November 28th: "Close to Home: Homesick"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“Close to Home: Homesick”
Rev. Amy Morgan
November 21, 2021
First Reading: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
9 How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? 10 Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. 11 Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. 12 And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. 13 And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Second Reading: Luke 21:25-36
25 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
27 Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.
28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
29 Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees;
30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.
31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.
33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
34 "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly,
35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.
36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man."
The day began in Thessaloniki, at the ancient agora where the Apostle Paul tried to share with the Thessalonians the good news of Jesus Christ.
Paul had been driven out of the market and out of town by people antagonistic to his message, and, as we hear in his letter to the Thessalonian Christians, it pained him that he couldn’t return to the faithful and beloved flock he had nurtured there, despite the opposition he faced.
On my sabbatical in Greece years ago, my husband, Jason, and I began the day at the agora in Thessaloniki, but we were driven out of town by a VW Golf, with the goal of reaching Corinth, almost 600 miles away, by nightfall. Chaos ensued when we attempted a side-trip to a mountain village and nearly totaled our rental car on a donkey path. This set us back several hours, which meant that nightfall arrived, and we were still several hours from our destination. We’d been travelling in Greece for more than a week, and the stress of the day was getting to me. We stopped off for gas in a little town, and I stepped out of the car to stretch my legs.
And then I looked up. The sky was ablaze with stars, more than I had seen in years from our light-saturated suburb back home. The sight was wondrous and beautiful, but also disquieting. I thought about how these same stars illuminated the sky over my home back in Michigan, where my son would just be finishing up his school day and wouldn’t be able to see them yet. And I suddenly was awash in a feeling of acute homesickness.
I didn’t long for the comforts of my physical home. But I dearly missed those I loved who were an ocean away. It was a reminder that home isn’t where you are so much as who you are with.
Our theme for Advent is Close to Home, a theme that acknowledges the “already but not yet” tension of our faith: Emmanuel is with us, and yet, God’s promised day—our everlasting home—is not fully realized. It names our deep longing for God to come close to us. In this season, we’ll explore how home is both physical and metaphorical, something we seek and something we are called to build. Ultimately, God is our home and resting place. God draws near and makes a home on earth—sacred ground is all around us.
The Advent season begins, as it always does, with a “little apocalypse,” with Jesus revealing his intention to return one day and redeem the whole creation. God’s home will be with mortals, and our true home with God will be complete, when Christ returns. The stars that will foretell this hopeful event are wondrous and beautiful, but also disquieting.
In this in-between time, after Christ’s Advent and before his return, we are homesick. Homesick for the world as God intends it to be; homesick for the love, justice, and peace that will reign in God’s kin-dom on earth; homesick for intimacy with God and restored relationships with the whole creation. We long to be close to home – that home that is not a place so much as a community, a home that is not about where you are so much as who you are with.
This is the kind of homesickness Paul felt for his beloved friends in Thessalonica. He longs to see faces instead of places.
This is a kind of homesickness that, I imagine, resonates with many of us. The isolation and separation brought on by the pandemic has created a longing for the faces of those we love. During the holiday season especially, many of us miss seeing faces, being with people, who are feasting at the heavenly banquet but absent from our tables.
Homesickness is something I imagine we’ve all felt over the past year. This may be a strange declaration, given the fact that most of us have spent most of our time at home this year. But homesickness is a longing for something much more than our physical domicile.
This poem by Rev. Sara Are Speed describes it well:
How do you describe homesickness to a child?
You don’t.
They know.
Children know the feeling of being away from home.
It’s fear, dipped in loneliness,
that “What if I’ve been forgotten?” sonnet,
or the “What if I can’t go back?” refrain.
Even a healthy, scrubbed-clean,
showered-with-love child
knows the longing of home.
But if I had to.
If I had to describe
that aching feeling, I would say:
“Homesickness is when longing and grief
wrap themselves around you like a blanket.
It’s the door to comfort thrown open.
It’s an eye on the horizon for what could be
and the only way out is to keep walking,
to keep dreaming,
to keep looking
for signs that will point you back home.”
And if you tell that to a child,
you just may realize
that a part of your spirit
has shoes on
and has always been walking,
always been dreaming,
always been looking
for the home that could be.
The door to comfort has been blown open.
Tell God I’m homesick.
I’m on my way.
We are all homesick for things that have nothing to do with the four walls we live within, and maybe have felt trapped within, these past two years. We are dreaming and looking for a home where justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. We are dreaming and looking for a home where everyone is loved and not judged. We are dreaming and looking for a home where everyone has a home, and a friend, and a life filled with meaning.
We are homesick, family of faith. We, like Paul, are homesick for one another. We are homesick to see each other face to face and restore whatever is lacking in our faith. We are homesick for potlucks and fellowship, for casual conversation that has nothing to do with COVID or other catastrophes, and for gatherings and activities that don’t feel like a gamble.
In Advent, we remember God leaving God’s heavenly home to dwell in our earthly home. But we also wait for the time when Christ will return and when our home will be God’s home once again, but in a new way. Where the whole creation will be redeemed, where evil will have no power, where sin will no longer exist to trouble our souls.
The kin-dom of God is perhaps not a place we think of as home. Sure, we talk and sing about our “heavenly home” as though it is a place we can’t wait to reach. But, in truth, we long for the home we know. In the Anne of Green Gables book series, a young woman who is dying confesses to Anne that she’s terrified to die, not because she’s worried she won’t go to heaven, but because she will get so homesick. She says, “Heaven must be very beautiful, of course…but it won’t be what I’ve been used to.”
When we hear Jesus’ description of his return, these images are more frightening than comforting. But Jesus says, when you see these things happening, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” This is something we’re supposed to be looking forward to, but like Anne’s friend, we are afraid we will be homesick, that we will miss what we are used to.
But homesickness is ultimately part of the journey home. Turbulent and troubled times like the ones we are living through now, which perhaps somewhat resemble Jesus’ “little apocalypse,” where things are not the way we’re used to, fill us with a homesickness that motivates us to move toward those we love. Our home with God may look nothing like what we’re used to, but it will be home because of who we’re with, not where we are. It will be home because God is there, and love is there, and all those we love are there.
We have been driven away from home by all kinds of forces. Grief, fear, and anger have driven us away. Isolation, loneliness, and anxiety have driven us away. Injustice, oppression, and greed have driven us away. Self-righteousness, pride, and resentment have driven us away. We have been driven away from one another, from the people we love, from the faces we miss. We have been driven away from home, and we are homesick, homesick for faces, not places.
And at some point, we’ve got to stop driving, and look up at the stars, and see that home is both very far away, and that we are very close to home. The same stars are shining down on us all, in different times and places, perhaps. But they are telling us the same thing: God is with us. Christ has come. Emmanuel, God-with-us, has made a home among mortals. And though we are homesick and longing for Christ’s return, that feeling of homesickness is what drives us toward each other and toward God. It orients us toward our true home and draws us back together.
If you have been feeling homesick, friends: rejoice, for your redemption is near. Keep alert for the signs that God’s kingdom is drawing you closer to home. Do not be weighed down by worry or distracted by the addictions of life, but lean into the love that is calling us home, the love that has made a home among us, the love that will come again to make our home whole, complete, and filled with love.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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