Sermon Central
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There's No Place Like Home Series
Contributed by Gordon Pike on Jan 16, 2022 (message contributor)
Summary: It is the cross and the promise of a life after this one that makes this world, with all its ups and down, with all its sorrow, with all its conflicts and challenges all that much more bearable when we know that all of this is just temporary.
“There’s no place like home.”
Who said it?
Right … Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
Why is that line so iconic? As soon as you hear it, you see Dorothy … aka Judy Garland … holding Toto, clicking the heels of her ruby red slippers three times, and uttering the words … “There’s no place like home” ... almost like a prayer.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this but at the beginning of the book and the movie, when Dorothy runs away from home, everything is dull and gray. And yet … after landing in the colorful and exotic Land of Oz and all the crazy adventures she goes through … in the end she discovers that as gray and as bleak as Kansas may be, there is no place like home.
I love to travel, see new places. I’ve been to Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland. I love seeing new places, new people, new cultures … but I also love coming home. I love coming back to my home country, to familiar landmarks and sights, to shared customs and language, to my home, to my own bed, my own refrigerator, TV. You know what I mean?
You don’t have to leave the country or even the state or county to know that I’m talking about. Just coming home after spending a week with relatives or even just coming home at the end of the day … you come around the corner or you pull into the street and see the place where you live. You walk into the house and immediately settle into a routine … the dog greets you at the door or your cat saunters in and give you that “Oh, you’re home” look before it rubs against your leg and attempts to lead you to their food bowl … you drop or hang your keys in their designated spot so that you can find them again … open the frig or pick up the remote control … plug your phone into the charger … change into your most comfortable lounge wear … and you can feel the weight of the day just leave you. Your whole body relaxes as you plop down on the sofa or your favorite chair and begin surfing channels.
That’s how we should feel on Sunday mornings … at home. We pull into the church parking lot and we look to see who’s here and who’s not here. We recognize cars and faces and it makes us feel, well, happy, I hope, amen? We come up to the door and we greet and hug each other as we catch up with each other before the service begins. We find our pew and look through the bulletin, maybe mark the hymns, look for news of what’s happening in the church. Then the music starts and we settle in for the service and it feels … right … comfortable … peaceful … calm … and we leave here rested, inspired, and ready, I hope, to face the week ahead.
I don’t have to tell you that the world out there is a pretty crazy place right now, amen? But if you think about it, it’s always a pretty crazy place, am I right? We need … we value … our safe places … our oasis or islands of peace and calm in the raging rush of life, amen? I pray that your home or that this church is such a place for you. But there is another place where you can have peace and calm in the midst of the storms of life … your heart.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus tells His disciples. A rather curious thing for Jesus to say given everything that’s about to happen to Him. As Jesus gets closer and closer to Jerusalem, He begins to speak more and more about being arrested, tortured, and executed … which naturally causes the Disciples and His followers to get more and more frightened and stressed. When Jesus answers Mary and Martha’s summons to come to Bethany to help their sick brother, Lazarus, the Disciples warn Jesus that it’s not safe. “Rabbi,” they pleaded, “the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” (John 11:8). After raising Lazarus from the dead, John tells us that Jesus “no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from [Bethany] to a town called Ephraim … and he remained there with the Disciples” (John 11:54). Not only is Jesus’ heart troubled, so is His soul. So how, with the horrors He’s about to face and His death looming larger and larger on the horizon, how could He tell His Disciples and His followers: “Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:1)?
