Following the Shepherd #6 in Series
INTRODUCTION:
PRAYER
An
elderly man in Florida called his son in New York one November day. The father
said to the son, “I hate to tell you, but
we’ve got troubles here at home. Your mother and I can’t stand each other
anymore, and we’re getting a divorce. I’ve had it! I want to live out the rest
of my years in peace. I’m telling you now, so you and your sister won’t go into
shock later when I move out.”
He hung up.
The son immediately called his sister in the Hamptons and told her the news.
The sister said, “I’ll handle this.”
She called her father and said, “Don’t do
ANYTHING until we get there! We’ll be there Wednesday night.” The father
agreed, “All right.”
He hung up
the phone and called out to his wife, “Okay,
they’re coming for Thanksgiving. Now, what do we do to get them here for
Christmas?” (1)
There may a
few people who avoid going home but for most of us, going home is great thing.
Going home brings back all kinds of great memories. The Psalmist knew that.
That’s why he wrote what he did at the end of the 23rd Psalm. Let’s look at it
again.
Psalm 23
[1] The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
[2] He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he
leadeth me beside the still waters.
[3] He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths
of righteousness for his name’s sake.
[4] Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy
staff they comfort me.
[5] Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
[6] Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
The
portion I want us to look at today is the last part of verse 6: “and I will
dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” That passage always makes me think of
home.
I. HOME:
Growing
up, the first weekend in June was one of the highlights of the year. It was an
unofficial family reunion on my mother’s side. We would all gather at Aunt
Viola and Uncle Warner’s place. Aunt Viola was my mother’s aunt and one of the
interesting things about Aunt Viola was that she collected salt and pepper
shakers. She had display case after display case of her unusual collection. We
could and did spend hours and hours looking at them all.
One of the
goals we all had when we were on vacation was to try and find a salt and pepper
shaker that Aunt Viola didn’t have.
Anyway,
gather at Aunt Viola’s was an all day event. We usually go there about 10:00 am
or so. And we’d all turn to helping Uncle Warner set up the picnic tables, get
out the lawn chairs, horse shoes, badminton, croquet and volleyball sets. We’d
mark off the bases for the whiffle ball game.
We’d carry
out plates and cups and coolers full of drinks. It was the one day of the year
that nobody asked or limited how many cokes we could have.
And then
there was the food. Uncle Warner would have the barbecue going and there’d be
ribs, chicken, pork steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and sometimes even steak.
There was enough food to feed an army. And the smell in the kitchen was like
heaven. We had the usual, potato salad, coleslaw and macaroni salad. But then
there was also the big deep dish lasagna, the stuffed cabbage, the German
potato salad, sauerkraut and pirogis. There were about ten kinds of pickles.
And every condiment you can think of. It was a feast.
But that’s
not the only memory. After lunch we got serious about all the games. As my
cousins and I got older, whiffle ball became the game of choice. It always
turned out to be the teenagers against the old guys. In the heat of the
afternoon, after we were all played out and worn out, everybody would get quiet
and in the shade.
My cousins
and I would retire to Aunt Viola’s basement, where she had a Ping-Pong table
and this huge old radio. We’d fiddle with it and see how many foreign radio
stations we could pick up. We’d play some Ping-Pong. But we always made sure to
raid the freezer.
We thought
we were getting away with something. We’d open Aunt Viola’s freezer and sure
enough, there was always a new half gallon of Neapolitan ice cream. Danny loved
strawberry, Bruce loved vanilla and I loved chocolate. It was perfect.
We’d grab
spoons and snarf that down and then hide the empty container. I don’t know when
it started probably when we were about 10. And we’d all feel guilty about it
but excited that we’d gotten away with it for another year. It wasn’t until we
were 15 or 16 that we figured out that Aunt Viola knew what we were doing all
along. Not only that, but after that first year, she made sure there was a half
gallon of Neapolitan Ice Cream in the freezer for the gathering.
She never
said a word, but I do remember coming up the stairs one time and seeing aunt Viola
looking at us when the back door opened. I don’t know what Bruce or Danny saw
but I swear that as she looked at us, she grinned and winked, almost as if she
were saying: “Compliments of the House.”
That’s just
one of the memories I associate with Home.
II. THE
DESIRE:
Home.
Remember Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and ET the extraterrestrial? All either
one of them really wanted to do was go home. Home and that sense of home is so
important to us that we have tons of phrases like: “A man’s home is his castle. All the comforts of home. Charity begins
at home. Come home, all is forgiven. Don’t leave home without it. Keep the home
fires burning. Make yourself at home. There’s no place like home. Wherever I
hang my hat, that’s home.”
