I would like you to picture the following: you are a reporter, maybe with The Jerusalem Times or Haaretz, neither of which existed back then, but just assume for the sake of our discussion today you do, and Jesus of Nazareth is entering the City of Jerusalem. There is a big event, people from all parts of the country have come, they are waving their palm branches, and making a fuss that Jesus, the Galilean is entering Jerusalem. You try to get in the middle of the scrum to ask Jesus some questions. Yearning in your mind to ask this great character some very important things. But, the question that is on your mind and that you finally get to ask in the midst of the scrum is: “Jesus, where do you consider your home to be?”
You have always wanted to know this, for you are confused about where Jesus is from and what would constitute his home. Jesus would probably answer you by saying, “I suppose I am from Bethlehem. After all, according to tradition, that is where I was born, that is the place my parents went to sign the census and to record our family. It is the home of David, the family lineage from which I come. Bethlehem, Bethlehem in Judea - that could be my home. On the other hand, Nazareth could be my home. Nazareth is the place where I was brought up. It is the place where my father was a carpenter. My family was well known. (Nathaniel in John’s Gospel almost makes it humorous and says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It wasn’t exactly one of the most famous and favoured towns in Israel). I could call Nazareth home, but maybe it is Capernaum – after all I spent a lot of my time there! That is where my friends and my followers were – Andrew, Simon-Peter, James and John. That fishing village on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, maybe that was the place. After all, most of my miracles were performed there, so many of the stories and the parables that I told walking around there, the Temple that is famous in Capernaum is the place that I would have gone and spoken and worshipped, Capernaum, I suppose, I spent a lot of time there, that could be home. Or maybe it is here, maybe it is in Jerusalem. After all, this is where the great Temple is. This is a place where the crowds have greeted me with ‘Hosanna!’ This is the place where I feel loved in so many ways, this our national city, this is a place that David dreamt would be the great city for the whole world to see – Jerusalem could be my home! Oh, I have wept over it sometimes. There was a moment when I prayed that I could take them like a hen takes her chicks under her wing and protects them, and they wouldn’t allow me to do it. Jerusalem didn’t always receive me well; maybe Jerusalem is nevertheless my home.”
As a reporter, you are feverishly writing this down: it could be Bethlehem, it could be Nazareth, it could be Capernaum, and it could be Jerusalem. All of which in a sense would make sense! But then Jesus throws you a curve! Just when you think you understand, he says, “But my kingdom is not of this world. In my Father’s house are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you.” Recorded by John in Chapters 18 and 14,these are the words of Jesus as he was talking to his disciples. Maybe Jesus felt that he was from the Father, and the Father had sent him, and that his desire was in fact not only to be with his Father, but to draw other people to live with his Father. Maybe his home was somewhere else. Maybe his home was where God is.
I love the line by Warsan Shire, a poet I started to read in the UK these last couple of months. A young woman, who has a Somali upbringing, but also immigrated to the UK, she was born in Kenya. Her parents are of mixed backgrounds, and she has never really known where her home is, never really knowing where she belongs.
At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from.
Maybe home is somewhere I’m going
and never have been before.
Maybe Jesus was saying the same thing. It is not all the places I have been, it is also the place where I am going. I am going to prepare a place, a home for the world.
Some scholars have suggested that when Jesus looked at Jerusalem and saw the state of the city that he loved so much, he wanted to bring it under his wing, and he was possibly thinking of Psalm 91 and our beautiful passage this morning, for if ever there was a Psalm anywhere or a passage within The Old Testament that suggests that a home is regarded as there. This magnificent exuberance, monarchist, brilliant Psalm of God’s protection suggests that maybe we are at home when we are one with God. “He who is under the shelter of the Most High will abide under the shadow of the Almighty One.” Even in those opening verses of Psalm 91 there are different names for God himself – the “Most High” and “the Almighty One”. This is the incredible God with whom the psalmist feels, and note the language, they “abide” and those who dwell are “under the shelter of.” There is a sense of divine protection for the monarch, a divine protection for the people of Israel through the shelter of the Most High, and that the shadow of the Almighty will be with them. Martin Luther tried to capture this in his great hymn Almighty Fortress is Our God – that God will protect and be a home for and abide with the people. Jesus in his ministry seems to be embodying this vision that home is where God is, and the implications of saying this are immense for humanity and for the world – and for you and me!
I confess that over the last two months it has been emotional at times to hear the word “home” mentioned. For example, I went back to my hometown of Haslingden in Lancashire, a town that I left as a wee lad of four, and I preached for the first time in the place that had been my home. All around the walls of an Anglican church there were posters with the Canadian flag on it. The children from the different organizations – the Brownies, the Cubs, the Scouts, the Girl Guides – had all made individually a flag of Canada, and rather than painting a maple leaf in the middle, they had taken a red imprint of their hands and had placed it in the middle to personalize it so I would always have the symbol of each of those children emblazoned on the country where I live. It was powerful! For me to get up in my hometown and preach and see the Maple Leaf everywhere and all these children, was so inspiring! Was that my home? Was I home?
