Today might be called homesick Sunday. Homesickness is what we feel when we look backwards to what once was and longingly look forward to what is not yet.  One reason we could call this homesick Sunday is because the Gospel would have us glance backwards nostalgically to Jesus’ farewell discourse in which he spoke of his departure.  And it would have us look longingly forward to Ascension Thursday and Pentecost when he promises to send the Holy Spirit.  But right now we are in the middle, the already but not yet,  that sort of homeless no man’s land.  You can’t go home again is a common theme these days.  And another reason we could call this homesick Sunday is that today is also mother’s day.  In some cases our mothers have passed on and in other cases they live far away.  A few are lucky to be with their Mothers today.  On Mother’s day we think of the home’s our Mother’s created for us or the homes we wish they had created.

 

Jesus offers us a cure for homesickness in our Gospel today.

He says that if we keep his word, that Father and Jesus will come and make a home within us.  If we keep his word.  There are times when we will read “Keep his word’ legalistically.  But I don’t think Jesus means a nervous and scrupulous keeping of his word.  I knew a priest who took his job of reading the bible and praying his prayers so scrupulously that he was three years ahead on his daily readings. He never had a moment of peace which is something else Jesus promises to leave us.

 

Jesus means a different kind of familiarity with the word.   IN John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of abiding in the word.  Jesus speaks of a kind of cherishing of the word, an enjoyment of the word, a soaking up and resting in word. Summer is upon us and sun lovers are looking forward to soaking in the sunshine and resting at the lake or beach.

That’s a metaphor for the abiding in the word that Jesus shares with us.

 

We hear a lot of bible readings in our church.  We hear more than most Baptists and evangelicals who have a short quote and a long sermon.   Is that enough?  If we don’t take the word home with us, if we don’t have the word in our homes,  we will always be homesick for the word.  My family is Roman Catholic who aren’t much for Bible reading and once when I visited home from Seminary,  my mom said to me, “I am worried about your brother, he is reading the Bible.”

 

One of my favorite poets wrote a book of stories about God:

Once upon a time a child, a little child, 

gathered her friends together and began to say aloud,

Friends, we can’t find God,

 isn’t it odd that we can’t find God,

And they agreed that it was odd indeed

 

And so the children made a vow,

Since the grownups had lost God somehow,

They would pick something out that would keep them aware,

Something they could take with them anywhere.

 

Not an animal or something too big

So the little one looked around and up and down

And in an out and came up with a list.

 

They had feathers, an eraser and string

A penknife, pencils and pieces of things

Whatever they had in their pockets to spare

So they took them out and began to compare.

 

But the shiniest object (when looking them over) the thimble was brightest
and so they decided the thimble was rightest
for taking along and for knowing God was staying long and in their every day.

They knew where to find
their peace of mind
playing a game of tag or 'fame'
they simply had to call out the thimble's name.

Then, one day, the smallest
child took a big fall and
dropped the thimble from her hand.
And God turned to sand.

Just then, a wise old woman happened along
and she asked the little cloud, "What's wrong?"
And the little cloud replied, "God's gone."

But the older cloud knew right away,
so she said to the little one, "Here's your thimble. I found it today."

Rilke illustrates beautifully our homesickness for the good Lord.  He creates a metaphor for our daily need to hang on to and to cling to the Good Lord.

I hope you will notice that in our Bulletin today the “one a day Gospel readings”.  These are there that we might use them.  The holiest of the Jews, the Hasidim have little boxes in which they keep the words of SS and they wear these on their sleeves or near their hearts.  The one a day Gospel verses are there  that we might keep them, love them and cherish them.   They are there that the Father and the Son might make a home within us.

 

It was especially St. Augustine who wrote about that great primal sorrow that is a homesickness for God.  Augustine says:

 

I discovered that I was a long way from you in a land of unlikeness.

And it was as if I heard a voice from above saying, ‘I am the food of the fully grown:  grow and you will feed on me.  But you will not change me into you as you do your ordinary food.  Rather you will be changed into me.

 

Augustine’s words become reality for us in this Eucharist.  We take in our very own hands the bread of life, and we feed on him in our hears with thanksgiving. We do not change the Eucharist into our bodies.  Instead it transforms us into the Body of Christ.

 

But what is true of the sacrament of the table is also true of the sacrament of the Word.  Whenever we read the scriptures with love and cherish them in our hearts we are changed into the Lord.  We will be filled with awe and great desire.  We will be overawed in the measure that we are unlike Jesus and we will glow with fire in the measure that we are like our Lord.