L. Gregory Jones - "Homecoming" (May 20, 2001)

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-	A chapter of the gospel according to St. John,	0:03
	Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word	0:08
	"and my Father will love them,	0:14
	"and we will come to them and make our home with them.	0:16
	"Whoever does not love me does not keep my words	0:22
	"and the word that you hear is not mine	0:26
	"but is from the Father who sent me.	0:30
	"I have said these things to you	0:34
	"while I am still with you.	0:35
	"But the advocate, the Holy Spirit,	0:38
	"whom the Father will send in my name	0:41
	"will teach you everything and remind you	0:44
	"of all that I have said to you.	0:48
	"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.	0:51
	"Not as the world gives, do I give to you.	0:58
	"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.	1:03
	"You have heard me say to you,	1:08
	"I am going away and I am coming to you.	1:11
	"If you loved me you would rejoice	1:16
	"that I am going to the Father	1:18
	"because the Father is greater than I.	1:21
	"And now I have told you this before it happens	1:25
	"so that when it does happen you may believe."	1:29
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:35
-	Thanks be to God.	1:37
	(coughing)	1:48
-	Let us pray.	2:01
	Gracious and Holy God descend	2:07
	your Holy Spirit upon us gathered here.	2:08
	Speak through me, if need be in spite of me,	2:11
	and always well beyond me that your word	2:16
	might be communicated to your people this day.	2:20
	In the name of Christ we pray.	2:24
	Amen.	2:26
	Home, Robert Frost wrote,	2:30
	is the place where when you have to go	2:33
	you know they have to take you in.	2:36
	Home is the place that exists in our minds and in our lives	2:40
	as a space, a sanctuary,	2:46
	where we think we can find safety.	2:50
	It carries with it wonderful memories for many people	2:54
	of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven,	2:58
	of people gathered around the fire at Christmas time,	3:02
	of Sunday dinners of an extended family, a festive occasion.	3:07
	A time for gathering friends and family together	3:12
	around a common table.	3:15
	Home, a place that we treasure.	3:18
	It's been a place of refuge as well.	3:24
	How many times as a child	3:27
	did I think when I found myself in trouble,	3:30
	I'm going home and telling my mommy.	3:32
	I'm going home.	3:36
	When you're in an airport	3:39
	the thought of getting back to a familiar place	3:41
	is comforting, reassuring.	3:45
	It's a place where we find love, familiarity.	3:49
	It's one of the reasons	3:55
	why the notation of homecoming means so much.	3:56
	Whether it's in a school, or in a church	4:00
	or in any other setting.	4:05
	The notion of homecoming conjures up	4:06
	a time of gathering together,	4:08
	of remembering the past and being grateful for it.	4:11
	Of discovering friends anew,	4:15
	of reconnecting, of drawing things and people together.	4:18
	Home, a place we treasure.	4:25
	And yet home can also be a place	4:30
	of unfortunate nostalgia.	4:35
	A place we try to recreate in our minds as it never was.	4:38
	A place we try to cling to	4:44
	as if it could exist as a timeless space.	4:45
	Sometimes it's simply the changes of time	4:50
	that a home had to be taken down.	4:54
	It's part of a right of way.	4:59
	Or perhaps you moved so often	5:02
	it's hard to tell which of the houses you lived in	5:04
	could have been called home.	5:08
	Perhaps it's because of the brokenness of a family's life,	5:10
	because of the kind of abuse	5:16
	and destructiveness that broke things apart.	5:18
	And so	5:21
	marked home not as as place of sanctuary and refuge	5:24
	but as a place of pain, and suffering,	5:30
	a place of longing.	5:34
	We can't find timeless spaces,	5:37
	sanctuaries don't exist outside of time.	5:41
	They're always found in the midst of time.	5:46
	Maybe it's not even the brokenness of the past	5:50
	and the brokenness of our memories.	5:54
	For many people it's the fact	5:58
	they have no sense of home, no place to be.	5:59
	People who are homeless, in our very community,	6:04
	all around this country and all around the world.	6:09
	People who struggle to find any place,	6:12
	any territory, any space, that they can call their own,	6:15
	that could carry with it those memories.	6:19
	Or for many peoples around the world	6:24
	it's the struggle for a homeland.	6:26
	A place that can exist in time	6:29
	but that can also provide some sense of safety and security.	6:34
	Something that Israel longed for and felt so acutely	6:39
	in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust,	6:42
	that lead them to want to have a homeland,	6:45
	a place that they could call their own.	6:48
	And yet, tragically, now a place where Palestinians	6:51
	struggle for that same sense of home.	6:58
	Where is home?	7:04
	How do we find it?	7:06
	How do we discover it?	7:07
	How do we maintain it?	7:08
	Marilyn Robinson's beautiful	7:12
	and heart wrenching novel "Housekeeping"	7:14
