The Tender Shepherd – Ronald Raab (2020)
Where is your home?
My home is here at 406 Fern Ct. But when I go to North Carolina to see my parents, I say that I’m going home. When I was in seminary, VTS was home too, and I would leave my home there on Friday afternoon to come back home here for the weekend. When I go back there, I still feel that I am leaving this home to go back to that home, even if only for a little while. St Peter’s is my home too, a home I’m deeply missing right now.
That cliché, “Home is where the heart is,” is true. I like that saying because it stretches the definition of home beyond just a place to include the people in those places–the people we love, the people with whom we feel deep connection, the people we miss right now, the people for whom we rejoice, the people over whom our hearts break.
God’s heart is with us, so from the beginning, God, who loves us so deeply and so passionately, has been making homes for us. Adam and Eve were at home in the Garden of Eden. God promised Abraham a new home in a land that Abraham could only imagine. God brought the Israelites out of exile into a home in a promised land, full of milk and honey, a land that God watched over night and day. After being sent into exile into Babylon, the people finally returned home and rebuilt their beloved city, Jerusalem. And the people, in return, made dwelling places for God—in the ark of the covenant, a mobile dwelling place that could move with them, and then in the temple, where they would go to worship and pray to God.
All of these physical places though remind us that home is about more than the places and the people that we love on this earth. As St Augustine says, “God, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
The heart of God is our true home, the only place that we can truly rest, and God wants us to be at home–
So God sent Jesus to pitch his tent with us, to make his home with us, so that Jesus could show us the way home and to lead us home to God. The miracle of Jesus is that we discover that while Jesus is showing us the way to God and leading us there, that we have already arrived at home in God, through Jesus. Already we can rest in God.
Today’s scriptures teach us a great deal about being at home in God. In Acts, the followers of Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, are creating a new home in God in which they all live together.
As we’ve had to create a new home in these times when we can’t be together in our building but when we’re are still all living together as the church, this passage has a lot to say to us right now about we can continue to be at home with one another as Christian brothers and sisters by being intentional about doing certain things together.
The early Christians lived in awe.
One of the things I’ve noticed about the photos you send in for inclusion in our worship is the awe that you feel for God’s work through the natural world right now. We have more time than usual to pay attention to the natural wonders around us that God provides, but that we’re often to busy to see. The irises this year are amazing! But maybe they are every year, and I’m just too busy to notice them quite as intently.
The awe that these new Christians felt was more than their heightened awareness of the world around them, though. They saw for themselves the many wonders and signs that the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, were doing. These wonders and signs are still going on in various ways around us.
The Book of Common Prayer asks God to open our eyes. “Open our eyes, O Lord, to behold your hand at work in the world around us,” With open eyes, we can stand in awe of God’s healing power going on in the midst of all of the sickness brought on by this virus, we can stand in awe of how people are figuring out new ways to be the Church, even when apart, we can stand in awe of how people are working together to protect one another and to work toward ending the dangers brought on by this pandemic. Phil can tell us about the coming of the Holy Spirit on whole groups of people in other parts of the world. God works in small and large ways to bring us to a place of awe for God’s might and power and majesty, and the work that God is doing through his disciples here on earth, and that’s us! May people see God’s work going on through us and stand in awe of God!
When the news tends to deliver lots of bad news, this need to open our eyes and to stand in awe of God’s majesty working through God’s disciples is more important than ever! So I treasure every one of the photos you send in that remind you of God’s might and power, and love—both in nature, and in all of the ways that you find awe in the stories of God’s work being done in the world right now.
The new Christians also devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. A person who is at home in God will want to do these things with Christian brothers and sisters—to learn from scripture together, to pray together as well as individually, and to join together in fellowship to do these things in whatever form that gathering takes, including Zoom!
SInce we cannot gather around the Lord’s table right now at St Peter’s , this passage from Acts helps us to remember that these early Christians, who spent much time together in the temple, broke their bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.
Yes, this is a time to remember, that even as we aren’t sharing bread around one common table at the moment, we can still eat at home with glad and generous hearts, in spiritual solidarity with the person or people sitting next to us, in solidarity with the communion of saints, and in solidarity with one another even though we aren’t physically with one another.
The other sign of these people living in God’s house was that they were generous. They were aware of the needs of the people around them. They took care of those needs. Just as God cares for us, they cared for one another. In this church, people are busy caring for one another—I hear about some of the things that you are doing for one another, and much more happens that no one hears about at all—helping one another is just a natural part of living in God’s house together. This generosity applies to more than just our small church, though. We can be generous to those in this country and around the world who can’t easily get food right now.
My Spanish teacher who lives in Guatemala tells me that people who are hungry and don’t have the money for food go out in the streets and wave white flags. They are making their need visible, so that hopefully, someone will help. Even from here, we can help all over the world, again thanks to technology. So be generous and help when and where you can.
These early Christians are inspiring me and I hope they will inspire you too—to get creative and to act on new ways that we can study scripture, come around the table together even when we can’t and to pray together in this time when we can’t be in the physical presence of one another.
The reason that the early Christians did the particular things that Acts mentions is that Jesus had done these very things with the apostles while he was with them.
Jesus taught them—Jesus taught them not only by talking about scripture but teaching them about the character and nature of God by showing them through his own actions God’s generous mercy and compassion–by healing people, by casting out demons, by feeding hungry people, by bringing back people from the dead, by being direct about how the religious authorities had become blind to the ways of God. Jesus loved people and joined even with sinners and outcasts around the table. Jesus modeled a life of prayer by spending time in prayer himself.
Jesus calls us home in today’s gospel. If we are doing the things that the early Christians did as they created their new home, filling it with the things that Jesus had taught them—that is, if we are living in awe and wonder, if we are studying scripture, praying, and sharing generously, we are opening not only our eyes, but also our ears—to hear the voice of Jesus calling us home.
Jesus calls us home, where God sustains and strengthens us.
And Jesus leads us out, like a shepherd, to do the work that God has given us to do, to love and to serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To know that Jesus is leading us is a great comfort in this time when our lives have been changed and we are trying to figure out how to do God’s work from home and to serve God as faithful witnesses to Jesus’ love. God loves us, so God doesn’t send us out helter-skelter with no direction. Instead, God sends us out with Jesus leading the way, showing us how to love and serve the Lord.
Jesus is the one who leads us, who provides us with all we need, who goes with us through hardships and dangers, and who brings us safely home. Jesus says that he is not only the shepherd, but the gate –the gate through which we pass into the safety of the sheepfold when the day is over and our work is done.
Jesus is the gate into our true home, the heart of God—the home that God has been preparing for us since the beginning, because God’s heart is restless too, until we are all resting in God.