Home Place

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

August 27, 2006

Text: Psalm 84

My grandfather called his farm land, about 160 acres, the “home-place.” When he would be in town and was going home, he would not say “I’m going home.” He would say “I’m going to the home-place.” For him, “home” was not merely the house he lived in on the farm. The whole 160 acres was home.

I have a photograph in my office of the site of my grandparent’s house on the home-place. That piece of land, though long-since sold, holds a special place in my heart.

As a district superintendent I had another experience with another home-place which was special to a people, the people of a discontinued church.

I got out of the car with the realtor from Luling. She and I had driven out to the site of the Mount Union Methodist Church, located about 50 yards east of Highway 183, between Luling and Lockhart. The church had closed in 1996. The few members left were transferred to other churches. The building had been sold and moved away. Ownership of the land had fallen to the annual conference, and a man who owned adjacent land wanted to buy it. It was my job as district superintendent to begin the transaction.

The realtor and I looked out at the site, now largely overgrown with mesquite and weeds. Remnants of the rock foundation were barely visible. We were silent for a moment. Then we walked around a bit, she describing the boundaries of the property and the desires of the buyer.

As I headed back to Austin later that day, I tried to visualize the life of the congregation that had met there for so many years. I imagined listening to the preachers who spoke there, and the hymns that were sung. I tried to visualize the children, all scrubbed up and dressed up for Sunday service, as they came up in their wagons or their cars. The laughter and the tears; the fragrance of the bread and grape juice. The weddings held there, with nervous brides and more nervous grooms. The funerals, with caskets carried in and out, and the mourners as they came and went. The Board meetings, the charge conferences, the prayers of the faithful. Since Mt Union was an African American UMC,I tried to imaginethe refuge they felt in the place they could call their home, especially in all those years when they were not welcome in very many other places, including most other Methodist Churches. The peace they must have known there, the hopes that were born there.

I tried to think of the grandchildren of the members, where they are now and what they are doing, what they remember of the church and its sanctuary.

In the service of worship for the consecration of a church building, the officiating minister says:

Now, O God, sanctify this place,

For everything in heaven and earth is yours.

Yours, Lord, is the dominion, and you are exalted as head above all.

Mt Union was sanctified ground. It accomplished its God-given purpose in its time. It was and will always be holy ground. My hunch is that its sons and daughters still cast a wistful eye when they pass the place, even now.

We are earthly people, people of the earth. Yes, we have been taught, and we do believe, that, in Jesus, we were freed to worship God “in spirit and in truth” wherever we plant our feet. But if God dwells among us, this must mean that God is in some place, some one, some people. God does not merely hover above, fearful of incarnation. God is Immanuel. Jesus is the word become flesh, dwelling among us, full of grace and truth.

“We shape our churches, and our churches shape us,” someone once said, and this is true. Parcels of land and buildingsbecome sacred places for us. God seems especially close in these places. Over time, decisions are made, tears are shed and laughter lifts the heart. We feel the divine presence in places like this place. We get homesick when we are away.

It was the custom in ancient times for our ancestors to put together a pile of rocks and pour oil over them, at the sites where God has encountered them. (Where Jacob wrestled with the angel, for example.) We do this now, and some of the rock formations are magnificent.

In the history of our Hebrew brother and sisters, there was always a tension between God being in a place or person and God being free from any particular place or person---between God’s wholly otherness and God’s holy presence. The debate shows up in the Scriptures we hold in common, in the Pentateuch and the Prophets. Do we build God a house? Or do we keep the symbols of God’s presence, the Ark of the Covenant, in a moveable tent? Do we ask God for a king who can represent God, like other nations have; or do we call the invisible Yahweh our king?

This tension was not resolved, but the people of Israel faced hard questions when the temple of Solomon was destroyed in 587BC.The people of Israel had to ask who they were without a king, a temple, or their land.

But the temple was built and dedicated by Solomon to be the center of God’s holy presence and power, a divine residence, and for centuries after, s), Weeks (gift of Torah) and Tabernacle (40 years in the wilderness.) Their musicians sang and their poets wrote of the temple and the city on a hill surrounding it. (And they still do.) And they longed to be back there, in the temple precincts, where the Holy of holies was, with the Ark of the Covenant. Being there, even to be a doorkeeper, was better than being any other place in the world.They traveled three times a year to Mt Zion: Passover, Weeks and Tabernacle.

It was not the beauty of the building that drew them there,though it was beautifully decorated. There, they were in God’s presence. The psalmist speaks of “beholding God” even though God could not be seen.

To be faithful pilgrims did not mean that they were morally superior, but that they depended on God for their lives and their future; they would live being instructed by God in God’s ways, and receiving the forgiveness of their sins. The wicked were those who thought they were autonomous---self-ruled---- and who cared only for themselves and nothing for others---whose lives were dedicated to getting richer and insulating themselves from the desperate poor; to enjoying themselves and fulfilling themselves. (Whoops: this sounds too much like what I read in current self-help and new age books!) In a world where they suffered mightily from the comings and goings of the great nations, the temple was a place of refuge. They felt safe there, together, in God’s presence.

The festivals drew the faithful to the temple like a magnet. These events were liturgical in nature, but embroidered with feasting and dancing. They were like a county fair and a community reunion. Old acquaintances were renewed and new friendships formed. Stories were told of experiences shared and hopes for the future.

Though we may not invest the same degree of importance to place as did the Hebrew people, we know what it means to be attached to this place: sanctuary, chapel, classrooms, the loft, the library, the nursery, the playgrounds. (A fascinating exercise is to have members gather at the church and then to walk to the location in or on the church grounds—in addition to the sanctuary---which means the most to them, where they have experienced the closeness of God.)

