We’ve all had to adjust to a lot of things in these
days with Covid-19, but do you know one of the things I personally struggle
with the most? I’ve got nowhere to
go. I don’t mean the social isolation
and distancing that our leaders are asking us to practice, which is why you’re
watching me on a screen today. No, I
mean that if this disaster was a hurricane hitting us, we could go somewhere,
right? You could travel somewhere else
to avoid the storm. But wherever you
go, literally in the world, this storm is there too. So, I’ve been yearning to escape not to a
where but to a when.
For years, I’ve subscribed to a weekly magazine that
has way too many articles for me to finish in a week. So, that means, I’m usually a month or so
behind. So this past week, I was reading
the issue from late February, and it felt well….eerie. It felt like I was looking at a time capsule
from not weeks in the past but years, an era long ago when people actually went
to theaters, dined in restaurants, shook hands even (instead of washing them a
zillion times a day) when the news wasn’t 24-7 virus. And reading about it, I was thinking. Boy, I’ve
love to go back there and stay. Who wouldn’t?
Who wouldn’t want to return to those days when Corona virus was
something happening over there, not something wrecking your life here, heck,
wrecking everyone’s lives everywhere?
These days you can feel like you’re living like an
exile from home. You’ve been kicked out into a world that looks the same but
sure doesn’t feel it. Instead it feels
strange, alien, and yes, scary. But even in these days of Covid-19, home is
still a place you can find or rather it’s a place that can find you. How?
In these words, Jesus shows you the way.
Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.
How do you find a sense of home, a sense of peace and
security, even in this strange, uncertain, even scary world of Covid 19. In these words, Jesus tells you. In these words, Jesus reminds you that your
true home has never ever been a place or a time, it has always been a relationship. And only when you experience that
relationship, when you open yourself to that relationship, do you find
home.
But why isn’t home a place or time? In this story of the two sons, Jesus shows
you why. Neither of these sons
experience their home as a home. You
see, with each of these two sons, the home they have they don’t experience as a
home. One son wants to leave it as fast
as he can, even if that means telling his father basically. “I wish you were dead, but since you’re not
give me your money anyway.” Now, the
other son stays, but even for him, it doesn’t feel like home. He talks about he feels like a slave to his
father. Wow. Does that sound like home to you? If that’s home, it’s not a home I want to
live in.
But is it any different for any of us? If you’re really honest, has any home you’ve
had, really been home in the deepest sense of what you yearn that word to mean? Have you ever carried fond memories of some place
in your past, thinking that there in that place, you really felt at home? But then you went back there, and let’s just
say your memories didn’t live up to the reality.
Heck, even if I could travel back a month ago to the
days before Covid, that time still wouldn’t feel like home. Sure, I could go to the grocery store without feeling
like I was entering the danger zone or not think how many feet separated me
from another human being. But those days
had their own problems, their own struggles. They weren’t necessarily easier,
just different. Granted, they might have felt easier to deal with than the ones
we face now, but those days weren’t perfect either.
Yet both sons, even though they didn’t find home, they
sure were looking for it. One son thought
he would find it out there in the world, making his own way, breaking all the
rules that had gone before. And the
other son thought he would find it by obeying the rules, by drawing a life that
stayed within the lines. But that
didn’t work either. In fact, it so
didn’t work that at the end of the story, he finds himself more on the outside
than ever.
But in the story, Jesus does seem to say that the
younger son does, in the end, find home.
He returns home looking for a job.
But instead he finds the home he was searching for all along. And how does he find it? He finds it in his father’s embrace. No, that’s not right. The younger son doesn’t find anything. He doesn’t find home. Home finds him. Because home isn’t a place you find. Home is a relationship that finds you.
And that’s why I started the scripture reading with
that story of the lost sheep. You
see. Jesus tells three stories about
lostness. But in the first two stories,
someone seeks out what is lost. The
shepherd seeks the lost sheep. The woman searches for the lost coin. But in this story, no one seeks what is
lost. No one seeks the lost son.
When I was growing up, one day my older brother was
babysitting me. I don’t know what
happened, but for some reason I got upset.
I decided to run away from home.
I made it about a half mile. That’s
about how far I could make it before my brother and his buddy were able to
track me down in his buddy’s Camaro. I
still remember his exasperation as he told me to get in the car. At first, I resisted. But my brother and I both knew how it was
going to end. I crawled in, scrounged up
in the backseat, and we made our way home.
I knew my brother would come after me.
That’s what older brothers do. But
as I think back, I wonder how it would have felt if he hadn’t, if he hadn’t
cared enough to come find me.
During the Vietnam War, Daniel Dawson’s reconnaissanceplane went down over the Vietcong jungle.
When his brother Donald heard the
news, he sold everything he had. He left
his wife with twenty bucks and bought a ticket to Vietnam. And
for nine months, he wandered through the jungle, looking for his brother. He
carried leaflets picturing the plane and sharing in Vietnamese news of a $5,000.00
reward for anyone who had word on his brother.
He became known simply as Anh toi phi-cong, the brother of the pilot. For eight months he searched. Finally as a
Vietcong prisoner, he learned that his brother had died. His captors passed on
a Navy yellow vest, saying it was all that had survived the crash, and then
they let him go.
Talk about a brother’s love. But in this story, the older brother doesn’t
do a thing. He sees his father’s
heartbreak over his lost brother. But he never lifts a finger to find him. And when the brother comes home, he’s not
happy. He’s angry. And he never sees it. He never sees that the same embrace that
welcomed his younger brother, that that embrace had been waiting for him all
along.
And for too many folks who have encountered religion,
that’s who they have encountered, those false elder brothers, full of anger and
judgment, who are far from home and don’t even know it.
But if the elder brother in the story isn’t the real
deal, who is? Who is the true elder brother?
It’s the one telling the story.
Why can’t human beings find home, find that sense of
rest and security for which everyone yearns?
It’s because people don’t trust the love. They don’t trust that God truly and deeply
and completely loves them. So, they look for home in all the wrong places. That’s
the whole story of the Bible from beginning to end, our fear and distrust and
how it separates us from our true home, the God who loves us more than we could
ever imagine.
So, what does God do?
In Jesus, God comes to us. God
becomes the elder brother. Why? So, he could search for you. So, he could find you. So, he could bring you home, bring you home to
your father’s embrace. And God let
nothing stop him in his search, not even death.
Why? He loves you that much. God loves you that much. And the more you realize that, the more you
let the wonderful reality of God’s love for you sink in, the closer to home you
become. And even in the scariest days
of Covid 19, you can find that home living within you, holding you, comforting
you, giving you peace. And it’s not because you found it. It’s because that home has found you.
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