Sunday's Sermon--April 20 2008

Sermon April 20 2008
1 Peter 2:2-10John 14:1-14
“There’s a Place for Us (and Them)”
The two young people, a man and a woman, were on two different sides of a wall—not a brick wall, but one created by the people who loved each of them. As one told the story, her family hated his because of an ancestral feud or differences in social class. As another told it, the his race was considered superior to hers. The walls between them didn’t keep them apart because, as the story is often told, love conquers all. Romantic love, in popular wisdom, is the ultimate force; nothing can defeat it. Shakespeare told it about Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet; Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) told it about a young Puerto Rican woman named Maria and a young man named Tony. They found homes in one another’s lives for the short, very short time of the story.

The title of today’s sermon comes, with modification, from West Side Story—“Somewhere” is a song sung by the young man and woman as they sought some place, some time where they could be together and happy. They sought a world that wouldn’t keep them apart for race, class, language or place of birth

There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.
There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time to spare,
Time to look, time to care,
Someday!
Somewhere.
We'll find a new way of living,
We'll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere.
There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're half way there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Somehow, Someday, Somewhere!

John’s gospel describes Jesus as the incarnate Word of God who came to humanity and set up his tent among us, according to the prologue the author wrote. Jesus lived—made a home within humanity so that humanity could experience God as they never had before. He lived, taught, touched, fed and cared for those he met because that was the Word of God within him. He brought people home to God and brought God home to humanity. He was the place in which God and humanity dwelled.

In today’s text from this gospel, Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem and the inevitable death he faced there. As he was speaking to his disciples in this selection, he was assuring them of his continuing care for them even as he was no longer present. He was assuring them that God would be with them just like now and that God cared just as he did. In my paraphrase, “Worrying won’t help a thing. You can count on God; you can count on me. There is no place where God does not live—you are never without God’s presence.” And “You know me—you know God. I am in God; God is in me. God speaks through me; God in me does the work that I do. Listen, God is in me; I am in God. Believe me as I speak; or believe because of what God does through me. God is in you, too, as you understand that God is in me.”

Jesus built a home among humanity so that humanity could understand that God dwelled within them and dwelled among them. Jesus didn’t live just to die and leave—Jesus lived to reveal God, to reveal that God loved the world so much that Jesus, God’s son, would be our way to God. We are called in this story to feel safe in God’s care as the disciples were to feel safe, no matter what happened to Jesus. Yet as the story continued, as Jesus neared Jerusalem, his arrest and crucifixion the uncertainty in the disciples grew. It was a scary time and Jesus needed them to realize that God was in their midst now and God would care for them always.

Feeling safe and secure is one of the greatest feelings that we can foster in one another. Some children are exposed to uncertainty and danger way too soon in their lives and they never develop the assurance that they can rely on anyone. One of the pioneering researchers of child development described it as a journey with stage one as trust vs. mistrust. Infants and small children must learn that they will be fed when they are hungry, comforted when they are hurt or sad, and cared for when they are sick. This time is crucial so that they can move on to learn more in their lives. An insecure infancy and childhood creates a person must relearn trust or they cannot trust anyone else in their lives. Now, all children and infants are exposed to times when their needs aren’t immediately addressed—that’s natural, but if children are taught not to trust the people that love them insecurity may trouble them for their whole lives.

Providing a safe place to live is important when we are children. We need shelter from the weather: warmth in winter, shade in summer. Those specifics may differ from culture to culture. A tent for a nomadic society is enough. A building is necessary for our society—whether we share it or not. That is basic to who we are as humans. We need a place. But we also need more.

Having a home, in my view, is how we judge our relative happiness in life. If we belong somewhere, we have a home—wherever we live. If we don’t have a feeling of belonging, then we may live in a mansion, but home eludes us.

The stories handed down through generations reveal the importance of belonging. The story of Romeo and Juliet, which was adapted from an older poem which was adapted from the even older story of a couple named Tristan and Isolde telling of the timeless desire to find belonging in the life of one other person. This, too, is a natural inclination that brings young people together to form the basis of a family and a home. But this kind of belonging is usually just the beginning of their life together. It’s the most exciting, that’s why we tell stories about it, but it is just the beginning.

Many of us also find a sense of belonging within our families of origin. Mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, maybe even grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, form communities of kinship in which we can feel at home. As I described before, family is where we learn to belong from the very beginning. Care and feeding, loving touches and words, learning rules and encouraging curiosity are ways that families create a sphere where we feel we belong. Families are a further creation of the feeling of belonging that couples find in one another—ideally—yet they are more flexible in many ways. Families are made up of lots of combinations of relationships. Parents relate to one another—and belong together as lovers and friends. Children relate to parents as sources of security and discipline, of care and nurture—and relate to one another as peers and competitors, as sources of authority or advice, as people who teach them to love differences as well as similarities. And grandparents and all the others fulfill those functions—simply out of the way that we structure society. It doesn’t have to be intentional and usually isn’t, we learn and grow within them as love is expressed in all of those very embodied ways.

But sometimes, though we love one another, the differences between us and those we are related to can cause us pain and may even cause us to separate from one another. We are related by law and biology, but we may not feel connected as we think we should be. Sometimes that’s because of our lack of care by those who are supposed to love us, but sometimes it is just differences created by the complex and mysterious God that made us. Or we may just realize in our growth and development that we can belong in other places, too. And we like to belong—it’s who we are

I understand that we also find belonging—we find a home—in families of choice. We weren’t born into them or adopted formally by them—families of choice are formed through relationships arising from our choices. Groups of friends may become close enough to one another that they feel like family—they even disagree and continue to love one another just like family. They are a home for those who belong. I believe that for families of origin to be home they also have to be families of choice.

But we also can make a home within a family of choice called church. We can belong and feel love and care within the body of Christ. We can continue to create hospitality and welcome so abundant within the body of Christ that it can expand. We can take the words of Jesus seriously, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

We make a choice of family when we join ourselves to the church of Jesus Christ, making a confession of faith in him and being welcomed into the body by its members. And as members of this family, we have Jesus’ example and his teaching to continue. Not just to do as he did—as his disciples—but to continue his family in continuity. We are called to continue walking in the way, and the truth and the life that God sent to live among us. We are called to find home in Jesus and to share that home with those who are in need of one, too.

This home, this church, is built of nothing less that the members of the body of Christ—like described in 1 Peter, each one of us is called to be a “living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”

Jesus promised to make a place for us—and in 1 Peter we read that we, too, are a place, a home a dwelling place for the praise and glory of God—a home now and a home forever more. That’s what Jesus promised and that what we have. That’s what Jesus promised and what we will have for an eternity. One doesn’t cancel the other—one simply draws us in and then sends us out to share what we have. The home we gain is embodied in us—as it was embodied in Jesus. We are homes to God’s presence as we realize God lived in Jesus and we, together, are a home to those in need because God dwells in all of us.

There is a place for us and them
—here within each and among this community.
There is a time for us and them—now.
There is a place for us and them—the home of God. There is a time for us and them—and it is an eternity. Amen.