I gave this sermon at Camp Innabah for Narberth Presbyterian Church's Congregational Retreat on Sunday, May 26. The scripture passages were Psalm 91 and Luke 19:1-10.
Introduction
Who is ready
to go home? Who wants to stay
longer? At the end of a retreat we are
either ready to go home, or hoping that time will slow down a little bit and
delay our departure. The thought of home
fills us with a mixture of emotions – some of them good and some of them
bad. For some of us, home is where we find
rest from our work. For others of us, it
is where we work.
One day a husband
came home from work to find bikes and scooters blocking the driveway, and found
one of his three children outside, still in his pajamas, playing in the mud. The front door to the house was open and there
was no sign of the dog. Coming inside,
he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had
been knocked over, and there was a red juice stain on the carpet. In the living room the TV was loudly blaring
Sponge Bob Square Pants and his second child was drawing on the wall with
lipstick. Toys and various items of
clothing were strewn everywhere. In the
kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the
fridge door was open wide, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile
of sand was spread by the back door. He
quickly headed up the stairs, looking for his wife, worried something terrible
had happened. He was met with a small
trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels and
his third child in a tub overflowing with bubbles. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and
toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls. As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife
still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how
his day went. He looked at her incredulously
and asked, 'What happened here today?' She
smiled as she answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and
you ask me what in the world do I do all day?' 'Yeah?' was his incredulous reply. 'Well, today I didn't do it. '[i]
It’s a lot of
work to maintain a home, especially if children are involved! But when a home is at it’s best, it is a
place where we can find refuge from the distractions of this world. It is a place where we can find unconditional
love and support. Wouldn’t it be nice if
we could take home with us wherever we go?
1) Christ is Our Home
One of the
interesting things about the Bible is that it tells us that God’s people can do
just this – take home with them wherever they go! In our responsive reading this morning, verse
9 of Psalm 91 tells us to make God our dwelling place, our refuge, our
home. No matter where we are – at Camp
Innabah, in Narberth, or even in New Jersey – our home, the God of the
universe, is right there with us. One of
the visual pictures we have of this in the Old Testament is the
tabernacle. You see, when God was
leading His people out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, he went ahead
of them in a pillar of fire and smoke.
The pillar of smoke would shelter them from the burning desert sun, and
the pillar of fire would light their way at night. Whenever they stopped moving, his presence
would reside inside a tent called the tabernacle. It was sort of a mobile home for God. So wherever God’s people went, their God and
their dwelling place went with them.
What does it
mean to make God our home? What does
that look like? Psalm 91 helps us answer
this question as well. God speaks in
verses 14-16, and describes the person who seeks refuge in Him as someone who
loves God. Someone who believes in Him. Someone who talks with Him. When we put our trust in Christ, when we
repent of our sins and look to Jesus for our salvation, we are making God our
home in the form of a loving relationship with Him.
Allie and I got caught up in
Downton Abbey just in time for the season to end, so to get our British drama
fix until season 4 starts we have been watching “Call the Midwife”. A recent episode had a very poetic
description of home:
"Home is not simply a mark
upon a map any more than a river is just water. It is the place at the center
of the compass from which every arrow radiates and where the heart is
fixed. It is a force that forever draws
us back- or lures us on. For where the
home is there lies hope, and the future waits and everything is possible."
When Christ is
our home, He is the center of our compass, He is the object of our affection
and the desire of our hearts, He fills us with hope, and He both calls us to
Him and sends us out to draw others to their true home as well.
But perhaps
even more remarkable than the fact that we can find our home in Christ, Christ
makes his home in us.
Allie and I
really enjoy welcoming visitors into our home, even though there is often a lot
of work involved. I enjoy the excuse to
tidy up the house to get things more presentable, and I think Allie enjoys
being able to take more time than usual to prepare a special meal for all of
us. Drew and Zach enjoy getting to know
new people, and often they have loving hugs to offer.
I have found
that some people feel like this is what they need to do before they become a
Christian. They say, “I’ll become a
Christian once I give up smoking, or give up drinking, or give up swearing” or
whatever thing it is they regularly do that they know displeases God. And in some respects I commend people like
this, because it shows they have a high view of God’s goodness, realizing that
when we are a follower of Christ, we need to be our best selves. But I’m afraid that’s not really how it works
to be in a relationship with Jesus. In
fact, it’s quite the opposite. We can’t
get our lives cleaned up enough to please God, because he is good and holy
through and through. He is perfect – and
we are not.
