They went
home. By another road.
After brilliance broke into
their awareness . . . after that illumination first unsettled and then drew them
toward a deeper reality . . . after they saw
by that light something fragile and ordinary and impotent and holy . . . after they
at last recognized what kind of power kills and what kind of power saves . . . the
Wise Ones returned
home. But by a different road.
Here’s today’s sermon in a nutshell: The wise ones went home
after all their searching. But they took a different road.
Richard Rohr
might categorize the story of the Wise Ones as an archetypal myth about the
second stage of life. After detours and
dangers, their journey comes full circle with a homecoming like that of the
Greek hero Odysseus. Matthew’s Magi and
Homer’s Odysseus suggest that spiritual maturation requires us to do two
things: to return to our spiritual
home but to return by a different and
often difficult road. After all the wandering, seeking, searching,
and striving we've done in the "first half of life,”[i]
we (gradually or abruptly) begin to point homeward, changed. Yet we
return by way of a different path.
Poet T. S. Eliot could
be describing Odysseus or the wise men or you when he says that "the end of all our exploring /
will be to arrive where we started for the first time."
Jesus scholar Marcus Borg is describing the path to Christian maturity
when he invites us to “meet Jesus again . . . for the first time.”
Have you experienced that sort of paradoxical epiphany? We at Open
Table are hoping to make a way for folks to return to a home in God—but by a
different route. Some say their
involvement in Open Table has led them to take another look at Jesus after
maybe many years of indifference or even dislike—and that second look has
revealed a familiar and yet totally new Jesus.
Of course, in today's story of epiphany, the infant Jesus and his mother are barely mentioned,
and father Joseph not at all. The drama
focuses on the murderous King Herod, on some (at best) neutral religious
leaders in Jerusalem, and on some
godly foreigners who probably came from what is present day Iraq or Iran. God
was revealed to these honest
seekers from another culture; God was found by these wise ones in an unexpected place wearing an
unexpected face. The religious leaders who
should have known about and protected the Christ child abdicated
their leadership role, being so entwined, as they were, with the political
authorities, so committed to maintaining
institutions and customs, so suspicious
of those who are different, so protective of their own
power. Instead, it was up to those with a different way of
seeing the world—strangers from afar—to recognize God's activity and then act wisely enough to escape being used for harm.
The spiritual
journey many of us find ourselves on is not so different from
that of the wise men. A gradual or sudden
illumination pierced through the fog of what we thought was true and then set us searching. We wandered, some of us, for years. We may have left religious life entirely or
tried a range of spiritual practices and investigated a variety of religious
traditions. Or we may have sat politely in
a pew somewhere as a silent heretic, our wanderings being interior and secret.
But at some point we caught a glimpse of the Really Real, or at least the possibility of
something that is of ultimate worth that might save us and save our world, and we felt
a longing to kneel to and serve that goodness in the world. We don’t understand
this inner shift any more than the Magi did.
But like them, we seem to be heading back to a spiritual awareness that is
connected to our past and yet is also a new and deeper place. This spiritual state just might be our truest home. But to get there we must go by a route
different than the one we used years ago.
Let’s spend a moment considering what home might mean for those of
us on a spiritual quest. Then we’ll
consider what it might mean for us to journey home by a different road.
I love Robert
Penn Warren’s definition of home as “not a place” but a “state of spirit . . .
of mind . . . a proper relation to the
world.” What happens if we think of God
not as a father or mother, but as home itself, not as a being with whom we have
relationship but as the spiritual state whereby we are nurtured and become
related to one another? What if, then,
our spiritual goal is to become at home in the world and within our own spirits
and with one another?
God—as our home—is
our starting place and that place to which we long to return. If life is a
circle rather than a line, then God, who can be conceived of as our home, is
both our origin and goal. I am not talking about God as existing in some
place. I’m talking about God as that
figurative place. I am not imagining God as a home for me at some distant point
in time but rather as my home I experience now. If God is a home to enter only
after we die, then we live estranged lives here. And if God, by the way, is a home that
shelters only certain family members, then God is mean and small. If God is
home for me, then God is a home here and now and for all. God as home is not a
new image. The hymn, “O God Our Help in Ages Past” concludes by affirming God
as “our eternal home.” Mystics have imaged God as home. Scriptures name God as our “refuge” and
“hiding place” and “rock” and “shelter.” Unfortunately, the image that came to dominate
our thinking to such an extent that it becomes idolatry is the image of God as
father.
