"They said, 'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon. And are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said, 'Prophets are not without honor except, in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.' And he could do no deeds of power there."
--Mark 6: 3-5a
You've heard the phrase, "You can't go home again," right? Today we see how the Gospel interprets this phrase. I experienced what this phrase really means back in the summer of 2009 when I packed up a van and left my childhood home in Flat Gap, VA and drove with my folks to General Seminary in the middle of Manhatten. As we pulled out of the driveway, I knew I would never come home again, and I cried for a good portion of the first leg of the trip. I was like a three year old who had has his favorite toy taken away from him, and I was scared. My sadness and my fear were because I knew that in a matter of months my dad would be selling that house, the one he and my grandfather built, and would move from the northern end of Wise County down to the southern end. In my case I could not literally go home again because home would no longer be home; in fact, I know who currently lives in our old house--one of my old high school teammates--and I could not think of anyone better to be there. Still, I am not the same person I was when I grew up at 5531 Hale Gap Road, and that place is not the same place it once was.
My childhood home in Flat Gap. I moved away in the summer of 2009, just a few months before it was sold.
It took me a while to realize that that is how God works. That is how God's story is told. It is told with forward movement, with a voice that calls us to look to the future. While God does beckon us to remember the past--think about the Exodus story and how often Israel is called to remember it--we are not meant to dwell in the past or let it define us--were that the case, the Israelites would have remained slaves in Egypt. We are not meant to focus so much on the past, and, maybe, we are not meant to go home again; after all, God went home again, and it wasn't very pretty.
Jesus returns to Nazareth after having spent several months in Galilee building up his ministry. We don't know why he came home, but we do know that when he did so he was met with hostility. The folks in his hometown no longer recognized the person in front of them. This was supposed to be the carpenter, not some fantastic prophet. The Jesus they knew from before was not the Jesus standing in front of them. The town Jesus knew was no longer his home. All of this made the people scared, and when people get scared they often get angry; in fact, in Luke's version of this story the people get so angry at this new Jesus that they try to kill him by throwing him off a cliff! It's obvious in Jesus' case that one really cannot go home again, and after this story Jesus never does return to Nazareth.
The only thing is change. As Ryoji Kaji said, "the act of living is an embracement of change." Life is about transitioning, and we are going through the same transitions as our forebears, the same transitions through which our children will go. The same was true for Jesus. He knew life was about change and growth, about God doing something new. But once again we find that, when confronted with his fearful generation, he is met with anger and folks who--literally--want to push this new thing of God over a cliff.
There was a documentary made in 2008, which I highly recommend, called Prodigal Sons. It's by filmmaker Kimberly Reed and tells her story of going home for a high school reunion, focusing on her reuniting with old friends and especially with her estranged brother Marc. But here's the kicker: this story is actually the first time Kim goes home because the last time she was there she was called Paul and was the quarterback and captain of the football team. The film is an excellent look at what happens when our past and our present come into contact and do not get along. Like Jesus, Kim faces folks who cannot accept this new person in front of them. See, in the case of Paul, he never actually did come home. And when Kimberly came home in his place she was met with anger, fear, and an unwillingness to accept this new person and move forward with this new thing God was doing.
Poster for filmmaker Kimberly Reed's 2008 documentary Prodigal Sons.
Certainly Jesus is not telling us that we should NEVER go home, nor is that the point of Ms. Reed's documentary I love going back to Wise County and seeing family and friends, and I'm sure that you have a special place to which you like to return or children that you love having come home for a visit. The gospel Truth for us, however, is that sometimes God does something new in our lives, brings about a change, and rather than dwell on our past, God calls us to move forward, to be changed "from glory into glory," as that great hymn says. Sometimes, as we move forward, as we are changed by God, we are met with the kind of hostility that Jesus knew in Nazareth and that Kimberly Reed knew when she went home. And sometimes we are the ones who cannot accept the change. Sometimes we are the people in Nazareth or the people in Kimberly Reed's hometown, and we struggle with accepting this new thing that God is doing.
We know what this is like in the Episcopal Church. We've been hearing the voice of God calling us to change for 40 years! We heard God calling us to change in 1974 when we ordained women for the first time, and in 1979 when we ratified that "new" prayer book, and again in 2003 when we consecrated Gene Robinson the first openly gay bishop in Christendom, and once more the next year when we made Katherine Jefferts Schori the first female primate in Christendom. In each case there were those of us who could not seem to accept the change, who were afraid. Yet God was in the midst of the change, constantly calling us and moving us forward, changing us from glory into glory. And God will continue to do so, especially in light of new resolutions coming out of our General Convention recently.
So I'd like us to ask ourselves: what change is God doing in my life? Where might God be pulling me? What might God be asking me to let go of, so that I am not dwelling on the past but am moving forward with Jesus as my guide? Or what change is happening in my life that I cannot seem to accept? How can I move forward with God's grace through such a transition?
What the folks in Nazareth could not see, what the folks in Kimberly Reed's hometown could not see, (and what I could not see as the van moved out of my driveway and on its way to New York) was the holiness in the newness. In all of those cases it was near impossible to see God at work in this crazy new thing. But do you know why God is constantly doing something new? It's because God is not through with you! If God were through with you, God would just leave you sitting there. But because God is tugging you in new directions means that God still has work for you, still has a vision for you, still wants you to be changed from glory into glory.
Do not forget that whatever changes and chances life throws at you, God is in the midst of it. God is at work in whatever crazy transitions you might find yourself in. We may not be able to go home again, but that's because our home is with God. And God never leaves us! God is always calling us forward, always walking beside us, always doing something new and exciting in our lives. Know that God is with you as you continue to move forward. Because God is not through with you!
