September 15, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

Home

Edwin Estevez
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 112
Luke 14:1, 7–14

Imagine yourself as a living house. [God] comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what God is doing—getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently [God] starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is [God] up to? The explanation is that what is being built is quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but [God] is building a palace. [God] intends to come and live in it.

C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

What is home?

Perhaps home is the place of fond memories, a wonderful childhood at a particular place, a place you might still return to for the holidays. Or perhaps home is a place of broken dreams and hurtful memories, a place of pain such that it’s something one might call a house, a structure where one lived, and not so much a home.

“Home is where the heart is” are words we might find framed on a kitchen wall. Of course we are intrigued with travel, traveling the world and meeting new people, visiting new places. We are intrigued with the possibility of travel, says David Cohen from the book Chasing the Red, White, and Blue. In this book he pays homage to the travels of Alexis de Tocqueville, whose writings on Democracy in America are considered a classic read in political studies today. He makes the point that everywhere he traveled he noticed how intrigued people were with travel, with the possibility it might open up, especially if they felt stuck or found themselves in a broken situation.

But this penchant for travel’s possibility also draws our attention to our equal focus on home. You see it in another oft-required reading in high school: The Odyssey. Here, the character of Odysseus has travelled across the Greek islands, with many adventures to share. This part we enjoy vicariously, as we journey with him through risk, challenges, and new vistas. But the whole time he yearns for home. And my apologies for ruining the end of the story for any of those who haven’t read it, but he of course returns to a home that is almost gone, filled with guests he has not invited, eating his food, courting his wife, and offending his son. This, among many other things, is the tragedy of The Odyssey. Everything he has longed for, his home with family, is quite nearly gone.

The idea of home captures our imagination. This is why in a country like the United States, the home improvement industry is so strong—Home Depot, Lowes, Do-It-Yourself improvements. We want to make additions, renovate kitchens, upgrade bathrooms, make our landscape welcoming. It sometimes becomes a house of status rather than a home for welcoming.

What is home for you?

Today’s passage deals with the idea of home, of a gathering place for community, whom we invite and do not, about hospitality. And I can’t help but think about Jesus as this somewhat annoying guest in this particular Pharisee’s home. To be clear, scholars wonder whether the confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees are ever fair or if we interpret them fairly. Jesus and the Pharisees seem to share a similar desire to challenge the status quo of temple centrality; Jesus was likely a Pharisee, some scholars suggest. This confrontation might have been a genuine discussion amongst spiritual teachers, but it’s not hard to find other passages where Jesus visits a home and disrupts it: the home of Zacchaeus, Martha, the centurion. Jesus sometimes kicks some people out because they mock belief, or his very presence makes a tax collector return all he has acquired through corruption, or he welcomes those who might otherwise be unwelcome, such as the woman who anoints him with perfume. Jesus seems to have a habit of disrupting one’s home life. Which is exactly why I would be hesitant to invite Jesus to my home. Even now. Even as a pastor.

In today’s passage, that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. Can you imagine the host? Can you imagine the other guests? Jesus reminds me of someone who calls you out when you’re wrong, and it’s so stinging you want to debate him on it, but also so true you want to repent, so loving you want to surrender your defenses.

What is Jesus telling his guests? The very way they carry themselves, implicitly with pomp and circumstance, ignores what Jesus often reiterates as God’s kingdom truth: the first shall be last, the last first; the self-exalted will be humbled, and the humbled exalted. He is calling out the very way they seat themselves and their self-aggrandizement and false sense of self. If we imagine our hearts as a home, as the Bible often calls us to do, it is there where God meets us and there where we can invite Jesus as our guest. But just when we think we’ve invited a gentle guest, we get a surprise. Listen to how C.S. Lewis puts it, which is the quote found on your bulletin for today:

Imagine yourself as a living house. [God] comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what God is doing—getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently [God] starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is [God] up to? The explanation is that what is being built is quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but [God] is building a palace. [God] intends to come and live in it.

This is one of the challenges of our Christian faith. We welcome Jesus into the home of our hearts, but Jesus loves us too much to leave us to our own devices. Our homes are broken; there are dark spaces we’re ashamed of, places we wouldn’t like to show, secrets we’d like to keep—but Jesus offers the light of forgiveness, the healing power of grace, the warmth of God’s love. It is here where our own prejudices, our false selves, our greed and shame, our hate and lies, all of our home life, is challenged.

It’s not just individual: we are challenged as a community. Jesus is challenging the ways of the culture around him in this passage. As we debate as a nation, as a city, the needs of the vulnerable, the education of children, homes for those without them, food for the malnourished, and jobs for the unemployed, we aren’t given a formula for solving the problem and choosing the political solution but rather a principle by which we open our hearts to one another, to our neighbors, to the strangers among us, to the “other.” Even when our hearts reject others, out of fear or despair, God’s grace reminds us to open our hearts.

Henri Nouwen once wrote that home is the place where you discover your true belovedness—the place where God meets you, just as you are. As we prayed in the Prayer of Confession, using the words of Saint Augustine, there are things in our soul, our home, that we’re ashamed of, that need cleaning; in fact, that our home is too small for God. Yet there is this extraordinary and mysterious, baffling and wonderful intimacy of God, a humble intimacy that humbles us, as the world’s maker comes into our hearts. It seems threatening to have Jesus as our guest, in our home, challenging us. But it is there where God can make something wonderful and beautiful out of all of the broken pieces in our home; there we discover our true belovedness. Amen.