Thinking about
God as my home shapes my theology; feeling God as my home shapes my prayers. If I meditate on God as home, I’m less likely
to childishly present Father God with a list of requests and am more likely to
settle into a spirit of calm and compassion that enables me to see the rest of
the world embraced within this same home. Such prayer is about changing me
rather than changing God. I invite you
to try prayer as a discipline of very intentionally but simply making yourself
at home in the world. Then tell me if it
changes you.
Understanding God as home can alter not only our prayers but also
our ethics and actions. If God is my
most ultimate “home,” then my spiritual practices must lead to relatedness with
others who live within this home that God IS.
To be specific, if my spirituality is based on the sense that my god is,
in some sense, my ultimate home and if my goal in life is to be at home, then I
may also try harder to honor the planet that is our physical home and the
creatures that share this home with me. Perhaps those who are “at home in the
world” are those who can best work for peace and protect our planet. As a
church, we find ourselves engaged in many important causes, but I wonder if the
most basic issues of justice are those which foster just and peaceful human
relationships and those which ensure a healthier environment for all creatures
because we care about our mutual home.
Yet these also happen to be, for me at least, the most challenging
personal commitments. It’s hard for me to live a life of peace. It’s hard for me to monitor all the ways my
daily habits affect the natural environment. But the God who holds the universe
in a communal embrace is calling me to return home, which, if God is Home, is
another way of talking about the old concept of conversion. I need to be
converted, to turn away from actions that harm my home, to return to God, to
our “home.”
If we return to God, like the Prodigal son who returns home from a
life of disconnection and dissolution, we, too, can be reintegrated into a deep
sense of being at home in the world and comfortable in our own skin. That is spiritual maturity.
But we can go home again only via a different road. My theology today is very different than it
was 30 years ago. Yours has probably evolved, too. I thank God for new paths I’ve tried, strange
characters I’ve met. On most days I can even thank God for heartaches
endured. Like the wise men, we dare not
retrace our steps but return home by a different way.
Nearly eight years ago I literally returned home—having left Mobile in
1974 to go off to college and eventually to follow career paths to live in Georgia, then Texas, then Tennessee,
and then Ohio. The
thought of returning home was both a welcome and worrisome prospect. I was newly ordained and eager for my first
full-time ministerial role, but my chances of finding a congregation to serve
plummeted when George and I decided he should accept a position at Spring Hill
College. COULD I return home if I’d
changed so much theologically, politically, spiritually? Only by a different road. I returned home, for instance, after having made
deep and lasting friendships with LGBT folks, having heard their stories,
having marched in Pride parades, having served Open and Affirming churches. I
could not return to Mobile and just pretend I had not been, in some sense, converted
along the way. My real home in God had
to include all the folks I’d encountered, regardless of whether my geographical
home was willing to include those people and ideas.
On Friday, as Jan and Sondra and I were driving downtown to
participate in the We Do campaign for marriage equality, Jan asked me if, when
I was growing up in Mobile, I’d have imagined I’d be participating in such an event. I answered that I could not have even
imagined such an event taking place—much less my role in it—not even when I was
well into adulthood. Indeed, I was well into adulthood
before I could imagine a woman becoming a pastor. And my spiritual conversion relative to the
topic of human sexuality happened over many years and thanks, mainly, to
relationships with gay and lesbian friends.
It’s my own slow but steady conversion that gives me hope that others can
come to recognize their prejudices and trust that God, like a loving home,
holds us all together equally, safely, supportively. I’ve come home by a different way. It’s the only way we ever really return to
our truest home that some call God. It’s
the differences the Wise Ones encounter on the road home that save us and help
us save the ones today’s Herods would harm.
Through the Gospels we come to understand that the infant Jesus
would also journey home. By a different
way. The call upon my life is to follow
in that way. The mission of Open Table
is to follow Jesus. Who taught us a
different way.
In the musical Les
Miserable, Jean Valjean sings a final prayer as he is dying. Audiences probably
hear him asking God to bring him to a home that is heaven. But perhaps you can hear me pray
this prayer as one fully engaged in life who is longing to be brought into an experience
of God as our truest home. I pray this for us all:
God on high,
Hear my prayer
In my need
Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there
Where you are
Let me be
Take me now
Take me there
Bring me home
Bring me home.
Let me be
Take me now
Take me there
Bring me home
Bring me home.
Amen
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