Maybe not, because I favour a friend of mine who was a classmate in South Africa at Rhodes University. I hadn’t seen him in thirty-odd years. We hardly touched base except by Facebook since the terrible events that caused me to leave South Africa. He is now a minister in the United Reform Church in Swindon, and hearing that I was coming to the UK invited me to preach. It was one of the most emotional weekends you could ever imagine, and all the time he and his wonderful wife were talking about life at “home” – they were talking about Cape Town. It seemed so natural! For the three of us, it was like talking about home.
Or going and visiting my relatives, and all of them saying “It is lovely, Andy (that is what they call me and you must never do that on fear of death!) that you are home.” In Ross-on-Wye, in Cardiff, in Ascot, when I was with them, I was home.
Finally I got off the plane and Bien venue a Canada was there for me to see right away – Welcome Home to Canada! The person at the gate welcomed me back home to Canada. I picked up my bags, I came down the ramp, I saw a Tim Hortons, and I thought “Where Tim Hortons is – that is home.”! But I also agree with Stephanie Perkins, the poet. She said, “Home is not a place; home is a person.” Home, I guess for me, is where my wife is – and also my mother-in-law. It is the place where the people who matter most to you are: it really is!
Yet what was striking about all of this was that over arching it all was this profound sense that I got, particularly from my connections at Oxford, that home is in fact none of those, or maybe all of those, but it is with God. This I saw first-hand. I listened to a doctoral student from Japan give his viva, the defense of his thesis. It was about the church in Japan and how this particular scholar had been moved as a young boy by the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and by the great Kagawa the great Japanese theologian, and his work on the Cross. He became a Christian, a minority group. They are a small group, but they are a fervent group, and as I listened to him talk about the passion of Japanese Christians, you got the sense that right there in that place wherever he was and those people were, God was, and that was home.
I met a Chinese pastor doing his Ph.D. at one of the Oxford colleges. He is one of the founders of “house churches” that has grown to a thousand people and his challenge is what to do with all the people. Nice problem! He talked about how the Lord has worked amongst his people and how does he now structure sociologically: he was dealing with the ministry and the people. There is this incredible passion and sense of God working with him, even though there is much persecution and rejection. There is a sense in him that where he is, God is, and there is home.
One of the most moving conversations was with a Franciscan monk from Burkina Faso, a country that is often divided between Muslim and Christian, where there is hatred and animosity under the many leaders. Here was a man who was at Regents Park College for five years on a fellowship to restore our sense of love! Just so simple. But as a very devout Christian, rooted and grounded in the great Franciscan tradition, he has this sense, as he said to me, that no matter where he was, he always felt, and this is what caused me to preach this sermon, at home. Where God is, he is at home.
Think of the broken people and the homeless people this morning. Talking to an aid worker at Cardiff, who works in what is known as the “Jungle” in Calais, where many immigrants are stopped and are not allowed beyond the fenced borders of Calais, about the work that he has done as a medic on the ground amongst people who no longer have a home. He was saying the thing you have to try to bring to them is a sense that no matter what, they are still secure, that someone is looking after them. This sounds like the psalmist, “a thousand may fall to my right, ten thousand to my left, but somehow the shadow of the Almighty is there protecting me.” He said, “This is what is needed. This is the role of the church. This is the role of the people of God.”
It really doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter if you are a person who has been burdened by some profound sin in your life that makes you feel that you are separated from God and unworthy of coming into the presence of the Lord. You need to rediscover the forgiveness of God and the shelter of “the Almighty and the shadow of the Most High”. You need to feel that you can come again into the presence of the Lord. For those of you who have lost a loved one or are grieving or heartbroken or feeling alone because of a separation, you need to know that home is where God is and you can be with God.
The great quest of faith is to believe and to be true to the very core of your being. For those who have become disillusioned by tradition and forgotten the power of the love of Almighty God and the “shadow and the protection of the Most High” to have that restored in your heart and in your life is one of the greatest gifts. To know that no matter where you are, or how disillusioned you have, “the shadow of the Most High is upon you.”
When the last days of Jesus’ ministry and the hoopla of Psalm Sunday is over and the reporters are no longer asking questions and things have turned sour, Jesus started to know where “home” was, he really did! In many ways, home had rejected him. He understood what had been said before, “a prophet has no honour in their own home.” He experienced it in the city over which he had prayed, and was now rejecting him, and that he would be handed over to the Romans. He knew that the Romans would mock him, and maybe even make fun of his hometown – Jesus of where? Nazareth! King of the Jews! What a put-down!
For the man who would ultimately be crucified outside the city walls to symbolize his rejection, Jesus realized home was not a place, home was somewhere else. Home is where his Father is. That is why in Luke 23, Jesus says: “Father into Thy Hands I commit my Spirit.” He knew where his home was. His home was eternally with his Father, and his whole ministry is about bringing his people home, not to a place, but to God; not to an idea, but to a living presence; not to a structure, but to a person; not to just favour, but to love. When Jesus said, “Father into Your Hands I commit my Spirit” he was going home to the shelter of the Most High. Home is wherever God is! Amen.