Saturday, May 12, 2012

Our Home is in God - a sermon for May 13, 2012


A Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Pascha (RCL B) 5-13-2012
Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
Themes:         Mothers’ Day, home, the motherhood of Jesus
Title:              Our Home is in God

My dear friends in Christ: what do you think of when you consider the word “home”?

This one word, with all the multitude of mental associations connected with it – this one word is one of the most profound and deepest in the English language.

Home. What comes to your mind? What do you consider to be your home?

Hopefully, God willing, you have mostly positive memories and happy feelings when you consider home. For many of us, there are some painful memories mixed in there as well.

But no matter what comes to your mind when you think of home, this morning we need to consider this fact, this basic reality, of our lives as human beings: Our only true and lasting home is in God.

Today is Mothers’ Day, of course, and this naturally brings up ideas of home. For nearly all human beings throughout history, it has been our mothers who have maintained the family home.

Traditionally, men have been the ones to go out and bring back the provisions needed for the home, while the women maintain the home itself. This arrangement is changing rapidly in today’s era of gender equality, of course, but this is the tradition that has been in place for thousands of years.

In the minds of most of us, our mother and our home are inextricably linked.
This is good and normal and understandable, but I believe that God wants us to develop a new association in our minds between these words: home and God.

In our reading from the First Letter of St. John, we heard this today: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child” (1 John 5:1).

I wish this were always true: if you love the parent, then you automatically love the children as well.
In my experience, that’s not always the case. I can think of many times when trying to visit with friends, or being in a Bible study group with fellow church members, and their child is acting like a ridiculous maniac, out of control and not allowing us adults to have the good conversation that seems so rare as adults and which we’re really into at the moment…
Love for the ornery child is not the primary thing in my heart at that moment, do you know what I mean?

But of course, this scripture is referring to the relationship within the Holy Trinity, between the first and second persons of the Trinity. Everyone who loves God the parent loves Jesus the child as well.

On May 8, Tuesday of this past week, the Church remembered once again the profound insights and spiritual visions which were given to the woman known as Lady Julian of Norwich. Her feast day always falls near to Mothers’ Day here in America, and that to me is a gift of wonderful serendipity.

For one of Lady Julian’s most moving insights is that, as a balance to the emphasis upon the fatherhood of God, in our Lord Jesus Christ we find all of the qualities of motherhood.  

Every May I return to drink from this deep spring of wisdom and every May I am awed and refreshed by what this woman experienced in God.

Listen to a few of Lady Julian’s remarkable words:
“So Jesus Christ, who opposes good to evil, is our true Mother.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.
All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to [Christ]. [A] mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does [so], with the blessed sacrament.
This fair and lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of [Christ] and to [Christ] who is the true Mother of life”
(Showings – Long Text, Chapters 59 & 60).  

How many of you have ever thought of Jesus as our heavenly mother? The one who gives us spiritual birth, and the one who feeds and nurtures our souls, the one to whom we can always run for comfort and help and protection.

In fact, it is Lady Julian’s assertion that Jesus is our only true Mother, because all the goodness of motherhood comes from him.  

This is the point where we are challenged by God’s vision for our lives.
You see, it is easy to become overly attached to material things. We are creatures of flesh and blood, with mothers and homes and the family dining room table and memories of the holidays.
All of this is good; the stuff of life is very good. But we cling to it at our own peril.
These things can also become a hindrance to our growth in Christ, a block to our ability to bear fruit in Christ, to love as he commands.

All of us know that change is the one constant of human life. Nothing on earth stays the same.
Matter and energy are in constant motion and we are part of this movement.

And in the midst of experiencing all of this change and flux, it is normal and ordinary for people to grasp for something that stays the same, something that is solid and immovable.

That is a perfectly normal human tendency. The problem is that we try to hold on to things that are also changing, also in motion. We might try to save the family home, or some photographs from our childhood. We might not be able to imagine life without our mother, or our spouse, or our friends.

Whatever the particulars might be for you, you know what I mean about clinging to things, and about resisting and fearing the change, which we all know is inevitable!

And this is why, if we are to be spiritual healthy and centered, then we must come to know – in the very depth of our being – that our only true and lasting home is in God.

Can you say that with confidence, my friends, about yourself? That you know where your only true and lasting home is, and that you know it is only in God. Can you say that about yourself?

Thankfully, we have many good and faithful guides in learning how to find our home in God.
Please turn to the back of your bulletin, and there you will find A Litany To Honor Women of God.
Let us read through this Litany together now. We will begin it together.

A LITANY TO HONOR WOMEN OF GOD
Adapted from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

People:  We walk in the company of women who have gone before, mothers of the faith both named and unnamed,
Leader: testifying with ferocity and faith to the Spirit of wisdom and healing. They are judges, prophets, martyrs, warriors, lovers, poets and saints, who are near to us in the company of the blessed.

We walk in the company of Deborah,
Who judged the Israelites with authority and strength.

We walk in the company of Esther,
Who used her position as queen to ensure the welfare of her people.

We walk in the company of you whose names have been lost or silenced,
Who kept and cradled the wisdom of the ages.

We walk in the company of the woman with the flow of blood,
Who audaciously sought her healing and release from Christ.

We walk in the company of Mary Magdalene,
Who wept at the empty tomb until the Risen Lord appeared.

We walk in the company of Phoebe,
Who led an early church within the empire of Rome.

We walk in the company of Perpetua of Carthage,
Whose witness in the third century led to her martyrdom.

We walk in the company of Christina the Astonishing,
Who resisted death with persistence and wonder.

We walk in the company of Lady Julian of Norwich,
Who wed imagination and theology, proclaiming that “all shall be well.”

We walk in the company of Sojourner Truth,
Who stood against oppression, righteously declaring in 1852 “ain’t I a woman!”

We walk in the company of Alice Walker,
Who named the lavender hue of womanly strength.

We walk in the company of you our mothers in the faith,
Who teach us to resist evil with boldness, to lead with wisdom, and to heal the world. Amen.

Thanks be to God that we walk today in this great cloud of witnesses, all of these faithful women who have given us an example of loving one another as Christ loves us; and who have taught us that our only true and lasting home is in God.

Consider this, my friends and give thanks. Every good thing which you have experienced through your earthly mother and in your earthly home comes from Christ who is himself the source of all goodness, and who will be our home – our dwelling place – for evermore. Amen.  



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