Where is Home?

Where is “home” for you? I mean the place that really, truly feels like home, a place you could go back to at any time and still feel at home? The place in my mind that still feels like “home” after many years is the house my parents bought when I was in the second grade, up in the mountains of La Canada in Los Angeles. I lived there until I went away to college and I have gone back many times to visit for holidays and vacations. We all call it the “Ocean View house” because that‘s the name of the street, and on a clear day, you really can see all the way to the ocean, far on the other side of Los Angeles County.

What makes a place a home though? For me, as home is where I feel safe and comfortable. Nothing is odd or strange or foreign, it is all calmly familiar. There are memories attached to it, both good and bad, but a sense of peace reigns, and there are particular spots that are favorite places at home, where I always breathe a deep sigh of relief, as if, after having been lost, I am now found. At home I feel like I belong, as if I am known to my home and my home is known to me. There is a sense of loving presence at home, even if the house is empty. All pretenses are gone and I don’t have to pretend to be anything I’m not, and that’s perfectly okay. Home is a soft place to fall.

During my travels in my late twenties I went to Europe - to England and France and I will never forget the experience of getting lost in a rather industrial part of Paris. I had a really heavy backpack with all my belongings and was confused by the subway system and got off in the wrong part of the city. I wandered the streets and became lost and no one, it seemed, would speak English to me. I grew increasingly frantic and scared, thinking how foolish I was to travel around Europe by myself. I was hungry and had very little money and it was getting dark and I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Finally I came across a hotel, it was far outside my budget, but I was so desperate that I got a room for the night, just to get off the street. It took me ages just to figure out how to make a simple phone call out of the hotel and back to the US, with all the country codes and my calling card and operators speaking in French. I’ll never forget the moment I heard my mother answer the phone and say “Hello?” I couldn’t speak because the mere sound of her voice caused me to well up with deep tears and I started to sob: her voice connected me to home and I was so terribly homesick. I wanted nothing more than to be home in that moment and I realized how important home really was, for all my desire for travel and adventure.

Deep down, I think we all yearn for “home.” Something in us, deeply desires to have that sense of being at home, at a level that goes soul deep. And it’s even deeper than just a place or a house. We can find a sense of home in our family members, or with friends and people that feel like “home” to us. Over the years I have met many newcomers at the different churches and ministries I have served, and if they are searching for a new church, I always encourage them not to settle until they have sense of “home” at a particular church. That doesn’t mean it’s all positive or that there’s no challenge involved, but a sense of home is important when it comes to finding and committing to a faith community.

I’ll never forget the experience I had when I found my sponsoring parish when I first entered the Episcopal Church. I had visited many churches and sat in many pews, but the day I sat down in the middle of Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, my whole body relaxed and I took a deep breath, a sigh of relief, and seemingly melted into the pew as if I had found something I had been looking for, for a long time. The Holy Spirit was heavy in that space and the red-wood beams and stained glass were a sight for sore eyes. Joining Trinity was a decision I never regretted and knew, somewhere deep in my soul, that I had come home.

When I visited St. Alban’s in 2007 during my interviews, the first time I walked into this church there was a feeling within me, as if I had been here many times before. The same feeling occurred when I met many of you, as if I had known you for quite awhile, even though we were technically strangers. It has always felt like home here to me at St. Alban’s.

Our Scripture lessons today have something to say about this concept of home. In the lesson from First Peter, we read that we are to come to the Lord, “a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” Peter is referring to the body of believers here, that we as a community are called to become a spiritual home, one to another, rooted and built upon the living stone: Jesus. St. Alban’s is home to many of us, and that’s because this community is built on Jesus, our living stone, and we have allowed ourselves to be built up together into a spiritual home. This is not to be taken lightly, it is a beautiful and sacred thing, a true blessing. Many, many people do not have a genuine spiritual home, and they’re lacking this blessing in their lives. And it’s a blessing even when people here may annoy or hurt us, that’s part of being in community, and learning to extend and accept grace and forgiveness. This is sacred stuff.

And then in the Gospel lesson from John, Jesus says, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” The idea that Jesus himself has prepared a place for us, a true home, so that we can be where he is, is tremendously comforting. We search and search for a home on this earth, and sometimes we find something pretty good, but nothing can compare to the home that God has for us, for our home with Jesus.

I enjoy a TV show called “Parks and Recreation,” and on a recent episode, a character named Leslie was struggling with a decision she had made years ago, when she had turned down a job offer in a flashier city and had remained instead in her town of Pawnee. She asked her boss to recall what his advice had been back when she was considering the other position that had helped sway her decision. He said, “I told you I didn’t care what you did.” She smiled and said, “Yeah but what did you say after that.” He said, “I told you, you will get lots of job offers, but you only have one hometown." “Yeah, that’s how I remember it” she replied. As Christians we have only one hometown: and that’s in Christ.

I deeply believe that what we are all ultimately longing for when we seek home, is that sense of unconditional love, safety, protection, of being fully known and totally accepted, and that’s something that only God in Christ can give us completely and fully. For the Christian, then, Jesus is the ultimate soft place to fall. And where Jesus is, home is. Spend time with the Lord every day, worship in God’s house every week, and allow yourselves to be built up into this spiritual home, rooted in Christ, that exists not only here, today, but into eternity with God and one another. Amen.