“Welcome Home”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, Sept
13, 2015
Bath Church of the New
Jerusalem
Exodus 29:28-46; John 14 portions; Heavenly Secrets
10153
Welcome back! Welcome home!
It is a wonderful
feeling, this feeling of coming home. Humans
need a sense of home more than we need anything else. After any trauma or even just after a rough
day, our first instinct is to go home—home, where we are safe; home, where we
can rest and heal; home, where we can be truly ourselves; home, where we are
loved exactly the way we are.
We all know this truth
about home, and this is the home we all long for at the end of a long day.
Unfortunately, many
people in this world do not get to have that experience of “home.” From foster
children who are bounced around our social system, to families struggling with
troubled dynamics, to the terrible plight of today’s Syrian refugees, there are
many are in this world who have no consistently safe home to which they can go
at the end of the day.
Home. In the human hierarchy of needs, home is
foundational. It is a level one need to
have shelter and physical self-care. It includes the level two need for safety
and security as well.
There is a primal human need
for home. “Home” is where we go to be
restored and to find our center both naturally and spiritually. We need to return to ourselves, to gather
ourselves, to rest in safety and prepare for the coming day. That is why we
feel such a strong need to go home when
we have had a hard day.
Just this past week a
friend was voicing her distress over the plight of the Syrian refugees. You see, she knows what it is like to be a
refugee. She fled Eastern Europe as a child all those years ago. Her family had only a suitcase and the
clothes on their backs. She remembers to
this day what it felt like, and feels keenly for these Syrians.
Can you imagine having to
leave your home and country forever, not knowing if you would ever come back? This is not selling your home to go to a new
one. This is walking away from the only
home you have. I have heard from several friends in California who have been
going through something similar, having time to grab only a few possessions
before fleeing the wild-fires; not knowing if they will ever see their home and
possessions again. Most of us cannot even imagine the scope of the rootlessness
and sense of disorientation such a leaving can cause.
Refugees are lucky if
they even have time to stuff a few things into a suitcase. Everything else gets left behind. Now imagine that you must throw even that one
suitcase of belongings away to save someone else. Into the tossing waves or the fires go your most
precious books and keepsakes—the family treasures, the spare clothes, important
papers—everything. You have nothing left
but your life and your clothes, and if you are lucky, your family.
Do you feel that? That compassion that you may be feeling is the
presence of God within you. That sympathy and that heartbreak are the
Holy Spirit speaking in your heart. God
hurts when we hurt. We are created such that we hurt when others
are hurting. That basic human empathy is
the fabric of our souls—it is our birthright—to feel joy with and for others
and to feel shock and sorrow with and for others. That energetic movement—that e-motion—is the
stirring of your spiritual blood, for you are made of love.
I think of all the thousands
of people who stepped up to help at ground zero in the days and weeks following
the 911 attacks. Their sense of empathy
and connection compelled them to give aid any way they could. Massage
therapists and trauma counselors, volunteers to deliver water and sandwiches, truck
drivers and hands that unloaded trucks, each heart found a way to serve
according to their call. Each one was equally valuable and needed, yes, from
the elite trauma and bereavement counselors all the way down to the Porta Potty
service workers who made sure the hordes of volunteers had somewhere to, um,
“go.”
Somewhere to go. Yes, even including the euphemism, isn’t that
what home is all about?
We need a home to go
to. We need repeatedly to go home. This church is a home for many of us here,
and we don’t know what we would do without it.
Home. Home is where we
are safe. Home is where we can rest and heal. Home is where we can relax and be
ourselves and are loved anyway. Home is the place where we belong.
I hope this church feels
just that way for each person here. If you
see this place as your home church I hope it feels safe and healing, accepting
and supportive. My experience is that
this congregation does pretty amazingly well at these things for each
other. My experience is also that a few
among this group are excellent at welcoming spiritual refugees. Several make an
effort to invite new people back to their homes to build a better sense of
welcome and inclusion. For those who do, well done!
In the deepest spiritual
sense, God is our home. The God of Love is
what we have come from and to whom we will return. As our truest home, God ought
to be our number-one go-to haven to Whom we bring all our hurts and all our
trust. Is it true that God is the One to whom you turn when you need to rest
and heal? Is it true that God is the One with whom you can be truly and completely
yourself knowing that God loves you exactly the way you are? Do you live and move and have your being in
God?
Does that describe your relationship
with God? Does that describe your
abiding inner emotional experience of God?
If so, you are among the
very few and very lucky.
If not, you are like most
people. Your answer may have been closer to, “Well, not exactly….”
Just for the record, while
I know with my whole head, that God
is my safest haven, I have trouble remembering that and acting on it. I have trouble trusting that it is really
true. I have trouble living that truth. (Some might say that that disqualifies me
from being a good pastor. But from
within my socks and shoes, I think it at least makes me an honest pastor, and a
pastor that knows what it is like to struggle
to remember the genuine reality of God’s love. What is the old saying? “Them as can’t,
teach?”) Even Mother Theresa struggled
with her faith, so maybe I’m in good company.
And so if you are like me, you are in Mother Theresa’s company too.
Why is it that we have so
much trouble making God our home, or what is the same thing, making our home in God?
Why don’t we simply trust God
and from then on live in “the peace that passes all understanding”?
