The Home of the Soul

(is where Jesus is!)

August 24, 1997 John 6:56-69

Ephesians 6: 16 - 20

(also Psalm 84 How lovely is Your dwellingplace, O Lord)with

INTRODUCTION

When you hear the word "home," what first comes to your mind? Do you think of a family around a table? Or, maybe the house where you lived when you first went to school? Do you think of the place where you now live? One of our denomination's advertising logos, which Merritt Nielson helped develop a long, long time ago is "Our Church Can be Your Home!" "Home" is a loaded word.

HOME IS MORE THAN A PLACE

"Home" is always more than a place. Home is always where love connects with trust and covenant on a lasting basis.

Place is important to me. I grew up my formative years traveling from place to place without a house we called our own. I remember the first little bungalow my parents rented, and I had a bedroom that was my own. When my parents moved to a house they bought a few years later I was so upset at leaving that place that I went back and crawled through a cellar window into the empty house and went up to my room and just sat there. I thought I was losing my home, my place. But it wasn't "home" any more. I quickly found out that home went along with the relationships— home was wherever there was that long-term love and trust and covenant.

That same phenomenon happened all over again when I came to this campus. I was so frightened and alone— and then little by little this place became home to me. Over the years I was a resident student here I made friends that are like family, even after more than forty years. But I found that sense of home was more than these grounds and buildings. After I had been away just a few years, pastoring in Ohio, I came back for a summer pastor's retreat. I knew a lot of the pastors— they were my brothers in Christ. But E.N.C. was so very, very different! My generation was missing! My "family" here was gone! I was NOT at home any more!

HOME IS WHERE LOVE CONNECTS WITH TRUST AND COVENANT ON A LASTING BASIS

Where lasting relationships are formed, our souls can be at rest. That slogan "Our Church Can Be your Home!" is a powerful promise. God help us to make it more than a slogan!

OUR HEARTS CRY OUT TO BE AT HOME

As we go through life our hearts keep crying out to be really at home. Again and again the Bible authors capture this sense of the hunger of the soul. David says it so powerfully and so beautifully in our morning psalm (84) "How lovely is your house, O God! My soul longs and cries out to be with you all the time! And you make me at home, too, O God! Why, even the little sparrow has found a place with you!"

David had found the paradox of being "at home "with God while at the same time being "on pilgrimage" to keep that covenant, and maintain that trust, and finally find his eternal home with God. Both psalm 23 and Psalm 84 are very true. "The Lord IS me shepherd!" and "My soul cries out for the living God!" David knew the peace and joy of living in covenant with God.

Our earthly homes are to be places of covenant love. The heart can find rest where love connects with covenant and trust on a lasting basis. Some covenants are clearly understood: Marriage is first of all a solemn covenant. Some covenants are assumed: Every time parents dedicate children they make a covenant to be there for them! They're saying to those children, "God help me, you can count on me! You can trust me!" We assume a similar covenant between the children and their parents: "I'll obey you! I'll be loyal to our home! I'll trust you and love you, too!" (Maybe we ought to formalize that sometime on Mother's Day or father's Day??)

COVENANTS ARE COSTLY

They are not set up for ease and comfort. Love and trust and covenant do not always have smooth sailing. "For better for worse, in sickness and in health..." those hard times come. But when love and loyalty are there, a home is being forged, and there is something precious beyond all understanding. Happy indeed is the earthly home where loyalty and love overcome temptation and the pathways of least resistance. There is probably not a family here that has not been wounded with the pain of trusts betrayed and covenants abandoned. Our homes have been attacked, and are being attacked from many different directions. There is no simple answer to this great need. But here in this church home we can and must support one another and pray for our homes that love and covenant and trust will prevail.

THE HOME OF THE SOUL

There is a home for the human soul that is the place where love and trust and covenant come together in a divine-human connection. Jesus came to establish a family relationship with every one of us. Trust — love— and commitment. Covenant. Jesus gives us all three— he trusts us. He loves us. He makes the commitment of his Presence with us for ever and ever. Jesus asks us for a commitment in return. "I am the only way," he declared. "No one comes to the Father except by me," and "no one comes to me unless the Father grants it and draws them."

"If you want to be with me," he told the crowds, "you'll have to share in my body and my blood." It was a hard saying. It wasn't easy to understand. it was hard to simply trust.

CONCLUSION

Many simply turned and walked away. We want a home for our soul, they thought. but we know better than this Man what we need. Then they simply walked away.

Jesus turned to the disciples. It is the climax of this chapter— the climax of this whole lesson about miracles and bread and the home of the soul. "Will you go away, too?" Jesus asked.

Peter spoke for the other eleven— and I want you to know he speaks for me as well. "Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life! You are the Holy One of God!"

It was underlined in her Bible— Marion Turkington "went home" to be with the Lord last Friday— these words from the morning's Psalm:

" For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I wold rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God IS a sun and shield; HE bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in thee!" (84:10-12)HAPPY IS THE PERSON WHO IS 'AT HOME' IN YOU, O GOD!

Prayer: O God, YOU are our home! You have the eternal words of life! Thank you that we can have the privilege of walking with you, and being 'at home' in your Presence, until the day comes when we will see you face to face in that 'place' you are preparing for all your family. In Jesus' name. Amen

Hymn 577 Jesus is All I Need, or 626 Gentle Shepherd