“At Home in God” by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood –
August 26, 2012
Ordinary Time
In case
you missed it, there are quite a few people who have joined or re-jonied us
here in Bloomington in the past few weeks. Over the summer it took me 15
minutes to get from here to Buccettos on the other side of College Mall and now
it takes a solid half-hour to cross that intersection. The students are back,
summer vacations are over, and the town is abuzz with people settling in to
another academic year.
Bloomington
is an interesting place to call home. Like any place, there are those who have
been here since they were born. We even have some folks like that in our
congregation. And there are those, like me, who have settled here as adults.
And then there are all those people who are here just for a time – perhaps four
years for an undergraduate degree, or two years for a master’s, or the full
four-years-that-extended-into-two-more-for-a-masters-and-then-five-or-six-more-for-that-Ph.D.
Bloomington
is a temporary home for many.
Right
now, all over campus there are first-year students waking up to the delicious
taste of freedom. Maybe their parents drug them to church all their growing-up
years and they’ve decided to sleep in on this first Sunday after classes.
Perhaps they’re walking down to the BBC to have one of those bagels they’ve
heard so much about – venturing out with their new roommate. And we know that
some of them were out late last night hanging out with new friends, really
enjoying that newfound freedom, and they just went to bed a few hours ago.
They’ll stumble out to lunch in a few hours and call it breakfast.
But for
every student waking up to an exciting feeling of freedom, there is probably
another student waking up to a sense of emptiness. Or perhaps they just feel
conflicted. It’s exciting to move away from your parents, sure, but it’s also
hard. Right now, some student is groggily rubbing her eyes and trying to adjust
to the new sounds in her residence hall. She couldn’t wait to get away from the
noise of her little pesky brother, but now that he’s gone she realizes she
misses him.
Surely
all of us who have moved away from home at some point remember this feeling.
There is excitement as we move on to new adventures, but there is also longing
for the old and familiar. Moving away from home is hard work.
Home,
sweet home. Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home. Make
yourself at home.
Don’t
worry. I’m not going to stand here for fifteen minutes and read you a bunch of
clichés about home. But, gosh, there are a lot of them, right? Home is such a
powerful concept.
What is
home, really? A place to sleep at night? Sure. A place where you are loved? In
the best cases, yes. Our two-year-old has a habit of yelling at the dog when
she comes into the dining room during mealtimes (as you can imagine, this
happens with great regularity). I often tell him, “Honey, you can’t yell at
Yankee. She’s just walking through the room. This is her home. She’s allowed to
be here and she gets to feel safe in her home.”
Home
should be a place where we feel safe. Where we can relax and be our truest
self.
And home
doesn’t have to be a structure with four walls. Home can exist in a lot of
other ways. When I marry couples, I end the service with a blessing and I say,
“Wherever you go in this journey called life, may each other’s arms always be
home.” I love that part of the service. I didn’t think of it, by the way. I
stole it from the Rev. Lynn James.
The arms
of a trusted partner are a home.
Of
course, not every home is happy. Realistically, we know that home – as in the
place where you hang your hat – is not a happy place for many children or
adults. There are those who are constantly on guard in their own homes –
worried about the next blow or cruel word that will come their way. There are
those who live in fear because they live in unsafe neighborhoods or war zones.
There are those who cannot be themselves around the ones who are supposed to
love them because their families will not accept them as they are. And, of
course, we can’t forget those who have no home at all. I think that one of the
most difficult things about being homeless must be that sense of insecurity all
day and night – having no door to lock to keep you safe.
Part of
the reason we long for home is this: there is no such thing as a perfect home
because there is no such thing as a perfect person. Just as we are all a mess
of brokenness and wholeness, our homes are a mess of brokenness and wholeness,
too.
Our
scriptures today deal with this idea of home. A home for God. Humans have
always been obsessed with this idea of God’s home, I think. It’s one of the
first things a child will ask about God, “Where does God live?”
Any
parent or adult who has looked into the eyes of a child asking that question
knows it’s not an easy one to answer. I mean, sure, we can say, “God lives in
the church,” or “God lives in our hearts,” or “God doesn’t live anywhere,
silly! God is everywhere!” But you also know you’re likely to get a few
follow-up questions. Trying to pin down God is impossible – even for adults.
Probably
since the beginning of time, people have recognized that there are special
places they can go to access the Holy. You’ve probably heard of this idea of
“thin places” – places where the veil between the Holy and the Everyday is so
very thin that it virtually disappears. Places where we are able to easily and
more fully access that sense of connection with the One Paul Tilich called “The
Ground of Being.” Places where the presence of God is so palpable that you just
can’t ignore it.
