A place to call home

COMMENT

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WHEN we talk about following Jesus often we immediately think of the call to deny ourselves, pick up the cross and follow. While that is undoubtedly true, have you ever considered that we are also invited to join in on the second leg of the Journey?

There is a journey to be made beyond the cross: by this I mean the journey back home to the Father. It was the thought of going home that allowed Jesus to endure the cross. In Hebrews the writer tells us it was the joy of the welcome home by the father that sustained him through the agony and shame of crucifixion. To know you are going home is a joyful experience full of expectation and hope. The journey may be long and arduous but the feeling of heading home is beyond description.

I wonder if our understanding of the mission of the church would change if we grasped the importance of the second leg of the journey we are called to embark upon. The story of Jesus is one of rescue. He has come to find us and bring us home. You see we are people who follow the one who was sent by the Father and has now returned to the Father and invites us to finish the course and follow him in his footsteps back home. And as we journey home we become a community on the way inviting others to turn around and head back home with us. Mission using this model is compelling. It says to the weary traveller: ‘Come and join us. You belong to the family. Let’s go home together.’

A few years ago I sat down beside a young man who was estranged from his father. I had been invited to reassure him he would be made welcome if he was to pluck up the courage and go home. He looked at me and said: “I’m not sure my father wfill forgive me, but I’d love to go home.” There were tears in his eyes and tears in mine, because I knew his father was waiting for him. I remember asking the lad if he knew the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. He looked at me with a blank expression. When I told him the story he said: “That’s me!”

I wonder if we sometimes make the gospel too complicated. The more I live, the more I see that people, above all else, are looking for a place to call home. A place to belong. The church wfill only make sense if we recognise ourselves as strangers who are becoming pilgrims in community going home.

The first Christians had a sense of anticipation. They understood the old order was passing away and a new order was coming into being. The resurrection of Jesus speaks to us all about our future wellbeing. It tells us not to become too attached to the material world we live in. It is beautiful and we have to care for it but this is not home.

We are creatures made for another environment. Creatures made to breathe a different kfind of air. We are spiritual beings.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m stfill passionate about making the material life of the poor better – and we have a responsibility to seek to bring the Kingdom in on Earth – but we need to be remfinded that the things we get overexcited about in our congregations are often things that have no real bearing on the journey home. Too often we want to hold on to the identity we have made for ourselves in bricks and mortar, when the reality is we are people who are passing through time into eternity where material things have no currency or postcode.

I guess I’m suggesting in all of this that when making decisions about mission and the message we share, inviting neighbours and friends to join us in the journey home may well be the first step in practical evangelism.

The Very Rev Albert Bogle is a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary Ffirst Church Online at www.sanctuary/first.org.uk

This article appears in the July 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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