Home is a
place where we’re recognized, greeted, welcomed, loved and supported. And if
all of these sensations are missing from our lives, we become lonely and our
hearts ache and we long for those feelings desperately even if we don’t know
what they are. You can’t really define home but you CAN feel at home. And you
know WHEN you’re home.
That’s our
desire. That’s the longing we have. To be at home.
C.S. Lewis,
in his famous sermon, “The Weight of Glory” tells us that all of the desires we
have or experience on this planet are fulfilled in one way or another. We get
tired, there’s rest. We get hungry, there’s food. We get thirsty, there’s
water. But the one longing for which there seems to be no earthly satisfaction
is our great yearning for home. He says the reason we can’t find it here is
because Earth is not our home.
We all seek
a place where we are recognized and loved. Where we can fall into the welcoming
embrace of our fathers, mothers and other relatives. C.S. Lewis says: “That place exists. It’s called Heaven. And
until we recognize it as the place for which we were created, a place that no
earthly locale will satisfy, we will be doomed to wander in fruitless searching
for some pale counterfeit.
God is
waiting for us to come home. God leads us to green pastures so that we can find
rest in Him. God leads us beside still waters to quench our thirst. God offers
to restore our soul through the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son.
God has paved the way of life with paths of righteousness that will take us
safely through the valley of death.
God
prepares a table laden with a feast of love, mercy and grace. God calls us by
name. God wants to welcome us and reward us. So that goodness and mercy will
follow us not only through the rest of our lives, but all the way home.
All God
asks is that we receive this incredible gift and enter into God’s family. Because
God knows that our real home can only be found where God is.
III. THE
PROMISE:
A. That’s the promise isn’t it? That’s the promise Jesus made to each of
us, that we would dwell in the house or the mansion or the place prepared and
built just for us by the very hands of Jesus our Savior. If you remember the
passage from John 14, that’s what Jesus said. “I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you may be also.”
What will
it be like? I have no idea. I heard a preacher go on and on about all the
trappings of heaven, and how big the mansions were going to be and how good the
meals were going to be and how gorgeous everything was going to be. But the truth
is Scripture doesn’t say. Scripture talks about the glory and majesty of God, it
talks about the place prepared for us but it doesn’t describe the rooms. All I
know is that “It’s beautiful over there.”
I know this
for a fact. I know it firsthand because I saw the beauty reflected in the eyes
of an old Coastie as I held his hand while he died, and that’s what he said. It
was my first encounter
with death as a Pastor. It was at one of the first Churches I served.
I’d been visiting the father of one of the members who was in
the VA Hospital and was dying. Charlie was an ex-Coastie like me so we hit it
off pretty well and started swapping sea stories. I’d stop and see him about
once a week. That last week he wasn’t even aware that I was there.
One night about three in the morning, the doctors called the
family and they called me. When I got to the hospital, Charlie’s daughter and
son-in-law were already there. Charlie looked pale and shrunken. His breathing
was rapid and shallow. There was very little life left in him. It was obvious
that he wouldn’t be with us very much longer.
I had only been a pastor for about seven months, and really
didn’t know what to do or what to say. I hadn’t had any of those pastoral care
classes or read anything about what to do at times like that. So, I did the
only thing I knew how to do, so, I prayed. We all held hands and prayed.
I was scared to death. I don’t even know what I prayed. But the
whole time I was praying for them, I was praying for God’s guidance and
strength for me.
When I finished praying, we all looked up and there was Charlie,
his eyes were open and as clear as could be, the light had come back into his
eyes. He was looking up. It looked like he was looking at something a long
distance away. All of a sudden a beautiful smile filled his face. He took a
deep breath and said, “Oh, it’s beautiful
over there.” In his smile and in his eyes, I saw the glimpse of a
reflection of what was waiting for him and for us.
With those words, that daughter’s tears were wiped away. The
moment their father uttered those words you could see the hope and the promise
of eternal life alive in their eyes.
That family was given the rare opportunity to look into the
face of one who experienced the reality of heaven; one who experienced the
reality of the Resurrection promised by God.
I knew the Resurrection was a reality before I ever heard this
man’s witness. I knew it because Jesus said it was so. But I’ll never forget
the look of joy and anticipation in that Charlie’s eyes.
