, our lives are in shambles, because God has not built them.
The truth is, we would never be able to look at things as they are except the city that God designed and built for us in Jesus the Christ. Because He was a stranger and foreigner in our midst--even died on a cross--we have a whole new foundation established for us. We have a yearning, a longing for our spiritual home with Christ.
The journey of faith is exilic. This kind of exile, however, means looking toward what is to come. We live, much like our Lord, as strangers and foreigners in the world. We are homesick, not for some home of our past, but for a home we have never seen and cannot readily imagine, a home that even our dreams cannot fully trace.
That is how we can understand Saint Augustine's observation that our hearts are restless until they find the rest that is found only in God. Augustine also said that each one of us has an empty place in our hearts that is in the shape of God, and that means that nothing and no one else can entirely or ultimately fill it. This empty space is not a square hole, or anything so simple as that, but a complex, hungering, God-shaped space where only God fits and only God can fill. Try as we might to fill that space with other things - with human relationships, earthly success, a reconstruction of our past - sooner or later they will leave us unsatisfied. What we long for is something else and something more. Our homesickness is a yearning for God.
In the New Testament book of Hebrews the author reminds his readers of various examples of faith. There he recounts the story of Abraham. The Lord told Abraham to set out for an unnamed land where he and his family would dwell with God. Abraham immediately left his home and everything that was familiar, headed for this new land and wandered his whole life in search of it. In his wanderings he was sustained only by the promise and by this longing for the land in which he would build a home in the presence of God. To be sure, there would be times in his wandering when Abraham would long to return to the place he had once called home, but now he was more powerfully drawn by a promise of a home he had not yet seen, a place where his heart, now restless, could find rest in its true home, in God.
The author of Hebrews wrote of Abraham and his family: "They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one." This is not a desire for some heavenly home after we die, but rather for a home in which we are as much with God in this life as we might expect to be in the next, the only home in which the fragments of our lives can be made whole.
If our longing were only for the home we had left, we could
always return. But once we are claimed by the promise of a
home in the presence of God, a return to the homes we left
behind is no longer enough. Even if we were to discover that
nothing about our former homes has changed, we have changed.
Now we are drawn, not by a memory, but by a promise and so
our hearts are always marked by a certain longing.
That is why people of faith always feel a bit like strangers, even in the most familiar settings. On our journey of faith, we are called and commissioned to share ouir faith and the love of God with others.
Tony Campolo was in an airport in New Mexico. He writes,
“This elderly woman was sitting there, sad as could be. I went over and sat next to her and tried to cheer her up. I got laughing and she laughed so hard that I wondered what would happen. Others in this small airport gathered around and we all got her laughing. She couldn't stop.
Her friend came on this little commuter airplane and she
hugged her friend and bade us good-bye. She got into the car
and drove away. I was looking out the glass door and the car
came back up the lane. She came out, came up to me and said,
"Mister, you didn't know this, but it was three years ago today
that my husband of sixty-four years died. I didn't realize it until I
was on the way home that today is the first day since then that
I've been able to laugh. I wanted to come back and thank you."
You know, it may be something like that, that the world doesn't see as significant, but that may be ultimately significant in the long run. There are good things for you to do and be in the future. Put your future in the hands of God. Remember, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. Hope. Believe in the future. Seek the Homeland that gives you your identity and purpose that transcends all the troubles and concerns that we face day to day.
A little girl had been shopping with her Mom at Target. She must have been 6 years old, a beautiful red-haired, freckle-faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside, the kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. Several people stood under the awning waiting, some patiently, others irritated because nature was interfering with their hurried day, when the little girl's voice rose above the sound of the downpour. "Mom, let's run through the rain."
"What?" Mom asked.
"Let's run through the rain!" She repeated.
"No, honey. We'll wait until it slows down a bit."
The young child waited about a minute and repeated, "Mom, let's run through the rain."
"We'll get soaked if we do," Mom said.
"No, we won't! That's not what you said this morning," the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom's arm.
"This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?"
"Don't you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, `If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!'"
The entire crowd was struck silent. Not a sound was heard but the rain. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Some might have laughed it off or scolded the child for being silly. Some might have even ignored her. But this mom chose to affirm her little girl's faith.
"Honey, you are absolutely right. Let's run through the rain. If God let's us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing." And off they ran, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and right through the puddles. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few others who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. Suddenly, getting wet didn't seem like such a bad idea.
When we are living by faith, knowing that we are both at home in this world and also seeking a homeland with God, we are tempted to just run through the rain. What is it that God is calling you to in your personal ministry to others, in your home life, in your devotion to God, in your goals, values and decisions facing you in your life? Let the rain symbollize the homeland that God is calling you to. Embrace it, smile and go run through the rain!
Amen.
Century Christian Church, August 12, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