	tells the story of two girls	7:17
	and their search for a home.	7:22
	How first their mother died,	7:26
	perhaps by suicide, leaving them.	7:29
	And then they were left	7:33
	to be taken care of by their grandmother.	7:34
	And the physical structure of the house	7:38
	seemed to deteriorate and then the grandmother died.	7:39
	And eventually their aunt came to be with them.	7:43
	But as it turns out their aunt is someone	7:48
	who had never had a sense of home.	7:50
	She was a transient, someone who lived on the buses,	7:54
	and trains and slept on park benches.	7:57
	And soon the two girls found their life	8:02
	falling into deepening chaos, fragmenting apart,	8:06
	as they were increasingly isolated from their community.	8:09
	Didn't know where to find anything.	8:13
	They discovered that perhaps	8:16
	they were becoming transients as well.	8:18
	And then at a culminating point in the novel	8:22
	the narrator writes theses words,	8:26
	"Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth.	8:30
	"The house fell on Job's children and a voice was induced	8:35
	"or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind.	8:40
	"And Rachael mourned for her children,	8:44
	"and King David for Absalom.	8:48
	"The force behind the movement of time is a mourning	8:51
	"that will not be comforted.	8:55
	"That is why the first event	8:57
	"is known to have been an expulsion and the last	8:59
	"is hoped to be a reconciliation and return.	9:02
	"So memory pulls us forward,	9:08
	"so prophecy is only a brilliant memory.	9:10
	"There will be a garden," she writes,	9:13
	"where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve.	9:17
	"Hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine."	9:22
	In the midst of these girls' lives	9:29
	they discovered the mourning that will not be comforted,	9:34
	the ravages of time that carry them forth.	9:37
	And yet, a longing for that day	9:42
	of reconciliation and return.	9:46
	A longing for that time	9:49
	when they will discover a true sense of home.	9:52
	According to the narrator one of the ways	9:59
	in which you can tell the story	10:01
	of the Bible is of peoples' exile.	10:03
	Of peoples' expulsion from the garden with Adam and Eve.	10:09
	The destructive relations of siblings of Cain and Abel.	10:12
	The pain and the suffering as time moves forward,	10:17
	and yet as we point toward the recreation	10:20
	of heaven and earth, the new Jerusalem.	10:23
	And in our reading for this morning,	10:28
	from John's prophecy in Revelation, we hear the words,	10:33
	"Behold, I am making all things new."	10:40
	As we come to those climatic verses	10:46
	that Carlton read just a few minutes ago.	10:50
	John sees a new heaven, a new earth,	10:53
	and he sees the new Jerusalem coming down.	10:57
	And he hears a voice that says,	11:02
	see the home of God is among mortals.	11:05
	The home of God is among mortals.	11:12
	The vision of the new heaven and the new earth	11:14
	is finally a discovery of the home	11:17
	that we all long for, it is a home John writes,	11:20
	"Where God will wipe every tear from their eyes.	11:29
	"Death will be no more.	11:33
	"Mourning, and crying and pain will be no more.	11:35
	"For the first things have passed away."	11:39
	The mourning that will not be comforted in this life,	11:44
	we will find comfort in our homecoming to God.	11:48
	That's the vision that we find at the close of scripture.	11:55
	But perhaps a brief moment of reflecting	12:00
	on the circumstances in which John of Patmos	12:03
	sees this vision and writes the Revelation	12:05
	can help us understand the power of that vision	12:09
	for the people of the first century as well as for our time.	12:12
	You see, John, was in exile.	12:17
	Persecuted by the emperor.	12:21
	Cast off to the island of Patmos.	12:25
	Exiled from his friends, from his people,	12:28
	from any sense of familiar surroundings.	12:30
	And in the midst of that prosecution	12:33
	the sense of longing for some place, for some time,	12:35
	for some relationship, could not be more acute.	12:39
	And yet, there is that vision of the new Jerusalem,	12:46
	of that place and time of gathering people together.	12:53
	Well if in many ways the beginnings of our lives	13:00
	as a collective people go back to an expulsion	13:05
	from a garden and a vision of a renewed and restored garden.	13:08
	What about now?	13:14
	What about our lives?	13:18
	Well Jesus has something to say	13:22
	about that in the gospel of John,	13:23
	in the midst of his farewell discourse.	13:25
	In the 14th chapter Jesus says,	13:29
	"Those who love me and will keep my word	13:34
	"and my Father will love them	13:39
	"and we will come to them and make our home with them."	13:42
	The way in which we are called to come home,	13:49
	to find home,	13:55
	is not simply to try to create some place apart from time	13:57
	and the difficulties and the struggles	14:02
	of relationships and politics in the world	14:04
	but rather to keep Jesus' word,	14:08