You could almost see the hand of Jesus reaching out to welcome
Charlie home. And that glimpse of the Home that waits for each of us was “Compliments of the House.”
We don’t
know what it will be like. But this we do know. Christ promised to prepare a
place for us. Christ promised He would be there with us forever. And Christ
promised to come back and take us there so we could be with Him and dwell in
the house of the Lord forever.
For me,
that’s enough. For me, it’s enough to know that we all want to go home.
B. For
some people, that’s not even enough. Let me tell you about Miss Emma. Miss Emma
and, Tom, her husband had been sweethearts since the seventh grade. From that
moment on, they were inseparable. They went and did nearly everything together.
In their later years, whenever I saw them, they were always holding hands. They
were still deeply in love.
Miss Emma
was devastated when Tom died. The day he died, she shut the blinds and drew
then curtains and darkness of her grief engulfed her.
A couple of
months after the funeral, on one of those dark, drizzly days, I stopped to see
her. I wasn’t sure she was home. The house was dark and all closed up; all the
blinds and curtains were drawn. I rang the doorbell, nothing. I knocked and
then I heard a quiet voice say, “I’ll be
with you in a minute.”
Miss Emma
finally came to the door, and as I walked down the hall to the living room, I
couldn’t help but notice that the whole house was sealed up like a tomb. We sat
down and went through all those first few minutes of formalities that you go
through when you have guests. And then all of a sudden Miss Emma burst out
with, “Is the resurrection real?”
It took me
back a little but I answered, “Yes.”
She in turn
asked, “Well, how do you know?”
We talked about the passages of scripture
which deal with the resurrection. And those where Jesus foretold his own death
and told us of the promise of the resurrection. We talked about how we have to
accept it on faith. It was all very Biblical and theologically correct. I would
have gotten an ‘A’ back in Seminary, but I could tell it wasn’t getting
through.
With a deep
sigh Miss Emma said, “I want a sign. I
need proof.” Unfortunately, at that moment, I didn’t remember Charlie’s
story. I’m not sure if it would have helped anyway.
I told her
the only sign I knew of was the empty tomb. She said, “That’s not enough. I want more than that. I NEED more than that.”
As we
talked the rain had been coming down harder and harder. It had gotten even darker.
The day seemed to match our moods. She was grief stricken and depressed. I was
depressed because I’d come hoping to help and it didn’t seem like I did a very
good job.
Before I
left, we prayed and I prayed for a sign for Miss Emma; something to ease her
grief and to help her know the truth of the resurrection. As I walked down the
hall, I felt sort of useless because I hadn’t been able to reach her. Nothing
had changed.
When I
opened the door, the first thing I noticed was that it had stopped raining and
the sun was starting to peek out of the clouds. The sky off in the east was
still dark and stormy but the western sky was beginning to lighten up. About
the same time that I heard the door close, I looked up. I immediately turned
around and rang the doorbell.
The door
opened and I took Miss Emma’s hand. I pulled her outside and pointed. We stood
there, hand in hand, in stunned silence as we looked at one of the most
beautiful rainbows I have ever seen. It was a full horizon to horizon rainbow.
The colors were brilliant and in stark contrast to the dark sky behind it. Miss
Emma started crying.
And then
she started laughing. She looked at me and through her tears and laughter said,
“He’s alive!!!” She hugged me, ran
inside and started opening curtains and blinds.
“He’s alive!!!” She knew her Tom was
Home. God knew what Emma needed the most. And that day, God responded in a way I’ve told over and
over again. And it came, “Compliments of
the house.”
CONCLUSION:
Home.
A place of welcome, where we’re recognized, greeted, loved and supported. Home,
a place where there is always room at the table. Home, a retreat to which a son
or daughter can return in triumph or defeat, in victory or disgrace, and know
they will be loved, no matter what. Home.
We all long
for a place where we know we are loved, and where we feel we belong. Some
people are blessed to experience some of that with their family. But all of us
have the chance to experience the ultimate homecoming through Jesus. Imagine
what it will be like when you see the outstretched hands of Jesus reach out to
you and say, “Welcome Home.”
The
Psalmist knew what awaited him, that’s why he wrote, “And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” That’s the
promise of our God. That’s the promise of Jesus. And it’s all “Compliments of the House” through the
Grace of God.
This is the Word of the Lord for this day.
________________________________
Bibliography
1. The Pastor’s Story File (Saratoga Press,
P.O. Box 8, Platteville, CO, 80651; 970-785-2990), December 2000
Other
References Consulted