God’s Generous Heart (Audio) Deut. 26:1-11
As the first Sunday of Lent arrives, we find ourselves at a border with the ancient Israelites in our reading from Deuteronomy. We are standing on the edge of the wilderness, looking with great anticipation toward the Promised Land. Just in front of us is the Jordan River Valley, where Jesus’ cousin will baptize him centuries later and God will name him (and every child of God) as Beloved. This river marks the boundary and entrance into a land flowing with God’s promise and presence. It is a sight for sore and tired eyes. The people of Israel are finally have arrived at the place God has given them to call home. The generous heart of God has created a home for his people. They are not wandering aimlessly, but heading home.
The problem for many people today is that the journey of life does seem aimless, even pointless, and this is in no small part due to the fact that people no longer have a sense of home. In past generations, families stayed in one place for generations. Extended families filled entire churches, schools and neighborhoods. Grandma and Grandpa lived a few miles down the road, nearly everyone lived within 10 or 20 miles of where they were born. You were known by your name most places you went and if they didn’t know you, they probably knew a relative of yours. This created a high trust society where chronic loneliness, anxiety and social unease were uncommon. That is gone for most people today. Today families are flung far and wide across the nation even around the world with no local blood-family connections and no historical connection to the place where they live. More and more people are nomadic, disconnected to their people or a place. I think this is a big reason for the social issues of violence, mental illness and general anxiety and suspicion among people that we see today.
As a result, there is a common experience in the modern era to desire to return home. This began showing up in the popular music in the late 1960s and 1970s with the growing diaspora of people from their home communities. Simon and Garfunkle sang, “I wish I was homeward bound.” John Denver celebrated, “Country roads take me home.” Johnny Darrell, in returning to the old home place, sang, “It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home.” Returning home became a desire for a greater part of a society, who, usually for economic reasons, had moved far from home. For a long time, Homecoming Sunday was the biggest Sunday of the year for churches as members anticipated the return home of folks, at least for a day, who had moved away. Large spreads of food would be laid out for everyone to eat after worship, with singing and fellowship. It was a sign of God’s generous heart for the people who had returned home.
The tragedy of our modern era is that many if not most people today do not have a sense of where home is. Perhaps they moved around a lot with Dad’s work. Perhaps their home life as a child was not good, and so they have no desire to return to their childhood home or family. Perhaps their hometown has changed so much due to population growth or changing demographics that they don’t recognize their home any longer. Perhaps their parents are gone, their relatives have moved away and they don’t feel at home anymore. So the painfully felt question presents itself: where is home?
Where is home for you? We use some common clichés to attempt to identify home in a time when home is not easy to recognize. The sentimental answer has been, home is where the heart is. But you can’t just magically attach your heart to a strange or foreign place and, wah-la, it magically becomes home. The cold, practical answer is, home is where you hang our hat. This suggests that we should be practical and know that the reality is people move around, community demographics and realities change, so just accept that wherever you are there is home.. The spiritual answer has been that that this world is not our home anyway, we’re just a passin’ through, so don’t fret it. Just wait patiently, no matter how lonely and miserable you are, until you arrive at your heavenly home and all will be well. Well, none of these offer an acceptable solution to our sense of detachment and alienation from home.
I think we all know that the true answer to returning home is rediscovering rootedness, to a people and to a place, to blood and soil. Sociological studies show time after time that people are most happy when they are rooted to blood and soil. Connection to an extended family, a heritage, to our ancestors and a living place is the prime place for nurturing a soul that thrives.
Jack Berry with The Gospel Coalition refers to this as fidelity of place, and says it is noticeably and painfully absent in our society today. He writes, “Fidelity to place isn’t a characteristic American virtue. Our country’s pioneer past predisposes us to respond to difficult situations by moving on; we often want the option of a new place, a new church, a new spouse.” Don’t like your job, your preacher, your wife? Have your tired of them? Just move on. But community cohesion, societal health, are best achieved when we are slow to move on, when we first count the costs of picking up stakes and leaving home.
With that said, the reality is that we live in an economically, socially and spiritually mobile world. People are moving all around for a living wage. People relocate to move up the social ladder. And people leave home on spiritual quests to find themselves. I moved away from home for economic reasons. Though, I am only a few hours from home at most, I still sometimes lament my semi-nomadic existence and feel the spiritual pain of uprootedness. In this context of a modern world on the move, what would it mean to return home?
Years ago, I remember reading an article by Kentucky writer and farmer Wendell Berry, who, quoting a friend of his, said, do you want to feel at home again, do you want to experience a sense of community again? Then just stop, somewhere, anywhere, put down stakes. Stop moving and start making a place your home. And eventually you will begin to experience attachment to the people and the place where you live.
There may be a period of nomadic moving around in your life, but at some point, just stop and commit yourself to a people and a place. This was God’s goal for his people. The history of the people of Israel was nomadic movement, fleeing corrupt civilization, then fleeing famine, then fleeing slavery, then wandering for 40 years, until finally they settled down. They planted themselves in a land flowing with milk and honey. And there they began to build a home.
If you do not do this, and you are away from your original home and extended family, you will never feel at home. You will always feel like an outsider. You will always feel like a second-class citizen. I encourage you to put down your stakes, begin building a home, start making connections, start building friendships, connect, care for others, commit to your place. Get to know it. Get to know its history.
Of course, never forget where you came from, or your ancestors, or your people. But, at some point, you take your first fruits from your new home and you give it back to the community where you live. In Deuteronomy, that practice is mediate by the priest. In our time, I suggest that it be done through the church. Let your rootedness with the community begin in the church and then spread out through your connections, ministry, friendship established here at the church.
You who are established in this church with deep roots, make the newcomers feel at home. Invite them into your circle.
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