The Fifth Sunday of Easter
20th April 2008
: 9:00am & 11:45am
Preacher: The
Everybody needs a home and in today’s gospel Jesus
assures us that ultimately all of us have a home to go to, namely the heavenly Father’s house.
He even promises to
prepare a place for us in that house. This is a cause of tremendous hope for us.
When things fail, when we
feel tired and lonely, there is always home to go to.
Lets
go home, I want to go home. How many times and in how many different
circumstances have we heard people say those words or have said them ourselves.
Last week Elijah Fung and
myself were at an Anglican Communion workshop in
Home is where we are
safe. Home is a place of communion. If you know your going home, the trip is
never too long or too difficult, even if it means an 18 hour plane journey with a five hour lay over in another city.
We must go out into the
world to know how lovely our own home is. Imagine if we had no home to go to,
and sadly with the millions of refugees in the world today this is the case.
Nelson Mandela, in the
book Long Road to Freedom, published in 1994, by Little, Brown and Company
tells how during the long years of his imprisonment on
In the dream I had just
been released from prison--- only it was not
In fact there was no one
there at all, no people, no cars, no taxis. I would
then set out on foot towards
Finally I would see my
home but it turned out to be empty, a ghost house, with all the doors and
windows open but no one there at all.
To have a home is not just
to have a house. It is to have a set of close ties with people who accept us
for what we are, and who give us a feeling of belonging.
I was talking with a some one the other day who
described St John’s Cathedral as his only permanent home, although he
and his family travel the world
with work commitments St John’s is
his home, it is where his grandparents, parents were baptized confirmed married worshipped and
buried from, the same was
true for him and his family, it is a place they call home.
But inspite
of all the buildings we put up and the roots we put down, here on earth we do
not have a lasting home.
All we have as
Hence, it is not only on
earth that we need a home. We also need a home to go to when death brings down
the curtain on the day of our life.
Without such a home life
would be a journey to nowhere.
During the Last Supper Jesus
began to talk to the Apostles about the fact that he was leaving them. On
hearing this, they were plunged into sorrow.
But he consoled them with
these words, which are probably the loveliest words in the Gospel. There are many rooms in my Father’s house.
I am going to prepare a place for you. I shall return to take you with me, so
that where I am you may be too.
This means that we have an eternal home to go to
namely the Father’s house.
I remember when I was a
curate some 34 years ago, the rector of the parish where I was doing my curacy
asked me to meet him at the local pub for a drink, I arrived and he presented
me with a beer and said Father I am going home, he had just been diagnosed with
terminal cancer and had been given three months to live, so we began to prepare
for his journey.
For a child, and we are
all children of God, home is not so much a place as a relationship of love and
trust.
A child can move around a
lot and not feel homeless, as long as its parents are there.
It is the same for those
who have a close relationship with God.
We spend our lives
searching for God, and groping our way towards him. To die is to find him, to
meet him and see him.
To die is to go to God,
and to go to God is to go home.
Jesus shows us God, and invites us to trust that in life and in death, our place with God is secure. We need not be anxious.