Creekside Church Sermon of December 8, 1996 "Going Home" Isaiah 40:1-11	Rev. David Bibbee
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Robert Fulghum said, "I know what I want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that...I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It's about a child of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of here and now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to happen." I want to take Fulghum's thoughts further and deeper this morning. There is something we all want for Christmas. It is not a thing. It underlies all our longings, and neither lights strung from New York to New Mexico nor all the presents money can buy can appease it. Knocking at the door of the heart is the longing for home.

It is so natural to connect Christmas and home. There was a survey which asked, "At what time do you most want to be at home?" The greatest choice by far was Christmas. You are driving the car with the radio on or pushing a shopping cart down the aisles listening to the music overhead when it happens. Perry Como sings, "There's no place like home for the holidays" or Andy Williams does, "I'll be home for Christmas", and even those who rarely give into sentiment and nostalgia feel a wave of something inside. In an instant we reel in memories of good times and fond traditions. I think of Christmas Eve at Grandma Bibbee's with the extended family and the culinary tradition of creamed chicken sandwiches and cherry tarts topped with whipped cream. Each year I have the wish to go back and experience it again, but why? Maybe it has something to do with a sense of security and well-being. Henri Nouwen said that, "Home is where you feel safe and completely free to be yourself--warts, wrinkles, and all." We all seek a place and a space where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came, as the old Cheers theme went. We all long for home.

It is important then to recall in this connection between Christmas and home, that we are celebrating a birth that happened far from home--"Away in the manger, no crib for a bed." We focus on a man whose home was elsewhere. "Foxes have holes," he said. "Birds have nests. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." And leading up to this birth we hear the prophet Isaiah address Israel in the wilderness. Wilderness was as far from home as you could get. Slavery in Egypt was tough, but forty years of wandering in the wilderness was tougher. The wilderness was a dark, dangerous, foreboding place where temptations abounded and there were no guideposts. After forty years, Israel never wanted to be in the wilderness again. But back again they were, this time in exile in Babylonia. Lost, abandoned, dejected with no hope for home. But Isaiah spoke to them for God. "Comfort my people, comfort them. Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord. Fill every valley. Level every mountain. Make a smooth, straight road for our God."

God had become a highway engineer who made a road on which His people could finally come home. Home to their land, but even more, home to him. I know a man who spent forty plus years in the wild. The jobs he held and the places he lived made it look like he had made it big time, but he was lost as lost could be. Alcohol became more important to him than his family or his future. Then God built a road to his door. In the middle of his insanity, he found a new want. I'll never forget the day he came to church, stood before the congregation and said, "Booze has ruled most of my life. I've spent too long running from my past, my pain, from people, and from God. God asked me to come home, and I am here to start." Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord.

It's a universal longing which we feel so keenly at Christmas. It becomes so pronounced at this time of year because the traditions, the carols, and the scriptures stir the needs and hopes within you. A simple tune may be all it takes to awaken the yearning; that desire to recover what we once had or greet what we do not yet have. It's what brings people to churches at Christmas who don't attend otherwise. It drives us back to friends and families seeking "something" we can't name and don't know how to get, but know we need. Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord.

We have to remember, though, that not every road we take will lead home. The road that most are inclined to take goes back. It seems that if you are going to find what you are looking for, it will be behind you; back when things used to be simpler, back when you were happy, back to what you learned in Sunday school. Back to where you were.

Two years ago I took John and Lisa to my elementary school, probably more for me than for them. Dad had cancer. Life was going to change, and I felt the need to retrieve some memories. The surrounding neighborhood had declined, and the buildings seemed to have shrunk. I peered through the window of my second grade classroom. Nothing appeared to have changed, though much of the interior of the school had been remodeled. I pointed to the teacher's lounge window that I had cracked with a marble when I was in the fourth grade. The sliding board and the monkey bars were the same I had played on. I could almost hear the sounds of the playground full of kids. It was good to relive the memories of thirty years ago, but then there was sadness, too. The yearning that brought me back wasn't satisfied...it was intensified.

Home is not behind us. Home usually doesn't live up to the memory. If you could go back there would be things you would keep the same, but there would also be things you would change as well. The sibling rivalry. The things that hurt you. The pressures that overwhelmed you. The unintentional things your parents said or did that you carry still to this day. The good old days aren't as good as we remember. Home doesn't live up to the memory. "Comfort my people," says God. "Comfort them. Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord."

