Various writers have told as about home. Home is where the heart is. Home is where they have to take you in. Home is where you run when the ball goes deep to right field. Home is something more than house..... it is more feeling than structure.
Carl Jung, in a letter to Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, remarked that the Alcoholic's desire for a drink was a spiritual need - that it was the search for the feeling of "home".
Some of us touch can touch that feeling in a big armchair that smells of Grampa's pipe tobacco - or fighting through the overgrown bushes up a long driveway to an old abandoned house. Sure it's empty, but you can still smell dinner cooking or bread baking in the kitchen. The whitewash has long since given up the fight to grey exposed wood and windows that remain are broken, but there is still something compelling that makes us want to look inside. The feeling of home.
- Mark was a young man who had a certain memory of home. It was throwing a
football in the front yard. Playing 500 with his brother and father - his dad
would kick the ball in the air and the two would chase after the ball, hoping to
catch it in the air for 100 points or after a a couple of bounces on the ground
for 50 points. When the 500 plateau was acheived the catcher became the kicker
and game would begin anew, father pitted against son in a contest of wills,
concentration, speed and skill - and always of joy and love. That was home. -
the feel of the pigskin, the grass stains, the rolling on the grass and the
warmth, the peace, the safety.
But things don't always stay the same. People grow older, children grow up - Mark did. He had his own ideas about how he wanted to live and what he wanted to do with his life. Mark wanted to find his own home. He had been living with his parents all of his life, he worked on the family farm; went to school. It was fine, as far as it goes, but somehow it was all coming to an end. Mark played guitar and played it pretty well. He wrote songs and people said he could sing. But it was hard to write songs, when school was busy cramming old poetry and physics into your head. What use was trigonometry to a musician - to an artist? And then, when he got home there was work to be done - and when it was done there wasn't enough time to drive into the city, and everybody knows there wasn't anything to do in town if you didn't play hockey.
Mark's brother played hockey - he was a real big deal. His parents curled. Mark didn't like ice. It was cold and you fell a lot. Mark loved his parents, but he wasn't going to be his dad - he had other plans. He wasn't going to be his mom - both mom and dad lived for the farm. And there was no way in the world he was going to be like his brother. The guy was totally lame - if he didn't make Jr.A hockey, he was going into farming full time! The guy had no soul.
Mark wanted out of this meaningless repetitive routine - hey, he just wanted to drop out of school and drop into life! Mark wanted to party - his parents would let him have people over, but they had to leave at midnight - and if Mark went out, he had to be back in by 12:30. Not that his dad would get mad or punish him if wasn't' on time - he'd long since given that up - but rather, he wouldn't say anything and Mom would get that disappointed look on her face.
It was time to go. So, Mark took his car (bought with money he had borrowed from his dad); his two guitars, amps and mixers (also financed by Mom and Dad). Took his money out of the bank - he had some money, dad paid him for summer work and he make money playing the occasional square dance or school dance. As long as he was in school, Dad paid for school and clothes and stuff, so the money had time to accumulate.
He wanted to tell his dad that he loved him and it wasn't anything personal, but as an artist he had to get out into the world - he needed a chance and a place to play his music....But it's hard sometimes to speak to the people you love. Mark left a note.
The city was good. He played his guitar at some coffee houses; met some people who found him a place to stay and even got a couple of jobs playing music - they called them "gigs". Not enough to make a living but that would come - no worry, he had some money. You know what was really great? Having people over at 4:00 am and drinking whatever and whenever he wanted. All-night philosophical discussions with like minded artists. Building a pyramid of beer cans. Sleeping until 3 in the afternoon.
I don't need to tell you the whole story - you know it. Sleeping to 3 in the afternoon everday is no way to make a living - friendships and relationships based on drinking parties are no more stable that the beer can pyramids. Mark soon found himself in the sole survivor of a wreck - a wreck of bitter friends, of angry broken intimacies, jobs lost and promises broken. All Mark had left was an empty feeling in the pit of his stomache, a feeling he was sure that he'd be able to fill in the city, but it hadn't happened. Mark sold his car for parts after he woke up in it against a telephone pole. He sat alone late one night in his basement apartment, watching the Wizard of Oz and tears streamed down his face as Judy Garland chanted, "There's no place like home, there's' no place like home." He knew how she felt.
But where was home? It sure wasn't in this cold and damp two room flat. It wasn't in his favourite bar that wouldn't let him back in. It wasn't with any of the women who would hardly speak to him now. He was pale and thin and smelled terrible. He couldn't see himself playing 500 in the front yard anymore - he wasn't that kid anymore. But that kid's home was the only one he could imagine. So he went back.
