HOME
Ruth 1:1-19; Galatians 3:26-29; Mark 3:31-35
3rd Sunday in the Season of Creation, September 17, 2023
Pastor Ritva H Williams
Welcome to Episode 5 of the Season of Creation featuring our exploration of Diana Butler Bass’ book Grounded in conversation with thematically selected scripture readings. So far we have considered “where is God?” in our natural habitat, and are now asking the same question about our human geography, specifically “home.”
Bass begins this chapter by reflecting on her beloved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books (basis for “Little House on the Prairie”). She writes:
Whether it was a cabin in the woods, a sod house on the prairie, or a wood-frame building in town, “home” has a surprisingly fluid meaning for this nineteenth-century family. Home happened in numerous geographies, in a number of different dwellings, a constantly changing reality. Home consisted of some familiar treasures, an appreciation of place, and closely knit relationships between loved ones … Home was as much a disposition as a building, the place of ultimate hospitality, where everyone was accepted, and a respite in grace … of knowing one was in the right place (pp. 164-5).
Just take a moment and think about your own experiences of home. I have lived at 18 different addresses on two continents, four countries, two provinces, and 2 states. In all those places, I have felt at home because that’s where my loved ones have been and are.
Bass reminds us that the word “home” comes from an Old English word — ham — describing to a place where many “souls” gather together. A physical dwelling is implied, but the main idea is a gathering of people. Home is not a building or a room, but a place where your love dwells (p. 172). Or as we like to say, “home is where the heart is.” Home shelters our lived experiences, holds our memories, shapes our desires (p. 169), and incubates the attitudes, habits and practices we take out into the world (p. 180).
Bass contends that home is a place where we belong, a place where God meets us (p. 167). Indeed, our home is ultimately in God, as God comes to us in, with, under, and through the natural habitats and the human geographies of our lives.
As we begin a new program year of Sunday School, Confirmation, Youth, and Adult Learning here at St. Stephen’s, let me remind you of our mission — to know, live, and share Christ. Our governance and budget structures are built around this mission statement. We even conclude every worship service with these words, “Go in peace to know, live, and share Christ” as a reminder of what we are about. You may be less familiar with the vision statement that undergirds this mission:
We aspire to be a spiritual home where, through wholehearted hospitality, life-changing sacred practices and grateful service, the Holy Spirit empowers us to share Christ’s love for the world.
We aspire to be a spiritual home — a particular and perhaps even peculiar type of home defined by biblical stories and teachings of Jesus.
This morning we hear the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who chooses to leave behind her country and family of origin in order to make a home with the Israelite Naomi. Hear again Ruth’s vow to Naomi:
Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried.”
Ruth and Naomi were not related by blood. They did not share the same ethnicity and religion. Their relationship was based in a marriage contract that had ended. Both Naomi and Ruth were childless widows, with little of economic or social value to offer. Yet, they commit themselves to create a home rooted in a personal relationship, where each will belong, find affirmation, support, and love.
In our Gospel reading, we meet Jesus at home in Peter’s house at Capernaum (Mark 3:20). Word goes out that Jesus has gone out of his mind, possessed by the demon Beelzebul (3:21-22). Jesus’ mother and brothers arrive, but can’t get in. The crowd sitting inside Jesus’ home relay the message: “your mother, brothers and sisters are outside asking for you.” Jesus responds with a rhetorical question, “who are my mother and brothers?” Looking around at those gathered in his home, he declares: “here are my mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (3:31-35).
This is one of the most radical sayings of Jesus. He basically redefines home and family in two ways: (1) as a matter of a commitment to a shared vision, values, practices, and habits among persons who may or may not be biologically related; and (2) as mutual, interdependent, reciprocal relationships. In the ancient world, brothers, sisters and mothers all shared the same social status. They were all equally dependents of fathers — patriarchs — who held life and death power over them. It is this culturally promoted patriarchal role that Jesus intentionally leaves out, and later rejects when he tells his followers, “call no man on earth your father, for you have one Father in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). In the home of Jesus, male humans are brothers, equals with their sisters and mothers. Only God has patriarchal power, and God chooses to express it through grace, mercy and steadfast love.
Jesus’ earliest followers took this teaching very seriously as we see in our reading from Paul’s letter to churches in Galatia: “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ” (Galatians 3:26-28). All of us are God’s children. We all bear the image of God and all are equally beloved, regardless of ethnicity and race, legal or economic status, sexual orientation or gender expression, physical challenges or and neuro-divergences or any other thing we humans might think up as cause for discrimination.
We all know that home can be a vulnerable place, a place of anger and fear, a place of danger and violence. If that has been, or is your experience, we hope and pray that St Stephen’s can offer you an alternative. We hope and pray that all who gather here will find a spiritual home where God meets, embraces and empowers them to know, live, and share Christ.
Excerpts from Blessing for a New Home (John O’ Donahue)
May this house shelter your life.
When you come home here, may all the weight of the world fall from your shoulders.
May your heart be tranquil here, blessed by peace the world cannot give.
May nothing destructive ever cross our threshold.
May this home be a lucky place,
where the graces your life desires always find the pathway to your door.
May this be a safe place full of understanding and acceptance,
where you can be as you are, without the need of any mask or pretense or image.
May this home be a place of discovery,
where the possibilities that sleep in the clay of our soul can emerge
deepen and refine your vision for all that is yet to come to birth.
May it be a house of courage, where healing and growth preloved,
where dignity and forgiveness prevail;
a home where patience of spirit is prized,
and the sight of the destination is never lost though the journey be difficult and slow.
May there be great delight around this table.
May it be a home of welcome for the broken and diminished.
May you have the eyes to see that no visitor arrives without a gift
and no guest leaves without a blessing.
Amen. Welcome Home.
