Homecoming
“Home Where the Heart Is: Nobody Here but God and Us Lost and Losing”
I know it is hard in and for our culture to hear, -- and especially here in
Wolf Pack country! -- that we are called by these texts to be losers!
There is so much more to life than winning. It is as if no politician
who does not talk about winning the “war on terror” stands a chance of winning
election, -- when we all know, in our hearts, such a war is by nature unwinnable,
-- and the real question is, how do we as a global village, even a global family,
move beyond war in the first place?
These texts call us not only to see ourselves in the lost, -- in the sheep and
the coin who stray far from home, who get themselves cut off from others, and
need to be sought out and rescued and brought home and partied over. These
texts also call us to see ourselves in the losers – in the prodigal love of
this shepherd who loses just one of 100 sheep and of this woman who loses just
one of 10 coins. We are called to be those whose feel for completeness,
for wholeness, for fullness and richness is both so sensitive and so strong
that we know in an instant when a single subtle part of us is lost, -- and we
will go literally to any lengths to find that one and to bring them back home,
restore them to village, restore them to family, restore them to relationship
and to community.
We move from summer to this fall season of the Spirit of Pentecost, the Jubilee
Spirit, the Promise and Power of God, -- made flesh not only in Jesus himself,
but in his body the Church, often in spite of ourselves. We move from
the baptizing and sanctifying work of the Spirit in our own personal lives and
gifts and callings to the communing and sustaining work of the Spirit in our
life together and in the resources we share with all peoples everywhere!
As we move through these fall months beginning, respectively, with Labor Sunday,
World Communion Sunday, and All Saints Sunday, we come home again, if we will,
-- to our work, the “economics” of our life, -- to our world, the “ecologics”
of our life, -- and to our wisdom, the “ecumenics” of our life, made up of our
Word and our worship.
We find that the work of Homecoming throughout this season is the work of maturing,
of growing fully where we are planted, of harvesting and of thanksgiving for
the harvest, -- the work of “gleaning the green,” of reaping that which God
is forever sowing, not only in gardens and fields and vineyards of our own tending
but everywhere in creation, among all peoples, and nations, and cultures, and
faiths, -- until, at last, as this season ends, with what is traditionally called
Sunday of Christ the King, the return of the conquering power of one in
glory to judge both the living and dead, we find ourselves observing it more
so as Sunday of the Cosmic Christ, the release of the gathering power of one
in grace and goodness to bind both the wounded and whole.
This bonding, this sealing together in right relationship, we call “covenant,”
after the form of relationship God offers us, freely and fully, while we are
as yet “no people” at all but only slaves in Egypt. It is the covenant
renewed for us as Christians in that while we are “yet sinners,” Jesus loves
us to life again! What we long for and look for, in effect, at the end of each
Earth Church Year is restoration of that “new covenant” foreseen by Jeremiah,
chapter 31, for everyone, of every faith, who has ever been, who will ever be,
on this earth – “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another,
or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity,
and remember their sin so more.”
These words are part of the packet we will be handing out for Homecoming in
the Fellowship Hall after worship today,
1st page) “Where Might You Like to Serve?
Hearing the Call – Building the Covenant” – Connectional Ministries,
Administrative Ministries, Program Ministries, Community Issues/Relations,
plus all the Specific Groups and Activities of the congregation – Check
as many as you like! The Lay leadership and Nurture Committees
will be in touch with everyone for questions and comments.
2nd page) “Help Build a Vision: What Do You Wish for Our Church?”
A chance to help shape our budgeting, our staffing, and our nominating
of church leaders, for our Church Conference November 22.
3rd page) “Take-Home Questions for Homecoming”
1) Reflect and name the primary “covenants” of your life. 2) Focus
in on your covenant as member or friend of this congregation.
Where/with whom does that commitment take on the most flesh and meaning?
3) How are “small groups” of all kinds in our congregation important
to living out your covenant? 4) Are there added groups or times
of meeting for groups you would like us to consider? 5) Bonus
Question: What did the focus on “call” in worship this summer do for
you?
It is the same Jeremiah who looks at where we are in our world in today’s text
and concludes, we have all “lost!” We have all “wasted” ourselves!
None of our so-called religious traditions (and the root world in “religion”
means that which binds, that which holds together and heals!), no matter how
much we protest to the contrary, is acting as if we know God! We are all
acting like “stupid children,” claims Jeremiah, as if we have “no understanding,”
“skilled in doing evil,” not knowing “how to do good.” That is all of
us, brothers and sisters, not just some of us, for we are all in this world,
this village, this family, -- together! Jeremiah here sees only earth
wasted and void, no people at all, not even the birds of the air, -- like desert,
our cities in ruins, because God is so angry with our behavior, our wicked and
unjust ways of regarding, of relating to one another.
