The FIfth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9B
July 9, 2006

Thomas Wolfe, in his classic novel “You Can’t Go Home Again” tells the story of an American writer named George Weber.  Those of you who have read the book will recall that the young Weber is someone whose purpose is to see life clearly, and to see it whole, and then get down to the truth of it.  As you might guess, this gets him into hot water.

He decides to write a book about his home town, putting into it everything he can remember about his family, his friends, and his neighbors.  When the book is published, they are all aghast at the thought of being nakedly exposed to the world like this.  And so, they rise up against their native son, and for the first time in his life, the young writer realizes how mortally afraid people are of the truth.  It brings into question for Weber his very identity, and sets him on a lifelong quest for a home to call his own.

It was this same kind of realization that confronted Jesus as he began his public ministry in Galilee.  Those who surround him, it seems, were equally afraid of the truth.  It started with his family.  In the third chapter of Mark’s Gospel, we read they thought he had gone way off the deep end.  His mother Mary and his younger siblings assumed his proper place was in the home, minding his kith and kin, like any other oldest Jewish son.

But here he was out and about healing people, wrangling with the religious authorities, and talking crazy about a coming kingdom not of this world, gallivanting around the countryside with his so-called disciples, fancying himself to be a Messiah.  In our day and age, acting like this would have gotten Jesus a one way trip to a psych hospital!

And Lord knows the neighbors were talking.  “He is beside himself,” they kvetched.  Jesus was bringing shame down on his good family’s name.  There was only one thing to do.  One day,  Mary and her younger sons marched off one day to fetch Jesus, presumably to bring him back to his senses, and escort him back to the real world.  When they finally find him, he is holding court with an adulating crowd.  Upon hearing that his mother and brothers were looking for him, Jesus replied: “And who is my mother and brothers?”  And then, looking at the crowd, he said: “Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

This truth is hard, even brutal, but every one of us who is a parent faces the time when his or her child leaves the nest.  At some point in our lives, everyone of us must leave home.  It was true for Jesus, it is true for each of us.

And what is true for Jesus and for us.  For when all is said and done, our identity is not dictated by our religion, or social status, or by our clan or tribe,  or even by the emotional needs or claims on us of our immediate family.  Instead, as all of us are invited to do, he assumed his identity by being true to himself, and by acknowledging the truth in himself.

Days passed after that initial, awkward incident in Galilee, and no doubt, it wasn’t an easy time for Mary or her other children.  Put yourselves in their place.  They had been publicly humiliated by their son and brother, the very one that everyone in town considered to be mad.  And to be make matters worse, word came that Jesus was planning a trip back to Nazareth.
As Jesus returned to his hometown, if must have seemed much smaller and quaint since he left it as a carpenter plying his trade.  We read in our Gospel today, that he found his way to the local synagogue, the place of a thousand childhood memories, and there he began to teach.

But all that awaited him was sarcasm and snide remarks.  The neighbors who listened murmured among themselves: “And where did this man get this?  What is this wisdom given to him?  What mighty works are wrought by his hands!  Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Simon, and not is sisters still with us?”  And they took offence at him.  And Jesus said to them: “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.”

Not much of a homecoming.  But then, it never is.  “There’s no place like home” is the enduring myth we hold on to.  We search for a home, long for a home, spend our  lifetimes trying to get ourselves back to a place we can call home.  But home is never what we expect, and always somehow just beyond our reach.

Yes, it is a hard thing to face this truth.  And yet, it is the only thing we are asked to do in our brief journey here on earth.  Face the truth.  It instills fear in us, because the truth forces us to leave that places that give us a sense of permanence and safety and security.  The truth is daunting because it compels us to move on.  The truth insists we have no lasting home in this life.  We can’t go home again, because home is not a place to reside in, home is not a nation or flag to wrap ourselves in, home is not a lifestyle to embrace, home is not a secure, unassailable refuge to escape the storm.

“Foxes have dens, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest his head,” Jesus said about himself.  But he might as well have been speaking about any one of us.  We are pilgrims, sojourners, fellow travelers whose true home lies on a distant shore, beyond the horizon we can see now.

St. Augustine spoke of our true home when he said: “Our hearts are restless, until we find our rest in God.”  A song of my generation, written by Eric Clapton, echoes this same truth: “I have finally found a place to live, just like I could never do before.  And I know I don’t have much to give.  But soon, I’ll open any door.  Everybody knows the secret.  Everybody knows the score.  I have finally found a place to live.  In the presence of the Lord.”

Friends, our true home is with God, it is in God, and it is from God.  And while we cannot go home again in this life, God is here, in our midst, giving us that hope and assurance, that one day, we shall go home, and there we will abide.