Home Is Where Text: Matthew 8:18-25 A sermon preached by James F. McIntire September 27, 2015 Homecoming Sunday Hope United Methodist Church Eagle & Steel Roads, Havertown, PA Phone: 610-446-3351 Web: www.havhopeumc.org Office: HopeUMCHavertown@verizon.net Pastor: HopeUMCPastor@verizon.net
Copyright 2015 James F. McIntire All rights reserved. 2
Matthew 8:18-25 Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. 19 A scribe then approached and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." 20 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 21 Another of his disciples said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." 23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him up, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" 26 And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" Home Is Where. I left the sermon title intentionally ambiguous. Should there be something more to it? An ellipses dot, dot, dot at the end leaving it open to be filled in by you? 3
Like Home Is Where and you fill in the blank. Home is where the heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. Home is where the anchor drops. 4
Or maybe you read it with a question mark at the end. Home is where? As if you re asking a stranger you just met. Where are you from? Where do you call home? Where is home? Home is Philadelphia. My mom s family has been in the Philadelphia area since 1720 so that feels like home. But my dad s family is from West Virginia. Is that where my roots are? Is that home? 5
Yet when I crossed the border into Scotland for the first time, I felt like I was home even though my family hasn t lived there for more than 350 years. Home is what or who or how or when. Home is where. Jesus was one of those people that we sometimes encounter who had no home, no place to lay his head he told us. Sure, he had a place where he was born Bethlehem, our Gospels tell us. He had a place where he grew up Nazareth we believe. A place where perhaps he lived as an adult Capernaum, a fishing village along the Sea of Galilee. He had friends near Bethany Lazarus, Mary, Martha where he could crash on the couch when he needed. 6
But, said the wandering rabbi, "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." So maybe home is simply wherever you are. Pico Iyer, a writer best known for his books on crossing cultures spoke at a TED talk in 2013. People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects. So I don't think I've really earned the right to call myself an Indian. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where were you born and 7
raised and educated?" then I'm entirely of that funny little country known as England, except I left England as soon as I completed my undergraduate education, and all the time I was growing up, I was the only kid in all my classes who didn't begin to look like the classic English heroes represented in our textbooks. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where do you pay your taxes? Where do you see your doctor and your dentist?" then I'm very much of the United States, and I have been for 48 years now, since I was a really small child. Except, for many of those years, I've had to carry around this funny little pink card with green lines running through my face identifying me as a permanent alien. I do actually feel more alien the longer I live there. And for more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be. So who s been on Pope Watch these last few days? We have. We ve followed him from Cuba to Washington, DC, to New York, to Philadelphia. And more yet to come this afternoon. 8
This is a man who seems to be at home wherever he is. I think that s the most remarkable thing I have ever seen. He s comfortable meeting with the President and comfortable visiting with elementary school kids. Along the parade route in Washington, he encountered 5-year old Sophie Cruz, born in the US to undocumented immigrants, managed to make her way through ironclad security and thousands of people to get a message to the Pope. She left a letter in Pope Francis hands: Pope Francis, I want to tell you that my heart is sad and I would like to ask you to speak with the president and the congress in legalizing my parents because every day I am scared that one day they will take them away from me. 'I believe I have the right to live with my parents. I have the right to be happy. My dad works very hard in a factory galvanizing pieces of metal. 'All immigrants just like my dad need this country. They deserve to live with dignity. They deserve to live with respect. 'They deserve an immigration reform, because it benefits my country and because they have been 9
working hard harvesting oranges watermelons, carrots, onions, spinach and other vegetables.' Home is where. Wherever you live and work and raise your family. Home cannot be contained within arbitrary geo-political boundaries. Isn t that at the heart of the Jesus message? The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Wherever he is wherever you are that is home. In New York City, I watched as Pope Francis stand alongside representatives from many faith traditions as they all prayed at the Ground Zero Museum in Manhattan. Here, grief is palpable, he had said outside as he lay a white rose on the memorial. Inside he spoke of tolerance and the unity we can find in sharing our faith with one another. He didn t try to beat others over the head with Christian dogma like so many of us are ready to do so often. Isn t this the Jesus message? Find God in all that you encounter; find God in anyone you encounter; find God within yourself. Love of self, love of neighbor, love of God. When he spoke to Congress on Thursday he emphasized what we call the Golden Rule, spoken by Jesus but by so many others of many different faiths before and 10
after him, a universal rule to live by: Do to others as you would have done to you. What Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow coined later that day on their MSNBC broadcasts as essentially the Don t be a Jerk rule. In Philadelphia on Friday night, before the Pope arrived, we joined 200 or so members of POWER Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild in a Faith Matters march through Center City to call for justice in policing policies, in fair wages, in ending racism, in education reform, in healthcare, in ending mass deportations and mass incarceration. We stopped at various locations for prayer and stories. Standing in front of the Federal Detention Center at 7 th & Arch Streets, we heard the story of a family whose daughter is locked up for trying to make a better life for her family by living in what we claim is the land of the free and home of the brave. For so many people it is not that at all. While African Americans and Latinos make up about 29% of the US population, they are 59% of the prison population. In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it 11
houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners. Much of this is due to crime legislation of the 1980s which is unequally enforced and needs to be reformed. While we stood outside the prison, we heard a loud tapping sound which grew more intense as we prayed and sang. Inmates tapping on the windows to get our attention. Many might be fairly held for crimes committed, but not all who now call this place home are there for the right reasons. Is it not the Jesus way? Visit the prisoner. To set the oppressed free. Follow the call of God as Micah echoed it to do justice, love kindness, walk humbly. So Francis today visits a prison in Philadelphia. Can we follow and reform our unjust laws? And then yesterday, his first moment of grace in Philadelphia, Pope Francis stopped the Fiat in front of a family at the airport, climbed out of the car, and brought healing and wholeness to 10 year old Michael Keating and his family. He leaned over Michael s wheelchair and kissed his forehead bringing to the center of our lives for a moment a young man with cerebral palsy who most of the time the world would just as soon ignore. 12
So yesterday afternoon, we made the pilgrimage to St. Charles Seminary and I pushed Lindsay s wheelchair to the front of the line, close enough that the Fiat almost had to swerve to miss us, and we got this close to this famous Jesus follower photo courtesy Joanne Miles! A healing moment even in a 25 MPH drive-by wave! This man who grew up in a poor family in Argentina now has one of the most elegant palaces in Rome where he can lay his head. Yet I get the sense that he has chosen to maintain his humble roots and his Jesuit spirit as he rejects many of the trappings of his office. This is a man who might have a silk pillow for his head, but he chooses a message of justice where he can hang his miter, drop his anchor, rest his feet, catch a siesta. This man finds his home wherever he is. With children, with the homeless, with the immigrant, with the prisoner, with the marginalized, with the poor, with the faithful, with the shunned, with the world. Foxes have dens, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. 13
Would that we might follow that Jesus way and find our home among the children of God in whatever ways we are needed. Today we come home to Hope and a new church program year after a summer hiatus. Or maybe you ve been away longer and are finding your way back home again. However it is, we have made our way back home where we gather in celebration and in commitment to Jesus who had now home. May we find this place we call home a place from which we can journey into the world to make a home wherever we are. Amen. 14