We may be behaving ourselves into massive devastation, and yet, Jeremiah hears
God saying, -- and this is a good as the news gets on this third year of 9/11,
and counting, -- and yet, “I will not make a full end!” God is the one,
the covenant-maker, who in last week’s text like a potter with clay is always
reworking, reshaping, beginning again -- who in this week’s text like a shepherd,
like a woman, is always losing someone yet always in search of the lost, always
reclaiming, always restoring to right relationship. God is the one who
never gives up! Who resurrects Jesus even from our execution of him!
Thank God, “I have not relented nor will I turn back!” God has not relented
nor will God turn back. Thank God for being Shepherd. Thank God
for being Woman. Thank God for being a Soft-Hearted Father, whose story
follows these two, -- to the end!
Sisters and brothers, the good news about Homecoming, for us, -- even for our
church, even for our nation, -- and for everyone else in this world is that
God loves us so unrelentingly! If you are not attending the Family Retreat
this weekend, please come Saturday morning for the “Bible and Sexuality” workshop,
as we consider how much harm can be done by religions, and what we can do about
it. I read this week the words of a brave Black UM pastor in Nashville
at a town meeting on human rights, including sexual rights, for all persons:
“It’s our nature to be bigots about something. There is something about
us as a people that we have to have an enemy. Even in the church,” he
says, “The church needs to send somebody to hell.” I ask, Do we?
Do we really need that, church?
What can any one person do? I invite you, at your best leisure, to reflect
upon both sides of the bulletin insert, from Christian Social Action,
the magazine of our General Board of Church and Society. (There are sample
copies on the table in the parlor and we are all invited to subscribe.)
The side entitled “A Prayer for Singular Peace” begins by asking, “What can
one person do for you, O God?” Against suicide bombs? Bulldozers?
Refugee camps? Addictions? Guns? Assault weapons? The passion
for profits before people? Even the church?! The prayer concludes, one
person can “become two!” We can covenant! We can build relationships!
We can come home again! We can join in relationship, in community again!
Beginning right where we are, extending all over the world. As Pete Seeger
sings, “Just my hands can’t tear a prison down, or ban the atom bomb, or break
the color bar, or heal the homophobe. But if two and two and fifty make
a million, we’ll see that day come round, we’ll see that day come round.”
We can organize! We can organize love, which then becomes justice!
Home is where the heart is, or where it belongs. Terry Tempest Williams,
from Utah, known for her religious love of the land, writes this month in
Orion magazine, “A domestic imperialism has crept into our country with
arrogance and ideology. It is easy to believe that we the people have
no say. I refuse to believe this. The only space I see truly capable
of being closed is not the land or our civil liberties but our own hearts. The
human heart,” she continues, “is the first home of democracy. It is where
we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous?
Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention
rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts
to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up – ever trusting our fellow
citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?”
Sounds a bit like Jeremiah’s questions from our relentless God.
I conclude with paragraphs ending my sermon following the first 9/11.
They still apply, at least somewhere in our world, everyday. – “Somehow,
I hope and pray, a growing and nonviolent number of us will allow our lives,
and our life together, to be rudely and sorely interrupted by this ruthless
and radical reminder, All is not right with our world! Getting interrupted
is one thing, staying interrupted is another [I would now say, part of the work
of the church is to keep us faithfully interrupted!]. . . . So long as all is
not right with anyone’s world, -- the world we must live in today, and, even
more so, the world we must live in tomorrow, -- So long as all is not right
in anyone’s world, all is not right in everyone’s world! For we are all
in this together, or we are not in this at all. Brothers and sisters,
we are no less the lost sheep and lost coins of these stories than anyone else
in this world! We stand in just as desperate and dangerous need of that
amazing grace, by which and by whom I once was lost, -- that is, I once was
cut off, all by myself. I was alone, broken, fragmented, separate, isolated,
-- thinking it was all about, Looking out for number one! Every one for
ourselves! Might makes right! Only the strong survive, the ones
who can “help themselves!”
But now, by the grace, by the courage, by the risk of this all-seeking God,
we are found! No longer I, but we! No longer lost, but found!
That is, we are looked everywhere for! Remember? Hasn’t each of
us had this experience? Looking everywhere for something, for someone,
lost? Lost earring? Lost shoe? Lost glasses? Lost keys?
For me it’s always lost datebook! Not to mention, lost pet. God
forbid, lost child! And even now, even each moment of each of these days,
those who are searching the rubble, the ashes, for lost ones, -- even for pieces
of lost ones [which now we know are pieces of us!]. . . . Remember? How
driven, how desperate, we feel to find that which, or whom, we have lost?
Remember!
Amen.
Rev. John Auer
