Home Sweet Home
THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 • Psalm 48 • 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 • Mark 6:1-13
I love a good homecoming story. The first movie that comes to mind is the 2002 rom-com Sweet Home Alabama, in which Reese Witherspoon plays the up-and-coming fashion designer Melanie Carmichael, who is engaged to New York City’s most eligible bachelor and son of the mayor. However, Melanie “Carmichael” is actually Melanie Smooter, who has been trying for seven years not only to live her big city dreams but also to get her husband to sign divorce papers. Melanie has to return home to (the fictional) Pigeon Creek, Alabama, and contend with all it means to return home to her family, friends, and life in the South. There is something about the arc of leaving our hometown and finding our true home that is meaningful for all of us, and it’s usually easier to reflect on someone else’s story than our own.
Some of us never leave the place of our origin, though it is rarer outside rural areas to find folks who have stayed in the same place. Like Melanie who left town to make something of herself, many find what they seek in proverbial greener pastures. We usually don’t create an alternate identity, but in many ways, we are often changed, if not transformed. Melanie’s mother Pearl, who doted upon her pageant queen of a daughter, cautioned her of an early marriage and tried to get her to leave town as soon as she could, perhaps projecting her own sense of feeling trapped in a small town.
But that sense of being trapped can be of our own making, either by ourselves or the society we have created. How much easier, we might think, if we had prophets to tell us when we are chosen to do or be something important, like Samuel anointing David. If only we knew we were anointed and chosen, marked as Christ’s own forever. Of course, I’m being a little sarcastic here. The baptized are anointed. We are marked. The biblical stories we hear today point us toward meaningful aspects of how we live our lives faithfully and do the important work of being who we are called to be and finding our way home to God, wherever we are.
David knows he’s anointed and embraces God’s favor. He was able to defy Saul’s attempts to destroy him, in fact growing stronger, gaining favor throughout the kingdom, until, as we hear today, all Israel and Judah are united under him, under one king. The shepherd boy has become the shepherd king. And all goes well as long as Daivd is obedient to God’s will, so long as he realizes his power and authority is of and from God, that he is anointed to shepherd God’s people; in this way, David is closest to unity with God. When David follows his own desires and charts his own path, things go awry for him. Coercion, deception, and manipulation are never of God’s will, and any one of these or other ways our relationships are not loving, life-giving, or liberating send us toward misadventures and hard-learned lessons. Those lessons are the cringe-worthy parts of the stories or movies . . . and we cringe because we know how much it hurts.
It’s deception, coercion, and manipulation that Paul counters in his letter to the Corinthians. Apparently there were at least a few false prophets or apostles around Corinth, proclaiming their spiritual experiences granted them power and authority over others. Paul, the clever one, puts on the cloak of humility along with the spiritual authority and power granted him through Jesus Christ, and Paul continues to boast his weakness to proclaim the strength of Christ. It is the Body of Christ in which Paul is most at home, the closest to God.
For some reason I’m often annoyed at Paul’s humility, as if it is for show. Then I remember something I heard either in a psychology class or one of the many servant leadership classes years ago: what we most despise about others is likely something we recognize and despise in ourselves. I need to pick up my own copy of N.T. Wright’s biography on Paul that many are reading in the Rector’s Bible Study, in which I hope to learn more about Paul’s sincerity, for I believe it’s there. If I can get past my own inhibitions, I can learn from Paul what it is to claim spiritual authority and power with true humility, the combination of which is a sort of homing device to stay on the path to God and fulfill God’s will. Despite his convoluted sentence structure, Paul is honest about where he comes from, open about his struggles, and calls others into the body of Christ, casting a wide net. I know I cast my prejudices upon Paul, and it takes effort to remember that Paul wields his privilege when he needs to not to lift himself up (though it does save his neck a time or two) but to enable him to proclaim the power and authority of Christ and to give glory to God. Paul doesn’t leave his place of origin seeking a future of his own making. Even if he did, the man formerly known as Saul is transformed by Christ and led throughout the region to bring others into the home that is to be found in oneself, embodied individually and collectively in Christ. Paul used his skills and gifts to shine a mirror before others that they, too, might be blinded by the glory of God or at least stunned out of complacency, awakened to the reality of their ways. It’s always the wake-up calls that tell us how far from or close to home we are, how near or far we are from God.
I do like that Paul and Peter and all the disciples and followers, really, show us a trajectory of growth as humans doing our best to follow the way of Christ, fully believing it is the way of Christ that leads us to our home in God. From that perspective, the narrative arc of our salvation is one of homecoming, of reunion. The individual stories of how people succeed or fail to live in union with God by being obedient, faithful, and loving toward God and neighbor parallel the story of humanity working itself from estrangement/brokenness/sin back into relationship/wholeness/unity with God.
When Jesus returns home, the hometown folks are amazed at his wisdom, wonder at his authority, and are dazzled at works he has done. But then they take offense. Why?
Have you ever known someone who left town, was gone for a few years and came back bearing marks of success? Does everyone then celebrate their success upon their return? Not usually; not everyone. And not everyone who is successful shares their abundance. Can we imagine a place so united that the wellbeing of one is the wellbeing of all? Can we imagine a place where with genuine humility and compassion, we proclaim the Good News of Christ, reveal how God has called us, and ultimately glorify God, and where, whether we are sharing or receiving, we are building up community, lifting one another in mutual care and concern? Do we have that kind of vision, that kind of faith? Jesus demonstrated spiritual authority and shared it. Jesus exercised power and distributed it. Jesus gave glory to God in sincere humility in the very acts of this shared power and authority, and those who weren’t in relationship with him, who didn’t believe in him and what he was about couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t receive, and couldn’t manifest the inclusion and belonging that was being offered by and in God.
If our concept of who we are is confined to one house, in one specific place, among specific people, how confined are our possibilities? What do we believe is possible? If, however, we claim our inheritance as children of God, in the kin-dom of heaven, as the priesthood of all believers, in what kind of place, in what kind of home do we abide?
Jesus shows us what it looks like to be rejected, even by those who think they know him, and Jesus shows us where to put our faith. Jesus’s rejection in his hometown, in that specific place with those particular people, highlights how close he had gotten to unity in God, how aligned he was with his own spiritual authority and power that was and still is not of human construct of understanding. Our faith belongs in what is ultimately loving, life-giving, and liberating: this is foundational to the home God builds. We get home to God not by pretending to be something we are not, not by glorifying ourselves, nor by manipulating or oppressing others. We get to our home in God by love, being open to the possibilities created in love, by loving God and our neighbor, being devoted with our whole heart, and being united to each other in pure affection (as our Collect for the Day requests). This kind of love presumes a deep and true love of self, too, the kind that claims God’s favor with humble confidence and boldness.
We are wise to remember that staying close to God as Jesus and Paul illustrate doesn’t mean we live a life of presumed welcome or without adversity and even persecution. And the more baggage we carry, the harder we make it for ourselves. But all the adventures and lessons along our way to finding our true home give us the perspective to appreciate more fully what was granted us from the beginning: life and love in God. Finding our home in God is the truest and sweetest home we’ll ever know.
© 2024 The Rev. Sara Milford
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas