A DIFFERENT KIND OF HOME
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Text: Isaiah 55:1-13
Regardless of where and how we grew up, we all know something about families and homes. Most likely our experience is first-hand, but even if any of us was raised in an institutional setting, we read about children at home or we saw images on television or movie screens. It is possible that those images and our memories are somewhat sentimentalized, nostalgic for a sense of home that may never have ever existed outside our imaginations. “Father Knows Best,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Family Ties” (though now we have “The Simpsons”, “Modern Family” and “Two and a Half Men” representing family life and home) - perhaps one of these, or any of a number of other media-produced families, was your ideal, the family to which you fled in the imagination of your heart when things weren’t going so smoothly in your own home. There are many images of home from both experience and the creative mind that are ultimately warm and fuzzy, in which all wrongs are righted, missteps corrected and sins forgiven. For some, these images of home are not far-removed from sentimental notions of heaven – “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.” I realize that these images have roots in a desire for security, comfort and warmth, in a longing to be loved and cared for to be free of conflict and stress, pain and struggle. And, in actuality, these images are not so far removed from the place and time in which God wipes all tears from our eyes or from Isaiah’s vision of a place where none are thirsty or hungry because all feast at God’s table.
But we also know that there are highly dysfunctional families and homes of horror. We see those on the news and we see them dramatized on television, stage, big screen as we well as in written fiction, biography and history. So, when we come to use these images to speak of the church – our church family and our church home - we should use them with care for all the many meanings they carry. When we say that one of the pillars on which we want to build our church is the provision of a home for heart, soul and mind, we need to be clear about what we are saying. My first reaction when I read those words was that they were meant to lift up the importance of community in the life of the church. Indeed, I think that is part of the point. But ours is not just any community. It is not just any family. It is not just any home. It is a different kind of home that the church promises to provide.
In the latest Christian Century (March 9, 2010), there are three articles in the beginning of the issue, running one after the other that might help us to understand this different kind of home that provides a special place for heart, soul and mind. The first is an interview with Mark Potok, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project and editor of Intelligence Report magazine. In the interview, Potok talks about the rise in hate crimes and hate groups in the past couple of years, which he believes are fueled by strains of racism in our culture. One concern is the tendency of some to blame the current economic downturn on “illegals” in the country. This is compounded by the election of an African American to the presidency of the USA . Barack Obama becomes a living symbol of the shift in the country away from white rule and a white majority. The Census Bureau projects that by 2042 whites will no longer be the majority race in this country. Potok goes on to talk about the role of the Internet and certain right wing talk show hosts, commentators and televangelists in playing on these fears and promoting hatred, whether intentionally or by implication.
While I don’t believe the majority of folks in this country have bought into this culture of hatred, many would say that it has a religious base and for some it is closely associated with Christianity because so many of its advocates equate white and Christian. I would argue that there is no true home for heart, soul or mind where hatred is present and fearful exclusion is practiced. I bring this up now because of the recent visit to our community of the hate-mongering members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who picketed Gunn High School in some twisted blaming of the school for the suicides of students connected to it, and also protested at the Jewish house at Stanford. Where the church is portrayed as offering a home for ignorance, fear and hatred, it is important, vital, that we bear a different witness, providing for those who seek a place where hearts can be healed of hatred, where souls can find release from fear, where minds can be challenged and changed by the gospel of peace and the Lord of love.
The second article is about a bicycle ministry at the First Congregational Church UCC of Memphis, Tennessee. Eight years ago a young man, an emancipated minor, came to the aging downtown church and asked for some space to set up a bicycle shop. Now I can hear the wheels grinding, the ones in some of your heads that is, what has this to do with church? Truth be told, the young man, Anthony Siracusa, wanted nothing to do with church, except for the use of the space. The article says he came “with sadness and anger but also full of ideas and hope.” His dream was “a place where neighborhood kids [could] bring their bikes for repairs, learn how to be bike mechanics and recycle old bikes back into the community.” Because the church said “yes”, because the church saw itself as providing a home for heart, soul and mind, there is now a flourishing business in its basement that serves a community of need. That young man went on to get his GED, finish college with honors, and is now traveling the world on a fellowship studying bicycling communities. Oh, and by the way, he did find his way into the church – eventually. Hear his testimony, a homeless boy who found in an old church not only a place literally to live but home for his heart, soul and mind: “Generous giving is a challenge; receiving out of life’s abundance is also a challenge. Giving and receiving freely – it’s the way we all grow together into the best self, the best community, we can be.”
The third article is a powerful meditation on death and dying entitled “Lent’s Terrible Gift: Lessons in Dying” by Kay Lynn Northcutt. She writes of Lent as an opportunity to practice our dying, to face our mortality and to take stock of how we live our lives. It is only in a home that is open to the heart’s longing, the soul’s struggles, the mind’s questing that spirit may move and such exploration can happen with integrity. Northcutt observes, “Bittersweet, that during the church season in which we anticipate our dying, we preoccupy ourselves with small things, inessential things ‘given up’ for 40 days.” The church that provides a home for the real work of heart, soul and mind is a different kind of home. It is a home in which spiritual discipline is honored, in which hard questions are asked, in which the mysteries of God are explored and in which compassionate care for persons is essential. She goes on to criticize any superficial search for happiness and too-easy settling for material comforts. She says, “Lent is the time not for giving up something of little consequence, but for identifying what is most essential in our lives, what we are living for.” She continues, “As [Thomas] Merton put it, ‘Ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for’ (My Argument with the Gestapo).” She concludes, “That is Lent’s terrible gift: an examination of our living.”
Come build a church whose mission is to provide a home for heart, soul and mind - a different kind of home where life is not always comfortable or happy, not always easy or secure; a home in which we pay attention to one another, patiently hear one another out, graciously accompany one another on life’s journey, and freely offer compassionate care to one another. In the end, we recognize that this home is not our home to own, it is God’s home to share. Its doors are open to strangers and we work to make room for others in this very different kind of home. No room for hatred, no room for cruel judgments, no room for careless criticism. Its greatest symbol is this table around which we now gather to feast. Here may we find a different kind of home where our hearts are nourished, our souls strengthened, our minds stretched and our faith renewed again and again and again in communion with God, in service to Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
6Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 12For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.