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St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
January 26, 2025
Year C: The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
Our True Home
Let us pray.
God of love and peace, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Help us to remember the way to our true home. Show us the way back to you.
Amen.
Most of you know (because I’ve mentioned it a couple hundred times) that I grew up and lived most of my life in Jersey City, New Jersey, one of America’s great cities, a diverse and densely populated place just across the Hudson River from New York City.
And, although I’m glad and thankful to be here with all of you, I don’t think you’ll be surprised that I do get homesick from time to time.
I miss having my family and friends close by.
I miss being able to walk down the street to our local restaurant or hopping on the PATH train and spending a few hours wandering around New York.
Of course, Jersey City isn’t that far away, so I do get back there a couple of times a year, which I’m always happy to do.
But, you know, these homecomings are strange.
Since I don’t live there anymore, I stay in a hotel – which is both shockingly expensive, and it’s also weird, disorienting, to feel like a tourist in my hometown.
And walking and driving around the city, it’s still very familiar but also changed – old buildings are gone and new, often very tall, buildings have arisen.
The city has changed.
And over my three and a half years away, during my time here with all of you, I’ve changed, too.
So now, for me, Jersey City is both home and not-home.
I got to thinking about all of this when I began reflecting on today’s gospel lesson:
Jesus’ return to his hometown, Nazareth.
You may recall that two weeks ago, we remembered Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River.
Luke tells us that right after his baptism, while Jesus was praying, he saw the Spirit descend like a dove and he heard a voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
Like us, Jesus was changed by his baptism, filled with the Spirit.
If Jesus didn’t know it before, he could now be certain of the Father’s love, God’s indissoluble and unbreakable love.
Luke tells us that after his baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for his time of temptation and testing.
Satan gives it his best shot, but Spirit-filled Jesus resists.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, more than any particular satanic temptations, I think the biggest challenge for Jesus – and for all of us – was and is to remember – to remember our baptism - to remember God’s indissoluble and unbreakable love for us – to remember God’s love and grace during the hard and frightening times that we all face in our lives.
Jesus must have remembered the Father’s love – must have felt God’s love – and he survived – triumphed – in the wilderness.
No doubt, Jesus was changed by his baptism and by his days and nights in the wilderness.
And now, filled with Spirit, he began his ministry of teaching and healing, and the word about him began to spread all over, including back in Nazareth.
So, by the time Jesus returned to his hometown, there was a lot of anticipation and curiosity and maybe also confusion and doubt – could it really be Joseph and Mary’s son who was teaching like no one had ever heard before?
Could it really be Jesus – I mean, we’ve known him since he was a kid – could it really be Jesus who was healing all these people?
Well, today we heard the first part of Jesus’ homecoming.
Filled with the Spirit, Jesus goes to the synagogue and reads from the Prophet Isaiah, reading words that must have been familiar to his fellow Jews:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then spirit-filled Jesus boldly tells his Nazareth family and neighbors, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
That day in the Nazareth synagogue, Jesus declared his mission – his mission to bring good news to people who get a lot of bad news, to liberate those in chains, to give people vision, to declare the dawn of a new day, a new age.
What a moment that must have been.
This year, we won’t get to hear what happened next, but you may remember that it doesn’t go well – in fact, it goes so badly that the crowd wanted to kill Jesus, forcing him to flee his home.
Or, maybe, what he used to think was his home.
The truth is that in his baptism and during his time in the wilderness, Jesus must have understood that his true home wasn’t Nazareth or any other place on earth.
His true home was God the Father.
And the same goes for us – if we’re open and paying attention, in our baptism and during our wilderness times we can recognize that for us our true home isn’t Owings Mills or Jersey City or the United States or whatever land we’ve come from.
No, our true home is God.
In a few minutes, I’ll have the great privilege of baptizing young Henry.
In his first six months of life, Henry has already been quite the Christian – his parents have brought him to church very often – yesterday he went on his first church trip to the National Museum of the American Indian – and let’s not forget, he was our Baby Jesus in this year’s Christmas Tableau.
Thanks to his faithful family, Henry’s Christian life is already underway.
But today, in the water of Baptism, God will make an indissoluble, unbreakable bond with Henry – and there is nothing that Henry or we could ever do or not do that would ever cause God to break that bond of love with Henry or with any of us.
There’s no force powerful enough to break God’s bond with us.
No force powerful enough to separate us from God, our true home.
And when we experience this – when we remember this - when we know this deep down in our hearts – then we can be brave – we can bravely use our God-given gifts out in the world.
There is no force powerful enough to separate us from our true home.
And when we experience this – when we know this – when we remember this – we can be brave and, with God’s help, we can live out our “servant church” mission which continues Jesus’ mission of love and liberation.
Our mission is best summed up in two of the promises we make in the Baptismal Covenant – to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self – and to respect the dignity of every human being.
I always think, I wish it didn’t say “all” and “every.”
“Many” or even “Most?” Easy! I’m in. Sign me up right now!
But all persons, every human being? That’s really hard. That’s only possible with God’s help.
But this is our mission.
We are called to love not only the people who are easy to love but also the people we don’t approve of, the people who drive us up the wall, and the people we don’t like or trust one bit.
All persons, every human being.
We are called to love Republicans, Democrats, independents, and people who somehow pay no attention to politics or current events.
All persons, every human being.
We are called to love people whose ancestors sailed on the Mayflower, people whose ancestors were brought here in chains, the Native Americans some of us learned a lot about yesterday, and the people who have just arrived here, like our Afghan friends who are cherished by so many of us.
All persons, every human being.
We are called to love straight people, gay people, and transgender people.
All persons, every human being.
We are called, commanded, to love our neighbors as ourselves – all of them, every one.
This is our Christian mission, a continuation of Jesus’ mission, a most challenging mission, a mission possible only with God’s help, only possible when we, the Body of Christ, stick together.
In our baptism, our restless hearts discover that our true home is God.
In the temptations and trials of life, we discover that our true home is God.
There’s no force powerful enough to break God’s bond with us.
No force powerful enough to drive us from our true home.
And when we know this and remember this, Henry and all of us can be brave, and live out our Christian mission of love and service.
Amen.
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