He got on a bus - sat in the back with his guitar (he'd sold his other guitar and amps to cover his debts); and smoked his last pack of cigarettes. Rothmans - he sometimes clipped the filter 'cause he liked them strong, or maybe it was a death wish. He didn't know. He didn't know very much anymore - he didn't know what he wanted in any way that he could articulate, he just knew that he wanted to go home. He wanted to feel those feelings he remembered playing football in the front yard, with the sun on his face, trying to get to the ball before his brother. He got off the bus. He couldn't afford a cab and couldn't bring himself to call his parents for a ride, so he walked the four miles to his parent's farm.
He came to the lane. It seemed longer than he remembered. (sniff, sniff) Dad still had pigs - funny how that smell can remind you of home. Up to the house. Up the porch steps - Mark was breathing faster now - he needed that feeling he used to get at his mother's table, in his father's arms - knock on the door (knock, knock.........knock, knock) The door opens, there was his brother.
"Mark? You sure smell bad!"
"Hi. I'm coming home."
"Well, it's about time. Mom had a stroke when you left. Dad and I have had to take care of her ourselves. Dad's been sick in bed for the past week. You can go up, he'll probably want to see you."
The house wasn't the same anymore. It wasn't the place where the little kid used to run. The walls were the same, the pictures were where they were supposed to be, but it wasn't home.
Mark started up the steps - he had so much to say to his Dad - how sorry he was that he had left him - how sorry he was that he had hurt him and mom - how much he wanted to be hugged by him and held by him. Mark got three quarters of the way up the stairs and couldn't go any further. He could never make it up to his Father and Mother. He could never be sorry enough to make up for the things that he had done; the things that he hadn't done. He turned - and went back down the stairs. He looked at his brother and said, "I'll call you sometime", opened the door and left. Back down the lane. No one called after him. The pigs didn't smell like home anymore, just manure and all he wanted to do was run.
In the gospel, we are told about the son's journey home as follows: "So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him." The father was in the road looking for his son. When he saw him - the father ran toward his son.
The first message for me is this: God sees us, no matter how far off we may be and is filled with compassion. No matter what we have done (or not done); no matter how we feel about ourselves; no matter when we decide to seek home in God - God meets us. The father didn't sit back and wonder wether the son had earned his way back into the family - he ran to his son, put his arms around him and kissed him. Acceptance. A love that never ends.
It puts a very real face on the meaning of grace: We don't earn God's love - we simply have to accept it. The son could not accept that love, so he left in search of that love; that feeling of "home". He didn't find it at first, but he did find it eventually. He found it in the arms of his father - the difference was that now he was willing to accept it. He was willing to be loved by his father. Just as we need to be willing to be loved by God - actually accept that we are loved by God. Actually act as if we are special and loved by God. Not better than anyone else, but special - particular - loved.
"Well, I've come to church for years now," you say, "I even pray and sing in a choir - how come I don't feel all warm and toasty and loved?" I'm not sure - but let's look to the parable again and this time take the message, not from the son, but from the father.
The father was out in the road - he ran to his son. He was not upstairs in the house - he did not keep his distance - he did not sit back in judgement. How often in our families and our churches do we sit back in judgement - make others earn their way back into the group? Banish some for un-pardonable sins? The gospel story today tells us that there are no such things as un-pardonable sins - we can come home, and so can the ones that we have tried to keep out.
Now this isn't a policy of, "if someone steals from you, let them steal again". If you notice in the story, the prodigal son did not receive half of the remaining farm, he had spent his inheritance - and if a man or woman steals from you, it is expected that you will watch your purse - but you can still break bread with them. You can still love them. You can still welcome them home. That's the hard part. It gets even harder - because God expects us to not only accept them - but to actually rush toward them and embrace them. That's the difference between my tragic tale and the gospel story - rushing toward the lost son - and that's the difference between tragic lives and lives filled with love and peace.
Why do we find it so hard to do? Perhaps we are like children vying for attention, trying to be the best son or daughter. Have you ever know children to be like that - competing with each other, telling on each other, trying to sure that they are loved. It seems as if young children think that a parent's love might get used up and a bother or sister and there might be no love left for them, so they become jealous of what others get, protective of their place and status. As a parent we say to our children, "I love you and your brothers and sisters, all."
"But who do you love the most?"
"I love you all - each differently and specially"
And as parents we mean it. God speaks to us as a parent and tells us that there is more than enough love to go around and it won't get all used up on someone "less deserving" than we. When we know that - when we believe that - than we can afford to be out there in the road rushing toward the lost child and inviting him or her home. When we do that, then we can feel at home. A home where we all have the right to weep; to safely reveal our tears, our exhaustion, our brokenness: Where we can be true and be assured that we will receive comfort and healing and strength again - a home where we can share joy and hope and laughter with each other. A home where we can feel the presence of God - the presence of love.
(Comments to Norm at norman.seli@sympatico.ca)
Enniskillen & Tyrone United Churches, Ontario, Canada