Sermon on Home

I promised to post some of my other sermons but never did. However, I am going to post this one.
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Your house is the place where you live. If you ask me “Where is your house” I will say “my apartment is on the third floor of SDA”. However, there is a big difference between a house and a home. Your home is the place you go back to, the place you are from.
Two weeks ago I met Noel (new teacher) and Carle (ADRA worker). After church we were talking and Noel asked me “Where are you from?”

I really don’t like that question, because I’m never sure how to answer it. I asked her “Do you mean ‘where were you born’, ‘where were you last’, ‘where have you lived longest’, or ‘where do your parents live’, because there’s a different answer for each of those things”. I really don’t know where my home is. I doubt I will have a home until I get married and have a family, then my home will be with them.

I have asked my students where their homes were. Many have said that they live with relatives here in the city, but their homes are somewhere else.
Why do we need two definitions for house and home?
What makes a home?

The dictionary includes this in its list of definitions:
(this is the only definition in the dictionary that is different from “house”)

a. An environment offering security and happiness.
b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

A house can be a prison if it does not offer security and happiness. I hear about a lot of people who run away from home, but I don’t think anyone ever runs away from home. Some people leave a nice home because they think it is a bad home, and that the world outside is better. They usually learn they were wrong quite quickly. Other people leave a bad home. A bad home is no home at all, because it lacks love, security and happiness. No one runs away from security and happiness. Some people leave security and happiness so that they can have excitement and adventure, but that’s not running away from something, that’s running towards something.

America has a big problem with divorce, many of my friends dread going to their “home” because of the arguments they will find there. Many more don’t go home. Sometimes they go to their father’s house, and sometimes they go to their mother’s house, but they don’t think of either as home. “Home” is something that they lost a long time ago, something they may never have again.

Home is part of who you are. The further you are from home the stranger things are, and the stranger you appear to everyone around you. A home tells you how to see the world. When you see something new you compare it to things you already know. When you hear a new idea you compare it to other ideas you have heard. If you have no home; no way of deciding what you think of things, then all you will see is confusion.

It seems strange to me that so many people have this problem. Why should there be a difference between where we live and “home”? Animals don’t seem to have this problem. Granted, I can’t ask them how they feel about things like that. I’ve tried asking the marmots, but they always run away from me, and even if I catch them their English isn’t very good, so it’s hard to get any useful information out of them.

Marmots aside, what makes a “home” for people?

You might say that home is where there are people who know you, but that’s true of a lot of places that aren’t home. Students at a university often make more friends than they do at any other time in their lives, but not many of them think of the university as “home”.

You might say that home is where your family is, but a home is more than a family. If a family does not have love then it is only some people who live in the same house and happen to be related to each other.

You might say that home is where you have lived for a long time, but that isn’t true either. When I was very little my mother would leave me with an old Cuban woman who would babysit me while she was at work. This woman had lived and worked in America for several decades, but her house was still decorated to remind her of Cuba, because Cuba was her home, not America.

All these things tell me that home is more than just a place, and not every place can be home. In fact, no place will ever be a perfect home. Every home will have problems. There will be times when it feels more like a home, and other times when it feels less like a home.

How can we say that one home is more like a “real” home than another? If we say that then we must have an idea in our mind of what a perfect home is, something that we are comparing each place to. Our minds must have an idea of the “perfect” home, and places where we live are either more like home or less like home depending on how they compare to that idea.

Most animals also have an idea of a perfect home. My parent’s house has a small river running in front of it. In the river there are beavers. Beavers build dams to hold the water back, creating a pond. In this pond they build a house made of sticks and mud. Inside the house they are safe from the coyotes, bears and bobcats that would love to eat them. To build a dam the beavers need a stream or a small river. If the river is too big then they can’t build a dam across it. If the land is too flat then the water goes around the dam as soon as the beavers build it, which not only ruins the place for the beavers but also floods roads and makes the farmers angry. If the river is too fast then the beavers can’t build the dam in the first place. Also, it place needs to have a lot of the trees that beavers like to eat.

In other words, beavers need the same kinds of things that we need. They need food, they need the right kind of river, and they need a place where they and their family will be safe. Beavers don’t always build a dam and a house. Sometimes they will just dig a hole in a river bank to live in for a while. Sometimes people find beavers miles away from the nearest river. However, this is not the beaver’s home. If a beaver is miles away from the water that means it is searching for a new river. If a beaver digs a hole in the riverbank it isn’t thinking of settling down and raising a family, it is just passing through.

All of our homes here on earth are holes in the riverbank; things that we build to sleep in for the night. The good ones, the ones that seem most like home, are the ones that resemble our true home, which is not in this world. You can tell this world is not our home, because the world simply doesn’t work the way it should.

The economy is unfair. If you don’t work you will starve, but if you DO work you might starve anyway. A dishonest man will probably become richer than an honest man, especially if he is dishonest in a way that isn’t illegal yet.

War is unfair. It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong, all that matters is who has the bigger gun.

The environment is unfair. If I pollute a river it doesn’t affect me, it affects the people downstream. If my country pollutes the air your country suffers, but mine might be just fine.

There is more to it than just “who to blame” though, the world doesn’t work the way it should because there if it did there wouldn’t be greed, war and pollution in the first place. Human beings were not designed to like sin, this is one of the reasons why sin kills us.

So, if we are in a country that is not our home, a country full of death that can never be our home, we must find our home and go back to it.

Phil 3:20-21
But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

We are in a country that is not our home, and it is a dangerous country. Just before Jesus was arrested and put to death he prayed for the believers, because he knew he would be leaving them in a place that was not their home: a dark, dangerous place full of enemies.

John 17:14-19
14I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

The earth is a terrible place. It is full of impossible situations, suffering, hunger and hatred. The entire earth is decaying, slowly crumbling from the long years of sin: years spent in rebellion against its creator.

When I say this a lot of people get up and ask me “how can you be so pessimistic and depressing? The world is a wonderful place if you just learn to be happy! Look at the beautiful sun outside, see all the people who love you! Sing a happy song and stop being so negative about things.”
I’m not talking about those things though. The earth is still a terrible place. Perhaps you yourself aren’t sad right now, but you are not the world. The world is crippled by sin, ruined by greed and hatred.

The world is falling apart because it is separated from God. The Bible says that it is “groaning”. All the nice things on earth, the loving people, the beautiful days, green grass and flowers, are the faint image of our true home. They are light shining through the windows of our home, which seems to be separated from us by an absolutely impossible distance.

In the story of the prodigal son, the son takes his inheritance from his father early and leaves. By doing this he was saying “I wish you were dead, all I want is your money”. He didn’t show either love or decent respect for his father. He took the money and went to a foreign country, where he spent it on “wild living”. Soon his money was all gone, and to make matters worse there was a famine in the country. He got a job feeding pigs, and he was so hungry that he wanted to eat the pigs’ food.

As he was hungrily looking at the pig’s food he came to his senses.

Luke 15:17-24
17"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' 20So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
22"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. 24For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

The further we are from God, the further we are from home. The things that make a home; love, understanding, security, trust, comfort, warmth and good food, are things that God meant for us to enjoy and things that he wants to give us. Granted, we may not always enjoy warmth and good food when we are working for God, but that is because working for God means working in the world. In either case, without God we can never truly enjoy any of them. We may spend our inheritance on fast living like the prodigal son did, but we will never know the comfort of home.

Some day God will take us to our true home. When he does that, no matter how far you travel or how much you see you will always be at home, because you will be in God’s heavenly kingdom.

Revelation 21
3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
Things to fit in: comment on how the world doesn’t work the way it should.