Home is a contentious subject around here these days. For those who haven’t heard, my mom and dad are in Fort Wayne. Long story, but mom is in rehab for a hip she broke the day after she got here. Dad is staying with us when he isn't staying with mom. But mostly he is wanting to go home. To get mom and take her home. He feels unmoored somehow. Like he can’t figure out what to do with himself. He stands in the middle of the kitchen, usually when La Donna is trying to work in there, like he is trying to remember what he was going to do. Or maybe even who he used to be.
He just wants to go home. And even my sister and brother think I’m being mean to him because I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be going back to the house in Paris Tennessee where they have lived for about 33 years off and on. Far longer than they lived anywhere else. Dad was a pastor and therefore moved around from place to place, even more often than I do, I think. But he walked away from that itinerant life and settled down in a house that should have been bulldozed and rebuilt from scratch, instead he worked on it piecemeal mostly on his own until it was almost liveable. He was quite proud of it, to say the least. Until the fire.
Long story, but someone with a grudge broke in and set it ablaze while he and mom were up in Fort Wayne a few Christmases ago. It had to be completely gutted and rebuilt inside. By professionals, the insurance company insisted upon it or they wouldn’t pay. So, he submitted to that and let them rebuild. Of course he grumbled about it, says he could have done a better job. Doesn’t like this or that, isn’t quite the same. Hasn’t felt right to him. Until now.
It would be more right than here. This is my home, not his. He doesn’t live here, he is a guest. And he makes a terrible guest. Mostly because he doesn’t want to be here. So, he spent most of the time at rehab with mom. Until he got on their nerves too. They said for mom’s sake he shouldn’t be there all day long. So, now he is here more. And wanting to go home. He doesn’t say it all the time, but it is there in distant stare of his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders, in the inability to find anything to do.
Settle down, it'll all be clear / Don't pay no mind to the demons / They fill you with fear / The trouble it might drag you down / If you get lost, you can always be found ... Phillip Phillips has probably made a mint on the song called “Home.” It was the theme song for the USA women’s Olympic gymnastics team last summer and has been used in every other commercial you hear on TV. They say he didn't like it at first, didn't want to sing it. Mostly because it wasn't his song, he prefers the ones he writes himself supposedly. But I think he has made his peace with this one. It has become his signature song. He probably will never do a concert and not sing Home, fans would demand their money back.
It is a good song, but it has become a phenomenon. In a uncertain age, to sing about home has captured everyone’s attention. It touches something deep within us. Some longing, some hope that almost goes beyond words. Home. Family. Roots, settle down, put your feet up. Make yourself at home.
Funny how Jesus seems so anti all those things. Wait. What? Really? You’d think that he’d be in favor of that. Of helping us to get home, to find where we belong. To find where we relate, fit in, are known. Isn’t he? Isn’t that what this faith thing is all about? Finding ourselves? Arriving at home, at last?
Well, you’d think so. And he does do all those things, will all those things for us. But his description of that is different than ours. His methodology of finding, seems almost like losing. His depiction of arriving sounds more like journeying. We want to be settlers, He wants us to be pilgrims.
Luke 9:57-62 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
Sometimes even home isn’t home. The unreachable destination, the unrealized dream, the undiscovered country. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him with that foxes and birds thing? Are we really supposed to leave our parents to deal with their own end of life issues? Are we really just supposed to slip away, rudely, as though the people who know us best aren’t important enough to even bid farewell?
You know, this setting the face thing can be a real pain in the associations. The Samaritans didn’t want to deal with him because of it. Ticked off the disciples too, they wanted to call down fire to burn them all up. Everyone seems to be a bit on edge in chapter nine of the Gospel of Luke. It’s like everyone just needs to go home. Go home and settle down. Go home and calm yourself. Maybe if Jesus just lightened up a bit...
We don’t like the edge Jesus puts on things at times. We don’t like the demand part of the faith, the commitment part. We like the grace part, and we often interpret that as anything goes, as long as your heart is in the right place. We like the be like little children command rather than the be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That must have been a bad day for Jesus. The folks who came alongside must have felt like they caught Jesus on a bad day. Understandable, really, since he was heading to Jerusalem to die a difficult death, after all. So, we can forgive his curt responses, his heavy handed demands. He was a man without a home, so he was anxious to get back to where he belonged, back into the arms of the Father.
On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t just short tempered, caught in a bad moment. Maybe he knows something he desperately wants us to know. And that is that home is never found by standing still, or even less by going back. Who said that you can’t go home again? Might as well have been Jesus. It is never back there. It is never found through nostalgia, through wishing that is was like the good old days that never were. Except in our fractured memories.
And the other thing he wants to tell us here is that home isn’t a place as much as a relationship. The first eager follower would have been better to simply say “I will follow you.” By adding in the “wherever you go” it became about the destination, not about the journey. I became about place and not about the commitment to follow the Word made flesh. The other two? They wanted a both/and. They wanted to follow, but wanted to stay behind at the same time. They wanted to divide their focus, a little bit here and a little bit there. I want to follow, and will follow, but I’ve got responsibilities, so as soon as get my life under control, I’ll be back. I’ve got lots of relationships, as soon as I get them in order, I’ll be back.
I wonder if the second one had simply said, yes I’ll follow you, if Jesus would have sent him back to care for his father. Having made the commitment to be in relationship with Christ, then all our other relationships and responsibilities become even more vital, even more pressing. Because now it is in the light of Christ that we fulfill these other duties. It is in the light of Christ that we serve and love and create home.
Hold on, to me as we go / As we roll down this unfamiliar road / And although this wave is stringing us along / Just know you're not alone / Cause I'm gonna make this place your home ... Home has always been a moveable feast. Not this place or that place, but the accommodation created when followers journey together for a time. There’s no place like it.
Shalom,
Derek
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