Amidst all of
our failures, all of our sins, all of our shortcomings, we must invite Him in
anyway. Zaccheaus, the little, sinful,
cheating tax collector, had no time to clean up his house or get his life in
order before Jesus came over. But Jesus
came over anyway. In fact, Jesus said he
wanted to come over! And Zaccheaus
welcomed him in. It is the same with us,
and it is really quite unbelieveable. The
Lord of the Universe is inviting himself over, hoping that we will welcome Him
in. And when we do, the King of kings
and Lord of lords, the Holy Holy Holy One is gracious to us and comes in and
accepts us as we are, warts and all. In
John 14:23, Jesus says, “If anyone loves
me, he will obey my teaching. My Father
will love him, and we will come to him
and make our home with him.” Jesus
wants to make our hearts his home.
But that is
not the end of the story when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts. Ben Franklin said that “fish and visitors
stink after three days.” And perhaps you
have experienced the frustration of a guest who overstayed their welcome at
your house! But when we ask Jesus to
come into our hearts, he doesn’t say thanks for the hospitality and depart
after just a few days, or a month, or even a year – he moves in for life! Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 that “He
anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts
as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”
Once the Holy Spirit is in us, he takes over! And he has every right to, because Jesus paid
the mortgage with his blood. We owed a
debt we could not repay, and so Jesus paid it for us through his death on the
cross. And now that the place is his, he
is going to start renovating.
You see,
usually we clean up before a visitor arrives, but when Jesus is our guest, he
is the one who does the housekeeping. Our
sins have been forgiven and will be forgiven, but there are some sinful habits
that remain, and he starts pointing them out to us. Some things he does away with himself, and
some things he delegates to us to take care of with the help of the Holy
Spirit. The end result of this divine
home makeover is a heart – indeed a life – that is fit for a king.
Conclusion
There was a
talented high school football player who was being recruited by all of the best
schools in the nation. When he visited
the University of Alabama, he noticed a platinum phone sitting on Coach Saban’s
desk. The recruit asked, “Coach, what is
this platinum phone for?” Coach Saban
smiled slyly and said, “Son, that phone is a direct line to God. For one million dollars I can make a call and
speak with the Maker of Champions – you don’t win two national championships in
three years without some divine intervention!”
The recruit was impressed, and on his next visit to the University of
Florida he noticed a gold phone sitting on Coach Smart’s desk. The recruit asked, “Coach, what is this gold
phone for?” Coach Smart smiled and said,
“Son, that phone is a direct line to God.
For half a million dollars I can make a call and speak with the Great
Reviver – you can’t turn around a football program without some divine
intervention!” The recruit was
impressed, but on his next visit at the University of Georgia all he saw was a
plain black phone sitting on Coach Richt’s desk, so he asked, “Coach, Nick
Saban has a platinum phone that can call God for a million dollars and Kirby
Smart has a gold phone that can call God for half a million dollars – don’t you
have a phone that can call God too?”
Coach Richt smiled, and said, “Son, around here heaven is a local call!”[ii]
When Christ is
our home, and when Christ’s home is in us, heaven is a local call. We have a direct line of communication with
the Savior of the world and the lover of our souls. It would be wise for us – and it is vital for
our faith – to spend much time in prayer, to phone home.
This is a
great mystery: Christ is our home, and at the same time Christ’s home is in
us. The mystery gets even more
mind-blowing when we consider that Christ’s home is not just in us as
individuals, but also all of us collectively as the church. In Christ, we are the body and he is our head
– all of us together form a home for Jesus.
And while Christ is certainly our home in this life, another great
mystery is that he says that he is preparing an eternal home for us in heaven,
even better than we can experience today.
John 14:2 says “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so,
I would have told you. I am going there
to prepare a place for you.” The Greek
word translated there as “room” is the same word in verse 23 that is translated
as ‘home’: “We will come to him and make our home with him.” So you might say, “In my Father’s house are many
‘homes’” – in either case, the mystery is profound: our home now and forever is
in Christ, and Christ’s home now and forever is in us.
When you look
for the word “home” in the New Testament, very often – almost half the time –
you will see it preceded by “return” or “go back.” Typically the most exciting moment in a
baseball game is a home run, and the same can be said for our lives as well – and
so I urge you to run home. No matter
where you live, no matter where you go, your home is in Christ and his home is
in you. Let us now go home in the peace
of Christ.
[i]
This joke is merged and edited from two versions I found online: http://bethanygaddis.wordpress.com/2006/06/28/funny-story-for-stay-at-home-moms-2/
and http://www.whattoexpect.com/forums/stay-at-home-moms/archives/funny-little-story-2.html
[ii] I
first recall hearing a version of this joke from my dear friend Dave Pratt.