	to follow him, to gather together.	14:13
	For there we will find the dwelling of God in our midst.	14:17
	The Father and the Son will make their home with us.	14:22
	In the very context of our discipleship,	14:28
	of our love for one another.	14:32
	Of our bearing witness to the kingdom	14:35
	which Jesus announces and inaugurates.	14:39
	And shortly after he says these words	14:44
	he promises to send the Holy Spirit to be among us.	14:47
	The comforter, the one who will guide us,	14:52
	protect us and give us peace.	14:59
	I don't know about you but one of the memories	15:04
	that I have of home is of being tucked into bed	15:06
	during the winter months and having a comforter	15:10
	placed over the blankets.	15:15
	Something that gave me a sense of warmth, of love.	15:18
	A reassurance that I could sleep well.	15:24
	The Holy Spirit which Jesus' promises to send	15:29
	is a comforter who draws us together,	15:32
	who gives us a sense of home, a sense of peace.	15:37
	Not as the world gives but as God gives.	15:42
	There will still be mourning in this life.	15:50
	Wherever there are people who are homeless,	15:53
	wherever there are people who are suffer,	15:56
	wherever there are times in our lives	16:00
	where our memories haunt us,	16:02
	where we long for the peace of God.	16:05
	The peace which passes all understanding.	16:11
	But we know where we're headed	16:17
	with a vision of the new Jerusalem, a real homecoming.	16:19
	In Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved,"	16:26
	one of the freed slaves, Sixo is his name,	16:29
	is reflecting on a relationship that	16:34
	he had had with a woman named only as the 30 Mile Woman.	16:36
	A woman who had meant a lot to him	16:43
	even as he had traveled as a transient,	16:45
	not really knowing whether he could have a sense of home	16:48
	or where it would be.	16:51
	Toward the end of that novel	16:54
	Sixo is reflecting on that relationship and he says,	16:55
	"She is a friend of my mind.	17:00
	"She gather me man.	17:03
	"The pieces I am, she gather them	17:06
	"and give them back to me in all the right order.	17:10
	"It's good, you know, when you got a woman	17:14
	"who is a friend of your mind."	17:18
	A friend of your mind who can gather	17:23
	the fragments of our memories, the fragments of our lives,	17:26
	all that we have suffered and all we that have done	17:30
	to cause others suffering gathers them back together	17:33
	and puts them in the right order.	17:38
	The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ	17:41
	is a friend of our minds	17:46
	who takes the fragments of our lives,	17:49
	the things for which we give thanks,	17:51
	the things for which we mourn,	17:53
	and gathers them back together.	17:56
	Whether we're transients in search of any kind of home,	17:59
	a people afflicted with no sense of homeland	18:03
	or people who can give thanks	18:07
	for the security and the life of a good home.	18:09
	We all have fragments that need to be gathered together.	18:14
	As we gather around the table of our Lord	18:20
	we partake of the foretaste of the heavenly banquet.	18:25
	And the breaking of his body, and the shedding of his blood.	18:31
	Jesus gathers the fragments of each of our lives	18:37
	and puts them back into the right order.	18:42
	Jesus gathers the fragments of our communities	18:47
	and of our corporate lives and gathers them back together.	18:52
	Jesus gathers the fragments of our world.	18:59
	And behold he is making all things new.	19:04
	As we come to the table of our Lord	19:10
	and partake of that foretaste of the heavenly banquet	19:12
	we will discover our true home	19:17
	and the most powerful homecoming we could ever ask for.	19:21
	Thanks be to God, amen.	19:26

Item Info

Title:

L. Gregory Jones - "Homecoming" (May 20, 2001)

Description:

Sermon start time: 02:30. Sermon end time: 19:29.
The movement of human history is marked first by exile and an existential condition of homelessness, but the fragmented pieces and people of this history will ultimately be gathered together in a great homecoming when God remakes the heavens and the earth. Until then, however, we can find home (and God dwelling in its midst) by following Jesus and keeping his commandments. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “The way in which we are called to come home, to find home, is not simply to try to create some place apart from time and the difficulties and the struggles of relationships and politics in the world but, rather, to keep Jesus’ word, to follow him, to gather together. For there we will find the dwelling of our God in our midst.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4n01075w

Date:

May 20, 2001

Speaker:

Jones, L. Gregory

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1068
ref10293_fad
uachapelsermaud
duke:320700
dcrau001712
ark:/87924/r4n01075w
542f1a09-0f2e-42b6-abfc-0abb11aaf6c7

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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