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"A Place for You"

5/13/2020

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Picture
John 14:1-14
 
 
For the past seven weeks, all non-essential workers, like many of us, have been ordered to stay home in order to curtail the dangerous and deadly virus COVID-19. Day in and day out we have striven to create a routine in a time of ultimate disruption.  Do the dishes. Bake bread. Catch up on laundry.   Walk around the block. Exercise. Work from home.  Attend zoom meetings. Place internet orders. Catch up on reading, podcasts and webinars. Wave to family and friends from the window. Make phone calls. Watch recorded worship and devotional material. The list goes on. What have I missed?  What would you add?

The weeks have passed with no end yet in site. Despite the cabin fever that is fomenting, home for the most part has been our refuge.  We are reminded that there are many in these perilous times that do not have a home. They are some that don’t have the comforts of home.  They are some even for whom home is as dangerous as the virus we are trying to escape.  We cannot take home for granted.
In John’s gospel, Jesus declares it is God’s purpose and intent that everyone, everyone, have a place they can call theirs. For in God’s house there are many dwelling places.  Many homes. A home to take refuge in. A home where we can be safe and well. A home rooted and grounded in love.   It reminds us of John Howard Payne’s famous saying:
Mid pleasures and palaces,
Though oft I may roam;
Be it ever so humble,
There's no place like home.

Our passage however takes home to a deeper and broader meaning. Jesus left this celestial home to be with us.  So, on earth, Jesus considered Capernaum his home base. However, his ministry led him across the countryside and villages, and he found himself depending on strangers and disciples lodging. Even so, going from place to place, not knowing where he would sleep at night, Jesus created the space we call home.  He traveled with his disciples.  He lived the Gospel. He created what Peter would latter describe in his first epistle  “living stones built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” It is this faith connection Peter talks about that enables us to transcend any house we reside in. True home is our connection to each other. Our life and service together. To God, through Jesus.

 Our faith connection binds all the people and places we belong to – and holds it all together as a spiritual sacrifice. It anchors us as Jesus declares there is a place for you-not just in heaven but here in this world God created.  A place for you no matter what human society dictates. A place for the homeless. A place for the jobless. A place for the weary. For the ill.  No matter how alone we feel, out of place we feel, Jesus insists that we have a place with him, here on earth and in heaven.  Together we are a royal priesthood, a chosen people, a people belonging to God.

As a result, Jesus assures us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe also in me.”  There is a place for us. It is prepared. Furthermore, our home on earth is a symbol of God’s heavenly home, where we will dwell forevermore. Our faith helps us create home here on earth woven into eternity.  Home is where God is. God has made God’s home with humankind, through Jesus Christ. Wherever we are, there is home. A home for everyone. Home sweet home.

         In John’s text, the disciples are terrified that once Jesus is gone so will be lost the home that they have known, because Jesus has been their home.  Jesus knows this.  So, Jesus tells them all they need to know: He says: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  Jesus declares, they will have him always. He is our spiritual base. He is our home. Further, Jesus describes that at the heart of this home is the inseparable relationship that exists between him and the Father/Creator God. Jesus insists that we too are a part of this same relationship, this home, with the Father/Creator God in our relationship with Jesus.  The disciples, and we as well, take the same fateful journey in spreading the good news of the Gospel – a journey that becomes home.  A journey that gives them a place of belonging – the journey is home, as the saying goes, because it brings all in deeper connection with one other.  It turns strangers into friends and makes creation the housemates to all creatures. All have a home, in God’s creation

Now consider this.  "Taken from its hive, the bee knows its way home and makes a `bee line' back. An eel travels down the Rhine to the sea and keeps right on till she reaches the Azores, lays her eggs, and dies. Her progeny return to the Rhine and the process is repeated. Terns were carried in a hooded cage from their nesting grounds off the coast of Florida to Galveston, released, and in less than a week returned... Salmon... leave the sea, enter fresh waters, and ascend far inland, deposit their eggs and die. . . .Young salmon return to the briny deep, grow up, and then find their way up the very same river to pay their debt to their kind and to nature... In the spiritual nature of humanity there is that homing instinct. Something within us that says, `Not here, not here, but God.' http://www.moreillustrations.com/Illustrations/home%203.html

We all have a “homing instinct” –the Holy Spirit has placed into our soul to find our place in the world, a unique place created for each of us by a gracious and loving God.  To find our spiritual home through Jesus the Way. As people of faith we build this spiritual home on a foundation of relationships with one another. Home, sweet, home.

        Even in pandemic times we come together remotely to do his works, those spiritual sacrifices of worship, prayer, study, service and to deepen our faith together.  In all this we discover that in our connection to each other we awake to appreciation of each other, of Jesus and our Heavenly Father/Creator God, and become attuned to the needs of the world.    For a home where everyone feels safe and well.  To friend the friendless.  To visit the lonely. To heal the ill. To love the unloved. To fight for justice. To promote kindness. To practice mercy. To embrace the afflicted.  To home all without a home, to home those who have a house that lacks safety, security, and love. To proclaim the gospel.   To celebrate a home where there are real connections between people and among creation. All these works, these spiritual sacrifices, that Jesus promises we will do, even greater than those of Jesus he declares, because we claim that place for us, that home.  That home, sweet, home.
​
So, we give thanks today for our houses that have been turned into homes through our love and care and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.  We give thanks for our home here with Jesus and with the Father/God Creator, who has enabled us to be living stones that God uses here on earth to build a home of love and justice. So, in Jesus, we discover even in the midst of whatever pandemics and trials we face, we discover there is a place for us made by loving grace of God.  A place in Jesus in Our Heavenly Father/ God Creator; in turn in Jesus, in turn with us. That is a place for us, rooted in a place grounded in and transcending our earthly abodes. A place called home, sweet home. Amen.

