Let's Go Home

Part One — The Ache for Home

There is a painting by Norman Rockwell that I have loved for years. Even before I knew why it gripped me, it spoke to something deep inside — that universal ache, that timeless yearning we all have for home. Not simply a house or a street address, but the place where joy meets memory and belonging meets safety. The painting is of a young soldier returning from war, stepping into his family’s yard for the first time in a very long time. He is in uniform, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, the dust of a dozen faraway places still clinging to his boots.

The house behind him is old — an aged red brick tenement, weathered by the years, worn by the stories it has seen. In fact, the bricks are so old a fern has grown out of the mortar near the gutter on the second floor. The building is frayed at the edges, but it is home. And somehow that makes it beautiful.

Rockwell has captured the precise moment when joy — sudden, unpolished, unrehearsed joy — bursts open at the young man’s return. It’s like the house itself inhales and holds its breath in wonder.

His mother is the first one you notice. She stands on the wooden porch wearing her work apron, her arms thrown wide, her whole body calling out the welcome that her voice hardly needs to say out loud. Behind her, in the shadowed doorway, is his father, pipe in mouth, steadying himself against the doorframe as if his knees might go weak with relief. Rockwell liked to put himself in his paintings, and there’s a hint of his own face in that father — a quiet nod from artist to canvas.

On the porch roof sits the soldier’s older brother, hammer in hand, mid-task, mid-strike, mid-life — but frozen now, taking in the miracle of the moment. And then there’s the little brother, caught by Rockwell with both feet off the ground, suspended in that wonderful instant between joy and embrace. He is leaping off the porch and running like a little dog toward the brother he has missed with the kind of pure-hearted love only children can express without embarrassment.

Above them the laundry flaps — sheets billowing, shirts dancing in the breeze — as if the wind itself has joined the celebration and is waving a banner of welcome home.

But then your eye shifts, and you see her. A girl — a beautiful young woman now — standing partly hidden against the wall near the downspout. She’s not in the foreground. She’s not part of the noisy commotion. She stands a little apart from everyone, but the look on her face reveals everything. She is waiting for the moment when the soldier will turn his head and recognize her — the girl he left behind. She is home. And now he is home. Home to his mother, home to his father, home to his people, home to the girl he loves, home to the old red brick house.

And something happens inside us when we look at that painting. A tug. A memory. A longing. Because home is the treasure chest where we store our fondest memories. Home is where dreams were whispered and love first learned its name. Even in dysfunctional homes — and many of us have lived in those — there is still something about home that pulls on us. Even if it wasn’t perfect, even if it was painful, even if it was complicated, it formed us. And there is something deep in the human soul that says:

“I want to go back to the place where my story began.”

Home always draws us.

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A House Left Desolate

And that brings us to one of the saddest statements Jesus ever made:

> “Your house is left unto you desolate.”

Not, “Your nation” or “your city” or “your synagogue.”

Your house.

Your house is the place where your heart sleeps.

Your house is the place where your soul rests.

Your house is the place where your identity is shaped.

To be told, “Your house is left unto you desolate,”

is to hear that the place where you were supposed to belong

has become empty.

Empty of peace.

Empty of fellowship.

Empty of joy.

Empty of God.

And Zacchaeus — the man in the sycamore tree — knew all about that desolation. He lived in a beautiful house, but his soul lived in a desert. He was alienated from himself, from his community, and from God. His house looked fine on the outside, but on the inside it was hollow. A shell. A quiet, echoing emptiness.

He was the victim of a cruel response to his own cruelty. He had cheated others, and in turn, he had been emotionally exiled by those same others. He had money, but he had no welcome. He had wealth, but he had no warmth. He had security, but he had no belonging.