SPEAKER_00: Whenever I meet somebody for the first time or I'm having a conversation where I want to get to know someone, one of the questions I always ask is, where is home?
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I ask this question is it elicits a story, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know, well, my roots are here, but move there, but you know, this place, this place feels like home.
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that's really interesting is it's almost always precisely that language.
SPEAKER_00: This place feels like home.
SPEAKER_00: Rarely do they say, you know, I think this is home.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's genuine, you know, usually it feels like home.
SPEAKER_00: We're reaching for this like intuitive language.
SPEAKER_00: This this this we can't put into words, into description, home, but it's just like you know it when you know it, when you know it.
SPEAKER_00: That it it it reaches beyond speech, it reaches beyond language, it gets down to our pure desire.
SPEAKER_00: And this this image of home and homecoming, this is uh an enormous image throughout the entire world in all cultures.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you are familiar with the hero's journey of Joseph Campbell, he he he sees in all these traditions these uh this this story of the hero's journey, where the hero leaves home and comes back home to a homecoming.
SPEAKER_00: And it's extraordinary that he sees this pattern of the hero, what he calls the hero's journey, in many different cultures and times, and these myths and fables, these stories that people tell about heroes.
SPEAKER_00: And most often the the hero is at home.
SPEAKER_00: They begin at home, and home is like status quo, it's comfort, you know, it's familiar, it's nothing that's too uh uh uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: And the hero is called out of home.
SPEAKER_00: So typically something seizes the hero, something comes to the uh the this person, and it's beckoning them, beckoning them outside of themselves, beckoning them outside of the home.
SPEAKER_00: They typically have to go unwillingly.
SPEAKER_00: It's like they're they're charged, they're initiated into this calling where they have to go home even though they're resisting it, and then eventually, okay, all right, this calling is so strong, uh, uh, a leave home.
SPEAKER_00: And often then, once they leave home, the the hero comes into a relationship with a teacher of some kind.
SPEAKER_00: It's often like a sage, a wise person.
SPEAKER_00: And this wise person is one who has left home and has done the hero's journey and has come back.
SPEAKER_00: And they're giving wisdom to the hero, and and often the hero has a gift or a strength that is hidden from them.
SPEAKER_00: The hero is completely unaware.
SPEAKER_00: And the the sage, the teacher is there trying to awaken this hidden gift, this hidden insight that the hero is going to need for this great challenge.
SPEAKER_00: And often what follows this is you get this descent, right?
SPEAKER_00: This massive failure or this falling, this downward spiral where the hero is attempting to use all their prior conventional ways of negotiating life, and then it's at that moment that the hidden strength, the hidden gift comes forth, and it's like they remember what their teacher said.
SPEAKER_00: And then it's with this this hidden strength and gift that they defeat the challenge before them.
SPEAKER_00: And then after defeating this challenge, this journey a long way from home, they then return home.
SPEAKER_00: But they return home bringing an artifact from this journey.
SPEAKER_00: They bring a foreign object with them.
SPEAKER_00: It's an object that they couldn't have uh gotten had they stayed at home.
SPEAKER_00: And the hero comes back home with more wisdom, with more humility.
SPEAKER_00: Because they they've been to the depths of themselves, they've they know their weaknesses, but they also come back with wisdom because they know the gifts, the strengths that was hidden in them and revealed, and so they come back on this journey bigger, but they come, they always come back home.
SPEAKER_00: This image of home and homecoming, this is something we even see in the gospel stories.
SPEAKER_00: Where Jesus is calling people to leave home.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: Leave your mom and your dad, leave your work, leave your father and the gnats, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me where?
SPEAKER_00: Well, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be homeless for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus literally says, right, the foxes have holes, the birds of the air has nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
SPEAKER_00: Come, follow me, leave home.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus invites us on a further journey out of the comfort, out of the status quo, out of what we typically think we know into something much greater and larger and deeper and wiser.
SPEAKER_00: And we see, even in the disciples, right, we will see that the disciples, their weaknesses, Jesus is going to expose, right, their weaknesses, but also their hidden strengths, these hidden gifts that are given by God, if you recall this precious conversation, right, with Peter, when he confessed to Jesus is the Christ, and he says, On this rock, right, Father, reveal this to you.
SPEAKER_00: The power and presence of God gave this to you, this gift on this rock I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: Or you think of James and John, right?
SPEAKER_00: The sons of thunder, passion.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is like, Yes, yes, but not in at all the way you think it is, right?
SPEAKER_00: But that's to be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: And then in our gospel reading today, we see that Jesus is telling us of a homecoming.
SPEAKER_00: That where we're actually headed is home.
SPEAKER_00: What he describes as the father's house, the father's home.
SPEAKER_00: This is the end towards which everything moves.
SPEAKER_00: And if we think of this image of home, well, I think if we're honest, if we reflect on it, we will see how powerful it is.
SPEAKER_00: That sometimes that at some point in our life, maybe we're attempting to replicate what home was for us in a kind of nostalgic sense.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we want to replicate that us for ourselves or for our kids.
SPEAKER_00: Or if we didn't have the home, the family that we wanted or needed, didn't have the mom that we needed, didn't have the dad that we needed, well then we want to produce a home.
SPEAKER_00: We want to produce a father, we want to produce a mother, right?
