Revd Dr Lance Stone, Minister, Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge
Ezekiel 17: 22-24
Mark 4: 26-34
2 Corinthians 5: 6-10; 14-17
Home but Restless
Home. I wonder what your associations are when you hear that word. You know the sayings: ‘Home sweet home’, ‘there’s no place like home’, ‘home is here the heart is’, ‘home is where you hang your hat…’. Somehow such sayings suggest a longing, a yearning for somewhere we can call home and maybe that is because home is, above all, the place where we are able to be most fully ourselves. One of the joys of being a minister is that you get to visit people in their homes and often you see a different side to someone there. In our lives and in our dealings with others we so often find ourselves playing different roles, putting on different fronts, wearing different masks, but home is the place where we lay all these things aside and we are able to be fully ourselves – for better or for worse.
The theme of home is a very powerful one that runs right through the Bible. Go back to the very first book of Genesis and there you find the story of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden where they have been placed by God and which was their home. Then comes the story of Cain, who after murdering his brother Abel is condemned to be a fugitive and a wanderer all his days – restless and rootless and longing for a place where he belongs. And we could think of Jacob having to flee from his home and his brother Esau, and then there were the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness for forty years, longing for a homeland. And in due course we find the story of the exile, of the Jews being taken into captivity in Babylon and the deep longing there for home. That is the background to our passage from Ezekiel this week. There we find God’s promise to pluck a shoot from the topmost branch of a tree and to plant it on the highest mountain in Israel so that birds of every kind will nest in it, and this is a promise of return from exile for this scattered and displaced people. Here at last is homecoming from Babylon! And then of course there is Jesus who comes and makes his home among us, but who had nowhere to lay his head and was even expelled from his own home town. And we could think of the stories that he told: of the young man who we know of as the prodigal son, who left home and ran away into the far country and squandered his inheritance until, eventually, he came to his senses and came home to the arms of his waiting father. And then there is this story that he told in our reading today from Mark’s Gospel, and which echoes the passage from Ezekiel. There is this tiny little mustard seed which is planted in the soil and which springs up and grows into this chaotic, unmanageable bush. There is nothing very slightly or glamourous about a mustard bush. It is an unkempt mess of a growth and an eyesore, but the birds of the air come and roost in its shade. And Jesus here is talking about his own movement which is small and ragged and which maybe appears to be going nowhere. But from these small beginnings will come something far greater. From the seed of the kingdom planted by Jesus in his life and ministry will come this great bush where many will find their home. Here people from every tribe and nation will come and roost and find rest in its shade. And we might wonder if that is a description of the church today – our church. Ragged, perhaps, but a place where people find they truly belong. Is that us?
So this theme of homelessness runs like a rich seam through the Bible and from it there emerges the image of salvation as home-coming. It is one that was picked up by the Swiss physician Paul Tournier. Some years ago began his book ‘A Place for You’ by describing a young student who came to him in need of help for a deep anxiety that afflicted him. As he said to Tournier, ‘Basically, I’m always looking for a place – for somewhere to be.’ And while that student was speaking at a deep psychological level his words resonate in a world that is increasingly characterised by displaced and homeless people. And they resonate too with our deepest condition as human beings. At a number of levels we are all displaced people. In a variety of ways we are all children of Adam and Eve, children of Cain, children of exile, prodigal sons and daughters and salvation means homecoming: homecoming to a place where we belong, homecoming to our true selves.
And that brings us to Paul. Think for a moment about Paul. Remember Paul, furiously persecuting the early Christian followers and then one day he was on the road to Damascus to root out more believers in Jesus. And while it was Damascus that he was heading for, it was on that road that he discovered the true destination of his life, for there he met the risen Christ. And ever since then his great desire has been to draw closer and closer to Jesus. Ever since then he has yearned to become completely united with Jesus. Indeed Paul in his letters uses this fascinating little phrase that is so very rich in meaning: he talks of being ‘in Christ’. In fact he uses it here in our reading in verse 17: ‘If anyone is in Christ, or united to Christ, they are a new creation’. That phrase speaks of a oneness, an intimacy with Jesus that might also be expressed as being ‘a home in Jesus’. There, in being united with Jesus, we at last find rest from our wandering. There, ‘in Christ’, we at last find our true home. There we at last find our true selves. And here surely we find the very heart of the Gospel. In coming to Christ we come home. The great father of the church, St Augustine, way back in the fourth century once famously said, ‘our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee’ and he knew what he was talking about. His had lived a restless life, a life of flight from the God who was pursuing him and eventually he gave in and there found rest for his restless heart.
And maybe there was something of that in Paul’s story too. Yet the surprising thing is that Paul here in our reading seems to be as restless as ever. If he has indeed come home to Jesus, found in him his destination, he hardly seems restful. He still speaks of himself as an exile who has yet to come home. Listen again: ‘We know that so long as we are in the body we are exiles from the Lord… and we would rather be exiled from the body and make our home in the Lord.’ Paul here is certainly not speaking as someone who has come home yet. His longing is still to be at home with the Lord. And of course Paul is open to drastic misinterpretation here. Is he saying that he has had enough of this life, life in the body, life in this world? Is he saying that he wants to leave it and to get away and to be fully and completely with Jesus once and for all? Is he yearning here for a home far away in the sky where he can leave this world behind? Well, I think not. Just listen again to Paul’s great statement in verse 17: ‘if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation.’ You see, for Paul to be ‘in Christ’ is to be part of a new creation, a new world, a new order where everything is put right. And Paul is longing therefore that a world that is exiled from Christ and exiled from its true self may come home to its true created glory. Paul’s longing to make his home with the Lord is a longing to make his home with the Lord in a creation renewed and transformed.
And it is that desire that makes him restless. You see, Augustine was only half right. Yes, in Christ we find rest for our restless hearts. Yes, in Christ we come home. But we will never be fully at home in Christ until the earth and everything in it including ourselves is transformed into a new creation. And that makes us restless. As Christians we are not content just too chill out in Babylon. We want to come home: home to Jesus, home to his new creation, home to our true selves, home to transformation. And that makes us restless and impatient with ourselves and our world. It makes us eager and belligerent for change.
And that brings me finally, in closing, to William Booth. We have thought today about homelessness in a number of senses and I want to conclude with a quote from the founder of the Salvation Army. He, after all, will be forever associated with the homeless and the destitute. Listen to these words spoken by William Booth:
‘While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight-I’ll fight to the very end!’
Those are the words of a restless soul who had come home to Christ – and whose homecoming made him more restless than ever.
Amen.
