Our church community is embracing the theme ‘Turning Toward Home’ for Advent. The inspiration comes from a little read scripture in the Hebrew texts of the prophet Zephaniah. It is a book in the Bible with only three chapters! I always love it when we have the opportunity to be shaped by words that have been present in the pages of our sacred texts yet often get trumped by the more popular, more familiar, those we assume ‘every knows’ and wants to hear again and again. Zephaniah is not one of those books. The actual text that inspired this theme comes from the third chapter and reads…..”At that time I will bring you home, at that time when I gather you.”
Home. It is word that conjures up such complex and varied emotions. We all want to be like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying, and believing, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” as we click our ruby slippers together and appear in the sweetness of our Auntie Em’s embrace. And for some people this is true. Home has been, and always will be, a place that is filled with love and acceptance and safety.
But we also know that this is not so for so many near and far away. We know that home can be a frightening place, a place of injustice and abuse, of scarcity and pain. Home can also be a moving target. Homelessness is quite the norm for many and as we watch the daily trek of refugees fleeing what they have known as home, loving or otherwise, we can quickly be thrown into a multi-layered image of ‘home’, one quite far from the comfy, farmhouse of Kansas fame.
Somehow I think this often overlooked scripture calls us to an awareness of something that only begins with a structure that contains a door. It calls us to be aware of the places and experiences that help us feel gathered into the Presence in which we also have a greater understanding of the ‘home’ that travels with us at all times. Our heart-home, our inner-knowing home, our Spirit self, that place that cannot be built alone but must be nurtured fully and daily. It calls us to hold dearly, oftentimes firmly, on the Home of the Holy One.
If we are lucky, or blessed, we had the early seeds of that inner home planted in our literal home….the family and house we grew up in, the communities that shaped us, the people that have held up a mirror to our best selves and also when we behave at our worst. If we are lucky, or blessed, that inner, heart home has become bathed in compassion and mercy in big, gulping helpings. If so, we are most likely to do the same kind of nurturing for others. We can help create a safe house for others.
In all honesty, my heart-home feels particularly broken open this fifth day of Advent. As we have yet once again been thrown into the violence of gunfire and senseless acts of killing, my Spirit self is very fragile. It would be very easy to withdraw and try to hide away from the world. But this world is also my home and I cannot abandon it, I cannot become a refugee of fear and anger and mistrust. To do so would be to run away from that heart home that also houses kindness and gentleness and big, heaping helpings of hope.
At this moment in time I have no words of wisdom or answers for what has been happening In our world and in our nation in particular. I can only rest in the comfort of words written 600 years before Jesus walked the earth…..’I will bring you home…..I will gather you.’
May it be so for all this day who suffer, who despair, who don’t know where to turn…..who can’t find their way home.