SPEAKER_00: We want a home, we want this image of security and safety and love and affection.
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we attend to this feeling maybe of like subtle discontentment, I know I'm sure many of us here are, I mean, I use the word transplants, I don't know what you would call, but like you didn't grow up in Black Mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you did.
SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: But this feeling, this subtle feeling that I'm not like all the way home.
SPEAKER_00: Like, even if all the conditions of my life, the weather, my friends, my work or retirement, whatever it might be, like at the end of the day, it's just like it's not fully home.
SPEAKER_00: And that if we attend to this, feeling the subtle feeling of discontentment, if we actually go down deeper into it, we see that this discontentment is really just this like insatiable desire for a divine home.
SPEAKER_00: That's attempted to be too easily satisfied with the home of the things of this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the prodigal son, right, who leaves home and he's in a foreign land, and he's uh feeding pigs, and he's longing to eat the slop of the pigs.
SPEAKER_00: This is when we are confused about the home we're leaving and the home we're returning to.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see, what Christ is telling us, is that our home is God.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about that.
SPEAKER_00: This image of home, like home, this image of warmth and belonging and security and affection and treasure, like this place where you have a seat at the table, not even just a seat, but like this is your seat, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is mom's seat, this is where dad sits.
SPEAKER_00: Like imagine going into the father's home and he sees you.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have a your seat is right here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, We belong with God.
SPEAKER_00: It's where you belong.
SPEAKER_00: You belong with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The God, the Father's home is our home.
SPEAKER_00: The Father's house, this is our house, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: I'm preparing a place for you, I'm preparing a banquet, I'm preparing a table.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see in this, in our reading in 1 Peter, is that this homecoming is strangely present now.
SPEAKER_00: This home that we're oriented to is strangely present, so much so that it's like when we arrive in the Father's home, it's like we come home to the place we never left.
SPEAKER_00: Or we come home to the place where we always were.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the the the older son in the prodigal son story, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's like the father, like, I'm here, like everything I have is yours.
SPEAKER_00: Been here the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: And this image that Peter uses, that this cornerstone, this building block of a spiritual house, this is what Peter calls the church.
SPEAKER_00: Temple.
SPEAKER_00: That we, Paul says in Corinthians, are the temple, the home of God.
SPEAKER_00: Temple of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That apparently, like, if you think about your what is home to you, it's like, it's revealed, it's the Father, it's God.
SPEAKER_00: But if he asks God, like, God, where is your home?
SPEAKER_00: God says, you.
SPEAKER_00: So God says.
SPEAKER_00: So our homecoming is apparently God's homecoming.
SPEAKER_00: This beautiful union of coming home.
SPEAKER_00: Coming home to God.
SPEAKER_00: This beautiful picture of union coming to a place that we left, but apparently it never left us.
SPEAKER_00: A God we left behind, but a God who never left us behind.
SPEAKER_00: And the recognition of this.
SPEAKER_00: This is all discipleship is.
SPEAKER_00: This is all Christian spirituality, Christian living is this.
SPEAKER_00: It's simply being oriented to the father's home.
SPEAKER_00: Like, where are we going?
SPEAKER_00: We're going home.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to the Father's home.
SPEAKER_00: It's that the Father's home becomes the horizon, the guiding compass, the North Star.
SPEAKER_00: It's orientation, which is to say, it doesn't matter how long you went this way or that way or how long you stayed.
SPEAKER_00: All Christian living is, is wherever you are.
SPEAKER_00: Dial in.
SPEAKER_00: Orient.
SPEAKER_00: This is all repentance is, right?
SPEAKER_00: The turning of it's, oh, here.
SPEAKER_00: That's the horizon.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter where you are, what you've done, how long you stayed, what distant foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: It's this orientation, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is what we mean when we say that God justifies us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Sets us in the right relationship as you justify paper in a printer, you align it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is the meaning of sin.
SPEAKER_00: The word sin, it's actually not a religious term.
SPEAKER_00: It's a term from archery.
SPEAKER_00: You missed, fell short, didn't hit the bullseye.
SPEAKER_00: And to be brought to be justified in proper relationship is when God orients the aim of our heart towards his home.
SPEAKER_00: My prayer for us is that we would hear Christ beckoning us to his father's home.
SPEAKER_00: That we would see the father's house much like the prodigal.
SPEAKER_00: Where he just like comes to a census, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's staring at Pig Slock and he's like, I want to go home.
SPEAKER_00: That's spiritual awakening, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going home.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be with dad.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be with my father.
SPEAKER_00: This orientation, this about faith, this dialing in, this is what happens when the spirit, the helper that Jesus will be praying for shortly in John, is where the helper does, helps us, gets our sites, the spiritual sites of our heart aligned.
SPEAKER_00: Again, does it matter where you for if you imagine God, you know, as the point on a white piece of paper in the center of the paper, like it doesn't matter, like where, like what is a disciple?
SPEAKER_00: A disciple, it doesn't matter how far, how long, where they've been from that center point, a disciple is simply one that is, oh okay, we'll go in this direction.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how long, how brief.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, I mean that that that orientation can happen as we see in scripture, like on our deathbed.
SPEAKER_00: But let's not let's not wait to the deathbed.
SPEAKER_00: We need to go home.
SPEAKER_00: And this home is mysteriously here in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Can I invite you into a homecoming?