Swedenborg would say that
our difficulty being able to sense and believe in the Divine presence is the natural
result of our being temporarily stuck in physical bodies. He would say that while we all have spiritual
senses that will awaken after this physical body dies, meanwhile those senses
are dulled, bogged down, or even switched off while we are conscious in these
dense physical bodies. These physical eyes and ears are designed to see and
hear physical things, not spiritual
things. And when we are plugged in to
this physical reality which is so
very, well, REAL to us, it is
well-nigh impossible to believe in anything else. It is a bit like being a fish,
with eyes and ears and senses designed to work in water. While we live in the water, we have almost no
idea what is going on above the water and may have trouble believing such a
reality even exists.
Not only are our spirits
cloaked in physical bodies, it often seems that when we need God the most, God
is nowhere to be “seen”! Of course we
lose faith! It takes training to learn
to see God in the midst of the darkest times, and often our own anger and
disappointment and sense of abandonment create a block to our inner
senses. We become so disillusioned about
God that we don’t even want to hear
an explanation of where God was when we needed Him/Her. But if we look at our mortal condition
through the eyes of love, it is hard to feel judgment for our understandable
struggle to believe. Of course we doubt and look elsewhere
for security and comfort! It is only, well, natural.
Exactly.
I almost wonder if God
designed our mortal condition the way it is to encourage us “grow up”
spiritually. How many of us would ever
leave the comfort of God’s arms if we weren’t drawn irresistibly away? How many children would learn to walk or run
or do things for themselves if they never left their mother’s lap? Looking back over my spiritual evolution, I
strongly suspect that I would NEVER have left the spiritual nest or learned to
fly if God hadn’t gently but firmly pushed
me out.
Perhaps we cannot
truly appreciate God as our safe haven until we have lived for a long time
without that presence? Rather like
Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, perhaps we need to go somewhere very different for
a while, because the struggle to find our way back teaches us to value what we
had all along. Perhaps it is the way God
sets us down a few steps away and then beckons with parental arms and an
encouraging smile, “Now come back to me!
You can do it!” and waits to sweep us up in joy when our faltering steps
make our haphazard way back to the Divine embrace.
That is how we grow
stronger. That is how we learn to become
spiritual adults. And God sets us down again and again, inviting us back. And
we grow stronger with each step.
Before we end, I will
just dip briefly into the gems of the internal meaning of John 14. John 14 starts with, “Do not let your hearts
be troubled.” It starts with, “Don’t
worry so much!”
The rest of the chapter
is about finding our way back home, which is couched in a discussion of the
Father and the Son being one. Father is “concept”
and Son is “action.” Father is “intention” and Son is “fulfillment.” These two
things MUST become one in our lives, or they are without meaning or power. When
Jesus commands, “You believe in
God, believe also in Me,” he is saying, “You love the idea of God, now realize that you must walk the path I set
before you to find your way home. You’ve
got the ideas; now start living them.”
But Philip (representing us) says, “Show us the father and we will be
satisfied.” “Philip” means “a lover of
horses.” “Horses” in the Word always symbolize
our understanding, so “Philip” is our love of ideas. Philip is saying, “Isn’t if good enough if we
just think and talk about the ideas?” This shows our reluctance to make changes in
our way of living. WE are satisfied by just having shiny and
interesting ideas. We balk at allowing
God’s teachings to transform our feelings and lives. This is rejecting a lived theology (Jesus). There is a part of us that is happy to keep
God as a concept, far away, up in the sky, not right here, down on the ground,
in this moment and in this choice.
Jesus says, “Have I been with you all this time,
Philip, and you still do not know me?”
He is saying, “I have walked with you and asked you to walk with
me. I have loved you and asked you to
love me, and still you are saying,
‘I’d rather just keep it all about ideas, okay?’”
The only possible answer
to that is, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Keeping the commandments means allowing the
golden rule to guide us. It means that the learning we do in this space shows up in a transformed life out there. It means that we become more aware day by day
of how we are not as kind as we might be, or not as trusting as we might be, or
not as wise as we might be, and we make small changes. It is in these moment by
moment wobbly choices that we take our baby steps back to our true home. God’s love and wisdom find their home in our
lives through small, daily changes.
John 14 ends with, “Let us
arise and go from here.” Jesus is saying
is time to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. It is time to move on towards our true spiritual home, which
is with God.
The closer we draw to
this state of spiritual homecoming, the closer we will get to that place where
we feel most alive and most ourselves. Yes,
it takes work, but the more we do the work, the better the work feels, until the
life of heaven becomes something we love and which gives us joy.
May you continue to walk
towards your truest home, for as you do, the more clearly you will hear and feel
God’s message in your hearts:
“Welcome back. Welcome
home!”
The Readings
Exodus
29: 38-46 portions “Now this is what you shall offer on
the altar: two lambs of the first year, day by day continually. This shall be a continual burnt
offering throughout your generations at the door of the
tabernacle of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet you to speak with you. I
will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall
know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land
of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God.
John 14: 1, 8-9,
18, 23, 27, 31
“Do
not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me.
Philip
said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus
said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not
know me?
“I
will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
“If you love
Me, keep My commandments; and My Father will love you, and We will come to you and
make Our home with you. Peace I leave with you,
My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
But that the world may know that I love the
Father, I live as he commanded me. Arise, let us go from here.
Heavenly Secrets 10153.
The statement, “And I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel” from
Exodus is describing a spiritual dynamic. It is describing the way the Lord
flows into and is present within the loving-kindness of those “in heaven” and
those “in the Church.” “In the midst” is describing those things that live most
deeply inside us, which always starts out good because it is from God.
The Lord flows into and is present within
a person’s kindness and good intentions, which are always from the Divine Love.
This goodness is each person's true self, for each person’s character is made
of good desires. “Goodness,” here means what
we love; everything we love we call “good” anyway.
