Not Home Yet

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Perhaps some introductions are in order since I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. I’m Alex Joyner. I’m your pastor. I know, I know. I’ve heard the rumors. “Alex has gone off to be with some other church. He’s got a secret life as a talent scout for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s a supermodel. He’s really Dr. Phil.” I know the rumors and they’re not true.

What I’ve actually been up to is teaching at the Course of Study School for local pastors at my old seminary, something that I look forward to every year, despite the fact that mid-summer in Dallas is not for the weak of heart. Joel and I just returned late Friday night and it is good to be home. So put the rumors to rest. I’m not off doing any of those other things.

We actually had a difficult time getting back, though. For awhile there on Friday night it looked like we might be spending the weekend in Atlanta since our connecting flight was cancelled and weather delays were grounding all kinds of people. Then Joel was confirmed on a flight back home and I wasn’t. But we did finally manage a late night flight back to Newport News.

Something caught my ear though as we touched down in Atlanta. As we were rolling to the gate the flight attendant came on with her standard announcement but she misspoke and what she said was, “Welcome to Atlanta. Be sure to gather your personal longings from the overhead bins and be careful because some of them may have shifted during the flight.” Not personal belongings. Gather your personal longings.

Because it’s the way my brain works, I started thinking: My personal longings are in the overhead bins? What does that look like? My longing to win the Crystal Beach Triathlon is in the overhead bin? Being able to see my kids grow into loving, strong, self-confident adults? That’s up there? Writing the Great American novel? All of that is in the overhead bin? And they may have shifted during the flight? Maybe I’ve got some new longing I didn’t even realize I had – like maybe now I want to be a supermodel. Who knows what happened on that flight? And even though I hadn’t put any stuff in the overhead bin, I kind of wanted to open one up to see what was there. But it was just bags.

Gather your personal longings. What are the things that we long for? These are tough times for a lot of folks. We have had people in our community lose houses to fire. We have people who have lost loved ones unexpectedly. We have people who have lost jobs. I came back to see the headlines about the plans for the hospital to move to Accomack and I know that means great uncertainty for a lot of us. It’s easy for our longings to get tied up in our fears.

It’s also easy for our longings to be turned into material desires. The seduction of the media world is that we can but the things that will meet our wants. But as soon as we have, the discontent continues, fueled by advertising, until the thing we have, which once was bright and shiny, seems tarnished in comparison with the new thing in the marketplace. That smartphone is so much smarter than my smartphone. That car is so much nicer than the one I drive. That girl or that guy is so much more intriguing than my wife or my husband. But you know…I know that most of our wantings are not worth having. None of them can live up to the expectation.

Gather your personal longings. “For the place where you put your treasure is the place where you most want to be and will end up being.” That’s Eugene Peterson’s translation of Luke 12:34 from The Message – usually translated as “where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” But Peterson emphasizes that our desires shape our direction. Our desires tell us where we are headed. And the implication of this verse is that they will take us where we want to go. If our longings are for the Kingdom, the place where God is all in all, then that leads us on the road to heaven. Our world is shaped by that reality. And we will find our feet set in heaven even in this world. But if our longings are for things or distractions that take us away from God, then we will follow them right into the emptiness which is the most they can offer us. The heart wants what the heart wants and, for better or worse, it will get what it wants. But our longings, by and large, are misplaced, misdirected, and misguided so we end up in the emptiness, the loneliness, the void.

This week one of my former colleagues on the Course of Study faculty, the Rev. Paul Escamilla, a pastor in Austin, Texas, delivered the graduation sermon and he told the story of a Los Angeles priest, Greg Boyle, who works with gang members in some of the toughest neighborhoods of the city. He looks at the children and youth he works with, people struggling with the world as it is, struggling with addictions, violence and hopelessness and he tells them they are beautiful. He tells them that they don’t have to be defined by the hatred around them. They don’t have to let the streets determine who they are and how God sees them. They are beautiful.

Father Boyle was asked how someone can keep doing that when day after day the things that assault the children just seem to grow worse. When there is only death and disappointment and there is no hope. Boyle says, “You go into the sanctuary…you go into God’s presence…and you close your eyes and you see with your other eyes.” You see the world with your other eyes. Those eyes that see the world as God sees it.

Gather your longings. “Do not be afraid, little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” That’s what Jesus tells the crowds who come out to hear him. People who faced illness and poverty. People whose worlds were being turned upside down. People who knew grief and who knew what it was like to never feel at home in this world. Don’t be afraid, little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Then he goes on to advise them to take a step further into uncertainty. “Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that never wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes in and no moth destroys.” The place where you put your treasure is the place you most want to be, and the place you will be.

Do we have confidence in that world? Do we still trust and believe that if we really give it all to Jesus that he will lead us home? Or are we only content to follow when we can maintain a belief that it’s in our earthly self-interest? If I follow Jesus I’ll feel better. If I pray all of my earthly concerns will disappear. If I go to worship, I will be regarded as one of the haves and not the have nots.

What if we follow because we have confidence, not in worldly success, but solely in Jesus? Can we still give if there is no security, no glory, no guarantees of an easy life? Can we close our eyes and see with our other eyes?

I discovered a great German word when I was researching my book on Hard Times which is coming out soon. The word is Sehnsucht and it is hard to translate. It’s a compound of the verb “to long for” and the noun “addiction.”[i] This longing is a kind of homesickness that leaves us permanently unsettled.

C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer, often talked in these terms. He felt it was kind of the character of a Christian to be longing. He once wrote to a friend:

“[I]t is just when there seems to be most of Heaven already here that I come nearest to longing for a patria…[a homeland]…All joy…emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”[ii]

Gather your longings because they can be longings for the home that is waiting. Our best havings are wantings. And what we want is that home.

So when Jesus goes on to talk about being ready, keeping watch, being prepared for the bridegroom who comes in the night or preparing the house against the thief who comes in the night, he is just saying once more, “Don’t be afraid. God’s good pleasure is to give you the kingdom. All you have to do is let go of what you are clutching…let go of all those things that you think are so important that you can’t imagine being yourself without them…let go of those things…close your eyes…and see with your other eyes.”

We’re not home yet. We still get caught and confused by the volatile mixture of longings and desires that jostle around within us, threatening to consume us. But Jesus comes. The voice of the Beloved who knows your heart and knows who you are better than you know yourself. Jesus comes and says, “Come away with me. Gather your longings.” And because Jesus comes, those longings may have shifted during the journey. Be careful opening those overhead bins because all heaven is liable to break loose. Thanks be to God.

Luke 12:32-40 [NRSV]

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

"But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

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[i] D.G. Kehl, “Writing the Long Desire: the function of Sehnsucht in The Great Gatsby and Look Homeward, Angel,” Journal of Modern Literature, Dec. 22, 2000, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-80682150/writing-long-desire-function.html.

[ii] W.H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C.S. Lewis (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1966), 289., quoted in Terry Lindvall, “Joy and Sehnsucht: The Laughter and Longings of C.S. Lewis,” Mars Hill Review 8, (Summer 1997), pp. 25-38, http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr08/hall1.html#text14.