A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 27, 2007, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            Like me you may have followed the story of a boy scout who got separated from his troop early this spring and was lost in the North Carolina mountains for three days. When the searchers finally found him—disoriented but not harmed—a CNN interviewer asked the boy’s father how he came to be lost.  He explained that the boy had left the campsite to try to find the nearest highway so he could hitchhike back to Greensboro .  “Why was he doing that?” the reporter asked.  “He was homesick,” the father replied.

            That aching to be back where we belong that we call homesickness is built into the human condition.  We all know what it feels like—and from time to time we recognize that there is a spiritual dimension to the feeling.  St. Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.  Hildegard of Bingen wrote, “God’s Son became human in order that humans would have a home in God.”  The feeling that all is not right with our lives can lead us a long way astray—into all sorts of self-destructive behavior and all sorts of strivings to make ourselves and our lot in life better than it is. I think our real home may be a lot closer to us than we think sometimes.

            That was even true for Jesus’ friends.  Philip begs Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  There’s that spiritual homesickness again: if we could only know what God is like and where God is in our lives, then we could be in peace.  Then we can be satisfied.  Jesus’ answer is that you don’t have far to look.  If you want to know what God is like, all you have to do is look at Jesus.  In Jesus God is revealed to be amazingly inclusive—loving all sorts of people, including the people who were outcast in his culture.  God is revealed in Jesus to be astoundingly life-giving and forgiving—again and again telling people that they needn’t be ashamed and inviting them into new life.  In Jesus God is revealed to be full of joy—eating and drinking with his friends, even on the Sabbath, and asking his friends to continue to feast in his name.  “I have come so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete,” he said.

            I don’t know what answer Philip was expecting. Nor, for that matter, do I know what most of us think we are looking for when we long for an end to our homesickness.  All I know is that God seems to be remarkably consistent.  When God the Holy Spirit appears on the Day of Pentecost, God continues to look and act a lot like Jesus. The Spirit is amazingly inclusive: bringing together people from all races, classes and cultures.  The Spirit is astoundingly life-giving: fulfilling the prophecy of Joel and filling the young with visions and the old with dreams.  The Spirit is full of joy—so much so that the bystanders think the faithful are full of new wine.

            This message is that the end of our homesickness is already here and God is closer to us than we know. It’s a message made for this Memorial Day weekend.  Here in the Northeast, this is the start of summer.  The pools are opening and people are breaking out the barbecues and taking time off.  We hit this time of year with a little ambivalence, enjoying the rest and the change of pace, but worrying that we ought to be doing something, producing something.  I, for one, if I laze around long enough on my day off, will find myself feeling anxious: I ought, I think, to be up doing something, making something, growing something, accomplishing something.  I once hosted a visitor from the cornfields of Illinois who wanted to see New York .  She amazed me by “doing” the Metropolitan Museum of Art in just over an hour.  Seems she managed to walk through all the rooms in that time.  She looked at it all—though she really didn’t see much.

            Perhaps life is like an art museum: less about doing and more about being. I love the line from our Psalm this morning that says that God made the largest animal on the planet “for the sport of it.” Just for fun. Not to produce whale oil or to make or do anything.  Just for joy.  Could be we were made for the same reason.

            Church growth author Kelly Fryer tells of a time in seminary when she was listening to a dry lecture on a beautiful spring day.  The lecturer noted that all eyes were glazing over, so mercifully closed his notes.  Before he dismissed the class, he drew a big arrow on the blackboard—an arrow in heavy chalk pointing down.  He told the class, “If you understand that, you understand everything you need to know about being a Christian,” and then he left the room. Fryer admits that the most logical thing she could get out of the down arrow was, “He thinks we’re all going to hell.”  But when the class met again, the professor started by drawing the same arrow and answering the question in everybody’s mind: “Here’s what this down arrow means,” he said. “God ALWAYS comes down.  God always comes down.  There is never anything that we can do to turn that arrow around and make our way UP to God.  God came down in Jesus. And God still comes down, in the bread and in the wine, in the water and in the fellowship of believers.  God ALWAYS comes down.”
            The message of Pentecost and the message of the first day of summer is this: relax and enjoy. Open your eyes and take joy in being.  You needn’t pine and be homesick; don’t need to strive and fret and claw your way back into the good graces of the universe.  God comes down.  You are already home.

                                                                                    AMEN