Sermon: Coming Home to Life in Christ

Our disciples have been on an extraordinary journey. It was only a few years ago, as Luke tells us, that Jesus called his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galillee. That day, Jesus taught the crowds from Simon’s boat, then told him to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” […] When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. […] Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be [fishing for] people.” The fishermen left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:1-6)

But now Jesus’ ministry was over. The Passover Festival, was over, with its tension between the Romans and the Religious Leaders and that Itinerant Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. The drama of the past few weeks—of losing their beloved leader, healer and friend to the cross, their identity as disciples of Jesus—was over. Simon Peter himself denied even knowing Jesus three times before the cock crowed. (John 18:17, 25-27) And so, when it was all over, the disciples when home.

“The American naturalist Henry David Thoreau once observed that half of every walk is nothing more than retracing our steps as we go back home” (Every Step a Prayer, page 93.)

It reminds me of the pilgrimage that the disciples must have made, after the Passover in Jerusalem. They go back to the seashore where their work was, where it all began. But now something is so different.

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You know that saying, “You can never go home again”? I experienced a bit of that myself when I return to my childhood home on the prairies in central Canada.

I grew up in a small town in Southern Manitoba, called Waskada, a village of 300 people. It was the late 1970s, before the invention of video games or iPads so when you told your kids to “play outside”, they actually did. I was one of those kids. I remember… the mansion I lived in on the Prairies and the grass that was taller than I was! I loved to play outdoors. We stayed in that town until I was about 10 years old. I returned some 20 years later and couldn’t believe how it had changed… my mansion had somehow transfomed into a modest little blue house, and the grass, well, it had shrunk along with everything else! I laugh now! Because, of course, it wasn’t our old house, the grass or the town… it was me who was different. It was me who realized with some nostalgia too, “I could never go home again.” Home had become more of a feeling than a real, actual place.

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“On the night of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going home to his Father and will prepare a place for them because ‘in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places’” (John 14:20). Jesus goes home to God. The disciples make their way back home, and encounter a new experience of home they may never have anticipated.

In our scripture reading today, the disciples take the two day walk from Jerusalem back to the Sea of Galillee, back to the familiar, the routine of life… looking around its boats and nets, fishing and seashores. It’s the beach where their discipleship began. When things were full of possibilities. Where they were called. But now… the world is upside down. They take their boats out at night, and catch nothing. The disciples are in a dark place, a night of the soul. A night before the dawn…

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Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach. The disciples did not know that it was him. They were looking at him with their eyes, but seeing only the figure of the man on the beach asking for fish. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”

To the right side… to the right side of the boat…? to the right side. In truth, every side is the right side in a boat… Every side. Every where. Abundance. Christ is on every side. Christ was the man on the beach… Master! Simon Peter exclaimed jumping into the se, soaking himself through and through with joy! As he pulls the nets up onto the shore!

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The disciples experienced a dramatic shift in their center of gravity. That usual pull of home that—at its very best—pulls us back each evening to a place of comfort and familiarity and identity, for the disciples that sense of home shifted to the everythingness that is Love Made Manifest: Christ. Christ’s Love became their home. The life of discipleship — of learning and growing in service, community through love and forgiveness became who they were. Discipleship became their home. Like fish in water! An immersive discipleship experience of "big-L Living" that soaked them through and through.

(Big-L Living: with acknowledgement to Rev. Read Sherman of Trinity United Church, Montreal).

Christ was a stranger on the beach. Christ was the warm breakfast over hot coals. Christ is companionship of friends and colleagues. Christ was in the forgiveness of past sins and the promise of a new day. Christ is renewed meaning in the every day. This is where Christ is at home. In our lives. In our hearts. Our home is in Christ.

I believe, that this spiritual maturity is something we can only know we go out into the world adn return to the place where we started and see it with new eyes and new intention, and new direction. Where everyday work meets intention, becomes our vocation. Where we seek God not on the official spiritual path, but in our eathly endeavors everyday, infusing what we do with a new life and vitality! Living in a unity of finding Christ the human and Christ the Holy, in one. In us!

We are invited to be disicples. We belong with Christ, welcoming each other home to the abudance of the everything everywhere. Where you know who you are and to whom you belong. We are the seekers and we are the found. Finding that deep sense of …[breathe]… that we through faith and faithful community may come to find in Jesus the Christ… on the seasides of our everyday lives infused with the purpose of peace and oneness in our Creator God. Could you, could we, trust to invite Christ home into our hearts? Could you, could we, trust to find our home—our comfort and our strength— in Christ’s Way?

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Before I finish, I would like to read to you a poem called Away from Home, because it captures some of the sentiment of homecoming and coming to home to a life in Christ, Christ as our Journey and our Destination, Christ as our heart’s home.

Away From Home, featuring Phuc Luu (*adapted)

God sent us away from home, dressed with instruction clothed and turned toward a future that cannot be seen with frightening anticipation and the promise of blessing, now only points on the path, directional pointing clearly to something more— someone who made the universe and its sandy beaches and sky and moving earth beneath our feet. And we make our way on this seashore The tide ebbing and flowing with our belief Not to find ourselves, but to enter into the life of the beloved

Where what was lost is found Another new way of walking, making way To the place of our new birth where the miles we have traversed will be mapped upon the heart of the One who calls us to remember, to believe we will one day feel at home again in him.

AMEN.

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This sermon was prepared for Wesley United Church (Montreal) by Aaron M.

SCRIPTURE READINGS: Acts 9:1-6 (7-20), Psalm 30, John 21:1-19

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poem/Prayer Adapted from “Away From Home” featuring Phuc Luu, on The Work of the People website. Source: https://www.theworkofthepeople.com/away-from-home