26 August 2009

On the Journey

                                          A home of a different kind . . .  

              As members of Immanuel Baptist Church, we are the beneficiaries of a vibrant history and a rich heritage. From our very beginnings, Immanuel has been a unique congregation of Baptists in Western Kentucky. If you have grown up in Immanuel, you may be oblivious to its uniqueness. You assume that all Baptists churches are similar to Immanuel. In fact, Baptist churches like Immanuel become a more endangered species every day. If you don’t believe me, ask folks who have moved to other cities and have spent months looking for a place like Immanuel.

Our differences are immediately recognizable to first time visitors. Many visitors leave Immanuel wondering what kind of Baptist church they just experienced. Still others stumble into Immanuel and discover a place that feels like home. Across the years, I have heard people describe their experience of Immanuel as “coming home.” As your minister, I have often received these words as affirmation. They are to me a sign that we are doing the right things the right way, for the image of “coming home” has positive implications for me.

              When I hear someone speaking of Immanuel as feeling like home, the parable of the prodigal son immediately comes to my mind. I identify with the younger brother who ran away from home. There are times in your life when you just feel like you have to get away from home and family. You feel this inner compulsion to go out into the world and see things for yourself.  You want to make your own mark in the world. When others describe to you the world beyond your hometown, you want to see and experience it for yourself. I sense that the younger son in the parable feels this compulsion. He wants to experience the world for himself, and he believes with a wallet full of money he has all he needs. He goes to a far country. There he makes friends and lives a wonderful life for a while.

              I am not like the older brother. I do not believe his little brother spent all his money on prostitutes. The scriptures simply state that he squandered his money in riotous living. The older brother can let his imagination run wild, but I suspect his little brother lived in the far county as if only today mattered. He did not think of the future. Money has a way of attracting friends, and this young man drew a crowd. Nevertheless, when the chips were down, these good-time friends disappeared. In the end, the young man found himself alone in a far country having fallen about as far as a Hebrew boy could fall—he found himself feeding pigs. He was hungry and destitute.

              Finally, he remembers home. At first he chooses to see home from the perspective of a slave. Feeling the pangs of hunger and poking a finger through a hole in his garment, he remembers his father’s servants who have more than enough to eat, a dry place to sleep, and clothes that don’t look like rags. Facing reality, the boy has no hopes of returning home to live like a son—being a slave will do.

              This is where the story is both disturbing and comforting. It disturbs because the boy’s return home is not what he expects, nor what any of us would expect. If this home was composed of fathers and families we may have known, we expect the father to make the boy walk every painful step home. We expect the boy to have to apologize for his mistakes until the cows come home. There would have to be an acceptable expression of remorse for all the shame and pain he had caused. It is the collective wisdom of so many folks that it will do the boy some good to rub his nose in his failure and make him dangle in the wind for a while before granting him permission to come home and live like slave.

              This is not the father or the home described in the parable, and this is the comforting part. The father’s heart overflows with compassion not judgment. He runs to meet his son, embracing him with love. The joyful father ignores his son’s apology. He refuses to listen to any talk about a son living like a slave in his house. The father calls for his servants to bring the clothes appropriate only for a son. Unbelievable by any merely human standards, the loving father throws a party for the boy who has come home.

              It is my prayer, that when people describe Immanuel as having found their way home, they are thinking of our heavenly Father’s house. I hope they are speaking of a true spiritual home. I pray Immanuel feels like home because it is not what they expected it to be. I hope they experience more grace than judgment, more love for them than indifference toward them, more compassion than criticism, more acceptance than the challenge to prove oneself, and more understanding than suspicion. As your minister, serving both God and the people of God called Immanuel, I want our house to be like the father’s house amazingly different from any house we have visited before.

              I am not naïve however. To be and become a home reflecting the love and acceptance of our heavenly Father’s house, we have to believe that this is what people need at the deepest levels of their existence—forgiveness not judgment, acceptance not condemnation, love not indifference. We also have to believe that this is type of home we need—a home we long passionately to live in. Even more importantly, we have to commit ourselves to creating this home for ourselves and for others not by our good intentions and power alone, but through the power of Jesus living in us. Jesus has to be the builder of such a home. If he builds it, we will trust that we truly belong, and we will invite others to live in this house of peace and love called Immanuel.jamie