If home is not behind us, and not in nostalgia, then it must be right here. Home is in the present moment. These are the good old days. In Nashville, an executive invited his new pastor to play a round of golf. The man was head of a publishing empire that reached from coast to coast. He was a man of power, prestige, and influence. On the fifteenth hole he pulled the cart off the fairway and parked by a willow tree next to a tumbling brook. He sat silently staring at the water. The young pastor pondered the why of the detour. And without looking, the seasoned, powerful man said:

I come here often. I like to play late in the afternoon, usually by myself. I usually just stop here and think. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I hum a tune. I really love this spot. It's one of the few places I don't have to worry about how I look, or what I'm going to say, or how to respond to a request or question.

This could be a place to call home, couldn't it? All of us need a space like this--on the course, on the lake, on a walk, in a favorite chair...a place where you are most yourself; a place where you drop your guard and are available to God; a place where you muse over ultimate thoughts, a place that is safe where within the wings of God's embrace, your soul shall be filled with everlasting joy and there are no regrets for yesterday or fears for tomorrow. It's the home, which, as someone said, is defined not by an address but an attitude.

Yet as essential as it is to have such a space, it is still not home. We still have that sense of something more which we will not be at peace until we possess. Isaiah reminds us that, "People are no more enduring than the grass." Can't make time stand still. If the home we long for is not behind us and isn't fully present now, then it is yet to be. It has not been seen, nor fully experienced, yet it is precisely the hunger for it and the dissatisfaction with our versions of Home Improvement which tells us it exists.

Why would anyone long for it if it were not so? It would be the ultimate cruelty for God to implant a longing within us with no possibility of appeasing it. This is precisely what led Saint Augustin to observe that God has made us for Himself and that our hearts are restless, homeless if you will, until they find their rest in Him. Christmas means so much precisely because it brings into our conscience our deepest need for home that will never be realized with anything short of God.

In the epistle of Hebrews it describes the condition of Abraham and his descendants who followed God to where they didn't know. "Each died, not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believed. They saw it way off in the distance and accepted the fact that they were transients in the world. People who live this way make it plain they are looking for a true home. If they were homesick for the old country they could have gone back. But they were after a far better country than that...a heavenly country." If you're longing is only for home, people, and things as they used to be, you could go back. As it is, we feel out of place...strangers who know the past or present is not home, at least not fully.

This is why the one who had no place to lay his head told us about his Father's house where there were lots of rooms. It is why St. Paul looked beyond and said, "Eyes haven't seen, ears heard, nor hearts conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." "Where's home?" We are sometimes asked. You could give your temporary address, or you may remember that road God has paved up to your front door that leads to Him.

There once lived a man who received a dinner invitation from the King. He was excited, but scared, too, especially by the long journey. He took months deciding on what clothes to wear, and he took months more reading books of etiquette, and finally he was ready. His bag was packed, and there was a little room left. Being a carpenter by trade, he packed a few tools to build a shelter along the way. The first day he traveled till mid afternoon, then stopped to build a small, safe shelter. Come morning, he was ready to leave, but noticed places where the shelter could be improved. Well, one improvement led to another. After awhile he had added a kitchen, a study, and garage, and forgot about the journey.

The King wondered what had happened, so he sent word to someone else who was coming to the castle to check on the carpenter. When the envoy found him, he was living in the second house. He had sold the first. The carpenter invited the guest inside to lunch, but the man preferred to eat outside. He explained that he was going to see the King. "After lunch, would you like to come with me?" "I think I got an invitation once, but I am uncertain of the way." "I know. I was uncertain once. I was a carpenter like you. I kept building places to stay in. But one day another traveler taught me to unbuild...to leave the home I had and travel on with love and trust. I was worried about what I left behind, but he said the King had everything worth saving waiting for me. Let's let go of this home and get on with the journey." "Can I sleep on it?" The carpenter asked. "I suppose. I'll sleep out here under the tree and wait for you. It's easier to see the things the King has put along the way when you're not inside looking out."

The next morning, they were ready. "Which way do we go?" Asked the carpenter. The envoy said, "I'll tell you what. Let's sit a few moments and think hard about the King. Remember the stories. Remember how much he loves you. When we remember him clearly as possible, consider the paths that seem to best satisfy your longing for the King. Let your desire for him be stronger than your fear of picking the wrong path." They sat through the morning until a feeling grew within them and they were off. The carpenter still felt the need to build a home from time to time. The unbuilder made sure he knew what he was doing, and let him do it if he really wanted. While the carpenter built, the unbuilder waited silently in the yard, and soon they would unbuild and begin the journey again.

In the meantime, the King kept the food warm, which he was very good at doing.

Are you going home for Christmas? I hope so. Someone is waiting for you. If it helps put you in the mood, sing a duet with Andy Williams, "I'll be home for Christmas..." But remember this...the home to which we are headed, isn't only in your dreams.

[The parable, the Carpenter and the Unbuilder, was written by David M. Griebner]

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