Josh 5:9-12; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

There’s a beautiful song, performed by Simon and Garfunkel, entitled “Homeward Bound”. The lyrics in the chorus are:

Homeward Bound, I wish I was, homeward bound…

Home, where my thought’s escaping

Home, where my music’s playing

Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me…

I’ve discovered I don’t travel as well as I used to. My forty-nine-year-old frame can still ball up into economy aircraft seats and compact Suburus, but it doesn’t sit as patiently as it once could, and it doesn’t unwrap itself from 17 hours of traveling without a great deal of pain.

It never fails, for this reason, that when I agree to go on a mission trip that I have mixed feelings – on the one hand, I’m excited to be part of what God is doing in the world. On the other hand, knowing what’s in store for me in the going and the coming visits me with a certain sense of dread and the recurring question – “Why, Michael, did you ever agree to do this?”

After arriving in Managua, Nicaragua, I begin to sense that I’m not just in pain from the travel – it’s something else. I don’t sleep well that night, and come morning, I realize I need some quick medical attention. Doug Orbaker, the PC(USA) missionary assigned to Nicaragua takes me to the Emergency Room at a local hospital where I’m prodded and poked by a very competent Nicaraguan Doctor and her very capable medical translator.

I have an infection, she advises me. I will not be able to accompany my friends into the bush of Montegalpa, the mountainous region in northern Nicaragua where we planned to construct a classroom facility for farmers – a place where they can learn agricultural techniques that are more productive and more environmentally friendly. My friends must go on without me.

I spend three very lonely days in recovery. The hours were endless and empty. Again, my thoughts turn to home, but more importantly, these days of loneliness and silence became a wonderful opportunity for me to speak with my sole companion – God. In a very strange way, it was a refreshing time. In fact, I began to wonder, and then to believe, that this was the time God had in mind for me from the beginning. Not only was my health restored, but in some sense, my very life – that deepest part of life that wanes and waxes, ebbs and surges – that part of life which is the awareness of God’s presence. It was a wonderful gift to me to be ill – to be forced to sit and wait – to have nothing to apply myself to accept the waiting, and the loneliness, and the silence, and the presence of the living God.

Spending so much time in a non-English speaking world without the benefit of my companions gave me the opportunity to focus more on my Spanish. The empty nights gave me the time to focus on my guitar. The empty mornings gave me the time to focus on my prayers, and my writings.

Lent is supposed to be such a time – a time to contemplate just how far we really are from home and how we fail to live as if we were home. Instead, it seems, we’ve made ourselves far too much at home where we are now, and we’ve adopted far too many practices in our comings and goings and the way we treat others that fail to speak of faith, hope, love, and the ministry of reconciliation. Lent is a time when we are supposed to reconcile the reality of our dust and ashes with our ideals – the hopes and dreams for a better way of living life here and now in the Presence of the Living God.

Traveling to Central America is always a reminder that whatever it is I’m expecting to happen is going to change, and being able to not only accept that reality, but embrace it. It’s a manner of life that is open to the future, and not trapped in the past. It’s a constant exercise in listening to the lives and views of others and contemplating how God is working in them. It is a rich gift, and I thank God for pushing me to endure the pains of the journey in order to encounter the joys of being a colleague and friend to our brothers and sisters around the world.

Yes, home, whatever it is you call it, is a nice place to be. However, it is more critical to recognize that we are called to live as aliens and strangers who are far from home, who bear witness to the reality of that home, and the ideals of that home in the way we treat one another.

I share these things with you because there is a very important lesson in them about what it means to be Presbyterian. You see, the way that I approached Nicaragua – being open to whatever might happen, being unable and unwilling to attempt to direct the course of events – is the way we are supposed to approach being the body of Christ. It is the way the Session, in accordance with our polity, is supposed to approach any decision making process. It leaves room for the Spirit of God to move among us. You see, if you enter into a meeting with your mind already made up – there is no room for the Spirit to surprise or enlighten you. There is no room for God there.

You see, sometimes the Prodigal is not a person – it is an idea. Perhaps it would be better to say it is an “ideal.” It is the practice of living and working as friends and colleagues while listening for the guidance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Our parable this morning recounts how overjoyed God is when our ideals return to us – when we behave as we have promised to behave toward one another. Yet, interestingly enough, our parable also recounts that everyone is not happy when the way they thought things should go are disrupted by God’s grace in returning us to our true calling as Christians and as Presbyterians. The older brother was not at all pleased by the turn of events grace ushered in. Even so, God’s grace isn’t swayed by his criticism. God knows, apart from our ideals, we are dead.

The Book of Order requires me, at a service of installation for Deacons and Elders, to speak to such issues. In a moment or so, I’ll administer an oath to our nominees. One of the questions they will be asked is the following: “Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit.” Shortly after they answer all the questions posed to them by the Book of Order, the Clerk will stand and ask the congregation this question: “Do we agree to encourage them, to respect their decisions, and to follow as they guide us, serving Jesus Christ, who alone is Head of the Church?”

There was a time when I spent many meetings at Presbytery speaking against the designs of a group of pastors who allied themselves in blocs of voting members in order to have things their way. Several of my colleagues wondered if we too should form a voting bloc to even the playing field. My response was simple: “If we don’t believe that’s how God would have us act, why would we choose to act that way in response? I, for one, would rather lose my life acting as Christ has asked me, than save my life by acting as if there is no distinction between the church and the House or the Senate. They think they are striving to win Christ, but they are mistaken. At the end of the day, whatever it is they end up winning won’t be Christ. If that’s the case, why should we strive against them for whatever it is they hope to win?

I have never found it easy to sit, or to wait, while in pain and anguish. But, I can say from personal experience that doing nothing is sometimes the greatest witness we can make to the validity of our faith. To rest in the arms of God and allow the future to unfold as it will is the single sufficient act that speaks to the certainty of our conviction that God is present with us no matter what life throws at us. No, it’s not easy; it’s never easy, but it’s right.

What a joy it was to dwell in Nicaragua and Honduras in just such a fashion. While my initial hopes and plans for the first week drastically changed, you can’t imagine the things I gained by being open to the flow of God’s gracious Spirit in the midst of shifting sands. Once I regained my health and my strength, the cook, who had become a friend, took me into Managua to the open air city market – three city blocks of stalls selling everything from vegetables to shoes. Ann Taylor, the director of CEPAD, hearing of my recovery (and apparently about my nightly guitar playing) invited me to a private concert with folk musician Jim Strathdee, author of the hymn, “I Am the Light of the World” and many others.

By surrendering my plans, and placing myself in God’s hands, my experience was far richer and fuller than it would ever have been otherwise. I lived as a stranger and an alien among the people I had gone to serve, but they, in Christ, called me a friend, and fed me with the food of their love.

(Comments to Michael at mykhal@epix.net.)