Our
Hebrew and Jewish ancestors found “thin places” all over the place. Before the
construction of the Solomon’s Temple, people worshipped at “high places” in
other cities. With the construction of the Temple, ancient Jews believed more
and more that the Temple in Jerusalem was the best “thin place” of all and
would make pilgrimage there during the three festivals of Passover, Shavuot,
and Sukkot. Modern Jews build temporary, but often quite elaborate, tents in
their yards and on the grounds of their synagogues during the holiday of
Sukkot. This holiday marks the forty years the Israelites wandered in the
desert and lived in temporary structures. The human struggle to have a place to
call home and to know where God lives has been around for a long, long time,
friends.
In
today’s reading from 1 Kings we can see Solomon struggling with this child’s
question, “Where does God live?” He prays, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the
highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have
built! 28Regard
your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry
and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; 29that your eyes may be open night
and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be
there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this
place.”
And our reading from
the Psalms is said to be a pilgrimage song – one that the travelers might have
prayed or sung as they approached the Temple in Jerusalem. “How lovely is your
dwelling place, O God of hosts!”
Traveling is hard work.
And it was even harder work when you had to do it on foot or with just the help
of an animal. When I imagine a weary pilgrim approaching the Temple in
Jerusalem the words, “My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the house of God”
takes on a whole new meaning.
The psalmist says that those who rest in the House of
God go from “strength to strength.” Something about being in this “thin place”
– in the presence of God – makes it possible to run and not be weary, to walk
and not grow faint, to rise up with wings like eagles.[1]
Of
course, Solomon’s Temple was later destroyed. And most of us are not likely to
go to Jerusalem during our lifetime. How can we move from “strength to
strength”? Where can we sing this song of praise?
I’m
not telling you anything new when I tell you that thin places don’t have to be
places.
One of
the most holy thin places in our own faith isn’t a place at all, but a person.
I think that Jesus of Nazareth must have been a thin place. Please understand
that I’m not saying Jesus was a portal to God in ways that were better than
those of the ancient Jews. All religions have valid ways of encountering the
Holy and, for those who follow Jesus, the spirit of Christ is one of our surest
bets when we need to find a thin place.
There
was something about him that was so imbued with the Holy that the very distance
between that Realm of God and the Realm of the Mundane just collapsed right
down.
When
people were around Jesus they could see the truth – that there really is no
distance between us and God. That God is at home in all of us and we are at
home in God. And the thing about thin places is that they aren’t easily killed.
I believe Jesus’s very thin-place-ness is the reason he could not be held by
death. When someone or someplace or something is so very open to the reality of
God being at home within them, there is no way to kill that person or place or
thing because God cannot be stopped. Man, I just love the Resurrection. Gives
me chills every time I think about it.
So how
can we get there? How can we folks living in Bloomington, Indiana in the year
2012 access this lovely dwelling place that psalmist so beautifully writes
about? Because I don’t know about you, but I want a piece of it. I want to find
a way to go from strength to strength. I want to be connected to a force that
is so eternal, so true, so real that it cannot be stopped.
When
the news of crazy politicians just won’t go away, I want to find a way to dwell
in the house of the Lord.
When
the obligations of family and work and self and society are pulling me in forty
different directions, I want to find a way to dwell in the house of the Lord.
When I
am afraid, when I am weary, when I am sick, when I am lost, when I’ve said
something unkind – I want to find a way to dwell in the house of the Lord.
“My
soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of God.”
And so
I need to remember that I can make a pilgrimage at any time and in any place. I
can stop what I’m doing and take a moment to re-center. Even if all I have time
to do is say a quick prayer or listen to my breathing, I can make a pilgrimage
to the house of God. Because the house of God is not so far away, my friends.
We are at home in God and God is at home in us always. It’s just that we get
distracted. We forget. We need to be reminded.
In our
Called to Create Sunday School class last week, we talked about how difficult
it is to be creative if you don’t feel loved. You have to take risks to be
creative and you have to be willing to fail. And if no one has loved you in a
way that helps you understand you will still be loved if you fail, it’s awfully
hard to take those risks.
Have
you known people who just seem to make themselves at home wherever they go?
They seem secure and comfortable, even when in a new place? I think it’s
something similar when it comes to being at home in God. When we remember we
are always and everywhere at home in God, we are freed for hospitality. When we
feel at home – when we remember that we are always at home, no matter where we
go – we can create a home for others. We can move from “strength to strength”
and extend hospitality to our neighbors, to strangers, and to our families.
So I
invite you to remember to make a pilgrimage, friends. When you start to feel
lost – when you start to feel a little too exposed to the elements – when you
feel like you can’t find your way home, make a pilgrimage to the house of God.
It’s not so very far away and it’s always worth the trip. I promise.
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