Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
September 19, 2004 Launch Sunday
Hebrews 11: 1-3; 8-16. 12: 1-2
(The song – Over the Rainbow – plays and a film clip from the Wizard of Oz is shown)
“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There’s a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby.” Did you know that Over the Rainbow was voted the number one movie song of the 20th century? It is really not hard to understand why. It fits so well with the theme, the feel, of the film, The Wizard of Oz, and I also think it fits so well with the life experience of many of us. I know my heart has yearned for it – a lot of hearts have yearned for it – that land – that home – just over the rainbow. I believe that the song and the film continue to enjoy such an enduring popularity, touching generation after generation, because the journey of Dorothy and her friends is a profoundly human journey. It is not difficult for us to find ourselves in this story. We had a great time at Family Camp picking the character we most identified with. And, for people of faith, the journey of Dorothy and her friends is also a profoundly biblical journey.
The Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy isn’t the first to walk it…nor is she the last. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” At least Dorothy is told she is going to Oz. Abraham is told to pack up and head out into the unforgiving desert. Not to worry, he tells Sarah, his wife, God will show us the way (Sarah, of course is skeptical because she knows Abraham never stops to ask for directions!) Abraham is confident - God will show us the way… which is the way home.
Abraham and Sarah in the wilderness; Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness; Jesus of Nazareth, in the wilderness, indeed saying, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Even Jesus is on the road, on the journey, seemingly with no permanent home - all shelters along the way are temporary shelters. These biblical figures, each on his or her own Yellow Brick Road, never seem…at home. Always their vision seems out there… just over the rainbow. They dream of, indeed many of them see, another land, another home, and they know they aren’t quite there.
Hebrews again: “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland...as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” In his translation of the Bible, The Message, Eugene Peterson says, “People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home.” “Somewhere, over the rainbow, there’s a land that I dreamed of….” I don’t know if you can identify with that – that sense of earthly homelessness, that sense of yearning – but I know in my life, I sure can identify with it.
A pastor tells this story: “Up near me, at the county hospital, ministers take turns being chaplain for the week. I took my turn, and the week I was on watch, there was a baby born. Not a lot born in that little thirty-bed hospital. But I went there, it was about nine o’clock in the morning, and I saw all these people gathered, looking through the glass. There was that little bitty new baby, and it looked like a clan of people gathered around. I asked, ‘It is a boy or girl?’
“’It’s a girl.’
“’What’s the name?’
“’Elizabeth.’
“’Well, is the father here in this group?’
I looked back and leaning against he wall was a young man who said, ‘I’m the father.’
“’She’s a beautiful baby,’ I said.
“’Yeah.’ She was squirming and red-faced. Clearly she was crying, even though you couldn’t hear through the glass. I thought he might be concerned, so I said, ‘Now she’s not sick. It’s good for babies to scream and do all that. It clears out their lungs and gets their voices going. It’s all right.’
“He said, ‘Oh, I know she’s not sick. But she’s mad as hell. Oh, pardon me, Reverend.’
“I said, ‘That’s all right, but why is she mad?’
“He said, ‘Well, wouldn’t you be mad? One minute you’re with God in heaven and the next minute you’re in Georgia!’
“I said, ‘You believe she was with God before she came here?’
“’Oh, yeah.’
“I asked, ‘Do you think she will remember?’
“He answered, ‘Well, that’s up to her mother and me. It’s up to the church. We’ve got to see that she remembers, ‘cause if she forgets, she’s a goner.’”
If she forgets…I think sometimes that maybe I’ve forgotten. Ah, but somewhere, over the rainbow, there’s a land that I’ve heard of…in a lullaby, in a story, in my own heart. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I know I’m not yet there. And so, even when I’m home, it’s like I’m not quite home. I like the way Barbara Brown Taylor describes it: “On any given night, however comfortable we may be and however secure our futures may seem, we remain vulnerable to a certain heaviness of heart that can come upon us for no apparent reason at all - a sudden hollowness inside, a peculiar melancholy, an inexplicable homesickness. Have you felt it? The sense that there is a place you belong that you have somehow gotten separated from, a place that misses you as much as you miss it and that is calling you to return, only you do not know where, or how to get there. All you know is that you are not there yet, and that your life will not be complete until you are.”