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"Awe Together"

5/5/2020

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Picture
Acts 2:42-47

I would like you to look at your hand for a minute.  Fix your gaze at the center square inch.  That square inch of your body contains more than four yards of nerve fibers, 1,300 nerve cells, 100 sweat glands, 3million cells, 3 yards of blood vessels, and 32 million bacteria.  Amazing, isn’t it?
You have 45 miles of nerves just in the skin of your body.  There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels that run throughout your body. All of this is an intricate part of a larger community of cells.  There are anywhere from 10trillion to 100 trillion cells that come together to form you. Each one of these 10 to 100 trillion cells is a community in its own right:  made up of a membrane, a nucleus, mitochondria, cytoplasm, different types of membranes and interconnected tubes and enzyme sacks all working together, to process and connect information, feed and support internally and externally to the rest of the body.    All that in one cell.  It is astounding more so to think that the coronavirus, COVID19, a tiny snipet of a particle, which has caused so much damage and havoc worldwide, is even smaller than our cells.
All this abundance and diversity around us and in us is ours to behold.  Like the great mystics, how could we not contemplate all this and not weep? How can we not be in awe at the power and creativity, and wonder of the creator?  All which represent God’s love for us. A love that stretches from the sub-atomic to the galactic. A love that permeates our reading from Acts today, a reading that reaches into our hearts and connects us together as the body of Christ. These five verses capture what it means to live fully together as church, the body of church.  The early Christian community is described as an interconnected community as interconnected as the vessels and cells found here in our hand.
This brief passage is a blueprint for our life in faith together, It is the measuring stick of a healthy Christian community.  A community we are told that is devoted to learning, fellowship breaking of the bread and prayers. Is this not the foundation of our life together? It is not an obligation, but a way of living that is heart-led, arises spontaneously from a place of vibrant faith in Jesus. This is a community that voluntarily and joyfully uses its resources and gifts that God has given as a means to further togetherness, so that no one is in want or need. What if we made that a priority of our annual budget? What a difference our life together would be. This is a community that enjoys being together, enjoys each other’s company, a community that breaks its bread with glad and generous hearts. Isn’t that something we yearn for?  That being together in the name of Christ would make us glad and generous at the same time? What if we made as our primary goal for our community, to spend our time on creating glad and generous hearts?  How could we change as a result?
In this passage we clearly see the church not as a building, but as a living community, an interconnected body that cares for each other, worships and eats together. Our common life is the vehicle through which awe comes through the wonders and signs that occur in our common life together, root and ground in faith, hope and love.  Vessels and vessels of Glad and generous hearts.  Cell receptors directed to Awe. Cells of signs and wonder. Muscles created by spending time together. Sharing. Relationship and sacrificial caring. Not only is this the way we grow in faith, but how disciples are made.
God would have us find awe as a means to renewal.  Awe in how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. Awe the teachings and life, the signs and wonders of Jesus Christ, and the signs and wonders of a devoted church. Awe in the fellowship Jesus calls us to. God would have us find awe in the millions of prayers lifted up together. God would have us find awe in when communities that share its resources, holding all in common, and distributing to those in need. God would awaken awe in us as we break bread together and distribute it to the hungry—those who bellies need bread and those whose hearts are famished for spiritual bread, needing to know the love of God and finding a place in community and creation. 
        Awe touches us in many ways. Awe claims us as we live, day to day, becoming more committed disciples, creating disciples by our actions, and words of building up and praise, and giving sacrificially of our resources and time and care with glad and generous hearts.  Awe beckons us to become a way of life as we live out our life in the name of Jesus Christ.  Ultimately this is how we are saved: we discover the awe of God through the teachings and life of Jesus Christ in the devoted community of faith, with glad and generous hearts.
       Albert Einstein once observed:  There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt is awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Awe opens us up to not just natural wonders like the stars and galaxies, like the countless cells in our body, but to the creator who made it all come together, the creator who still performs those the mysterious signs and wonders in our midst if we just devote our lives to God’s ways.
Awe together. It is the way we will find our way through this pandemic and step by step become a renewed church.  Our text calls us to emulate our brothers and sisters of the first century.  Creating a sense of awe and wonder that we can still find in the triumph of the power to love and care -- in what often seems a turbulent and frightening world where bonds are broken and where community is forgotten.  Awe is what we need to rejuvenate, regenerate, to recreate to renew ourselves, to heal ourselves as individual followers of Jesus and as his church.
  So, let us pursue awe together. We don’t know when we can start worshipping together in person but let us prepare ourselves.  Because if anything this pandemic is teaching us, is that we can be community in many ways, not just in a church building.  So let us look and see all those vessels that lead us to follow Jesus: devotion to the word, to prayer, to the breaking of the bread, to spending time together, and caring for the needs of others.  It can turn us around. It can create the fertile ground for signs and wonders. May that awe forged from such life inspire us and bind us together, bringing day by day a new creation that God in his mercy is preparing us to be.   Amen.
 

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    Moirajo is a minister, social worker, wife, mother, writer and animal lover. That's just for starters. Join the story, there's so much we can share together! 

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