She adds, “It is not a bad thing to know you belong somewhere, even if you are not there yet. I like to think of it as God’s tug, a kind of homing instinct planted in each one of us that nags at us, and turns us around, and makes us restless when we sit too long, because none of us is home yet. That is the deep truth. Some of us have houses and some of us do not; all of us stake out various places to be for days or months or years, but none of us is home yet.”
Again, I don’t know about you, but this rings true in my life – this certain restlessness, a sense of incompleteness, always wondering, even at the age of 55, what am I going to be when I grow up? Always feeling that, as much as I love Sebastopol and home, I am not home yet. So then, what about this home? Where do we find it? Where do we find this place, this dream that lies just over the rainbow?
A Fred Craddock story: “Before I was married, I lived in a place called Watts Bar Lake, a little village between Chattanooga and Knoxville. It was the custom in that church at Easter to have a baptismal service. My church immerses for baptism, so the baptismal service was held at the lake on Easter evening at sundown. Out on the sandbar I, along with the candidates for baptism, moved out into the water. Afterwards we moved across to the shore where the little congregation was gathered, singing around a fire and cooking supper. They had constructed little booths for changing clothes. As the candidates moved from the water, they went in and changed clothes, and went to the fire in the center. I did the same.
“Once we were all around the fire, Glenn Hickey, it was always Glenn – this was the ritual in that church – Glenn Hickey introduced the new people, gave their names, where they lived and their work. Then the rest of us formed a circle around them, while they stayed warm at the fire. The ritual was that each person in the circle gave her or his name, and said this: ‘My name is…and if you ever need anybody to babysit…’ ‘My name is…If you ever need anybody to make repairs around your house.’ ‘My name is…If you ever need somebody to do washing and ironing.’ ‘My name is…If you ever need somebody to chop wood.’ ‘My name is…If you ever need a car to go to town.’ “And so it went around the circle.”
“Then we ate and had a square dance. And then at a time everyone seemed to know, Percy Miller, with thumbs in his bibbed overalls, would stand up and say, ‘Time to go,’ and everybody left. He lingered behind and with his big shoe kicked sand over the dying fire. After my first experience of this ritual, he saw me standing there still and said, ‘Craddock, folks don’t ever get any closer than this.’” What a wonderful image of church to carry with us on this Launch Sunday or any Sunday for that matter. And also perhaps a hint of where home truly is.
We live in a broken world, a world shattered by wars, famine, political upheaval and unspeakable violence. I believe we live in a country, which for all its greatness and potential greatness, is increasingly and dramatically confronted with its own brokenness – a brokenness I fear is growing deeper and sharper as we confront the widening horror of pre-emptive war abroad and a widening gap between rich and poor at home – you’re not going to support a family on minimum wage working at Wal-Mart. As for the church of Jesus Christ, no one knows better than the church itself all the ways it is broken, just as no one knows better than you and I the brokenness of our own lives. So where do we look for home?
“Craddock, folks don’t ever get any closer than this.” I think that when we remember that all we finally have is each other, that we are a people who live by the grace of God alone; I think when we remember that we are more, far more, than what we consume or wear or where we live; when we remember that there is no “us” or “them” out there, there is just us all standing on the same side of God’s counter, blessing one another, all seeking the way home – when we remember and do that, I think we are just a little closer to home, to that land somewhere over the rainbow.
And a final thought about finding home. When I think back to Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Jesus himself – with their dream of that “better country” – it was a dream that saw with unflinching clarity the tragic and terrible things of the world, but yet was not shattered by them because the dream came not from this world but from something whole and holy within themselves which saw the world also as whole and holy because deep beneath all the broken and unholy things, they saw what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. And sometimes, even in the midst of our confused and broken relationships with ourselves, with each other and with God, we catch a glimpse of that holiness and wholeness, which no matter how buried and unrecognized, are still part of who we are. And, in those moments… we are home. And so, finally, perhaps that place, somewhere over the rainbow, is not a land way up high, as much as it is a land – a home – that exists right here. So as individuals and as a church, let us dare to live, let us dare to journey, with our hearts open to this most real aspect of all reality, namely that the world is holy because God made it and each one of us is holy as well. To live out of that reality is, little by little, to get just a bit closer to home.