One of the reasons we are so attached is not only the beauty of the buildings, but the reunions we have with friends, old and new. We “read our lives together” as one has said. “How is Bobby doing in school?” we ask. “What’s happening with your new job?” “Did you get to plant that fig tree you wanted?” “How was your mother when you visited her?” “Did you get the new video game that you wanted?” Ordinary things of daily life, we bring with us, checking in with those with whom we share life. We form friendships here that last a lifetime. We also tackle great challenges together. We work side by side on VBS, we go on trips to minister to others. The power of being together and growing together, razzing each other, and sometimes even arguing with each other, draws us to this place. We want to be present. Often, in our times of greatest turmoil, a friend from church has been God’s messenger to us.

The people of Israel eagerly traveled to the Temple. The trip itself was almost as much a religious experience as the arrival.Psalm 84, in the main, is a song of traveling upward, climbing both in spirit and in altitude, a hymn sung and remembered, celebrating the temple and the journey to it.

Some of the faithful would travel for days to get there, like going on a vacation trip. (Remember the trip that Mary, Joseph and Jesus made to the temple, Luke 2:41-50.) They would travel through rough, dry places, and, if it rained, it would be a good sign that God was blessing their efforts.

They would anticipate. “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the house of God. At last, our feet are standing at your gates, Jerusalem.” (Psalm 122)

Children and teenagers who have been at Mt Wesley in Kerrville once, can’t wait to go back. Our daughter and son would talk about the trip for weeks. They could hardly wait to see friends made the last time, and to go up to the Bolivian cross and down to the pool. They might start singing the camp songs on the way.

I have heard more than one youth worker tell me that traveling to the work camp was where the close relationships began to be formed.

Getting to Tarrytown UMC may require a good deal of effort and some anticipation, too. We may see it as our weekly pilgrimage. Sometimes it is hard travel. In families, we may have to overcome some resistance. (One of my friends said that, on Sunday mornings, after much rushing about and cajoling, she would finally ask: “OK, now. Is everyone mad enough to go to church?”)

The other 6 days of the week, many of us are scurrying around, rushing here and there, with work and school and even church work. It is tempting to take it easy, slowly read the paper and skip Sunday worship or Sunday school. So what motivates us to go to the extra effort to be here? I think it is anticipation: As we make our approach, our spirits are lifted. It is a morning of the week like no other. We hear and speak and sing of things which are essential for our living. Other journeys to the church----for Disciple Bible Study, United Methodist Women, Youth Fellowship----are also such pilgrimages.

The theme of pilgrimage is acted out in our worship in this place once we arrive. At the beginning of the service, the choir processes, following the cross moving toward the Altar/Table. It is the residue of temple worship. They come in singing and we join in with them. We have traveled together to this consecrated room.

The other reminder is when we are invited to come up to the altar rail to receive Holy Communion. As we are able, we walk up toward the Altar/Table, approaching God’s presence in the sacrament, similarly to the priests and people who would walk up to the precincts of the temple, where the Holy of holies held the Ark of the Covenant, where God invisibly dwelt.

The reunion aspects of being together do not explain the depth of devotion that we have to places called churches. After all, there are many places we may go to meet with friends, and for many reasons. We are drawn here because we, as our Hebrew ancestors, seek communion with God. (We may not even know this is why we come.) We come with our needs---for confession and forgiveness, for praise and thanksgiving, for instruction in the ways of God. We may discover here needs of which we were not aware. And we may discover how empty and shallow are the “needs” which the advertisers saturate us with every day in myriad ways.

Worship of God is an end in itself, ultimately. It is in simply being in God’s presence that we find our deepest joy and fulfillment. We take “refuge” as the psalm says.

We cannot hide from the world, with all of its craziness. But we can make pilgrimage to this place, intentionally coming together to worship God. We will find that we are able to live in this world as agents of God’s justice, mercy and peace, without being squeezed into the world’s mold----its values of greed, self-preoccupation and revenge---which would vacuum life right out of us. “Blessed are those who take refuge in God,” the psalmist says, not because we are always safe from harm, but because we know who and whose we are, and the purpose for which we live: the greater glory of our loving God and the furtherance of God’s kingdom.

Many years later, Jesus visited the Temple. You may remember that he was disappointed with what he witnessed there. “This is a place of prayers for all peoples, but you have made it into a den of robbers.” This being said, while he angrily turned over the tables of those who were selling in the temple precincts. What was happening here?

I don’t think that Jesus was saying that having a temple was wicked. But if the temple, or, for us, the church, becomes an idol, we have a problem. We can be diverted from the worship of God to the worship of the place in which we think God is especially present.

I have known churches which had been morphed into societies for the preservation of antiquities, hardly the purpose for which they originally formed up as a church.

We may forget that, though God may be especially experienced in places we call sacred, we are not God’s keepers.

The Spirit is like the wind, Jesus said: we do not know where it comes from or where it is going.

We live in the same tension that the Hebrew people did and do: We draw near to God in great joy and anticipation and reverence, knowing all the while that God cannot be manipulated by us, or simply used as a tribal deity for our protection alone.

An old town scoundrel was gloriously converted one evening as he walked under the bridge. His life was never the same. He was a changed man. But every time he would see someone who had also been converted, he would ask, “Yes, but have you been under the bridge yet?”

The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. But now we dwell in Christ, “in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” We are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. (I Corinthians 12) We have the ancient human need to build edifices, to put rocks together and pour oil on them as a sign of “God being in this place and I did not know it.”

Being present on this campus, and in other places where we may gather or travel, builds us up personally and corporately. Why? Because our temple points beyond itselfto the our Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer.

Will the beauty of the place alone draw us here? Will friends, as important as they are? Not over the long haul.

 “God is our shield and our sun.”Our strength is derived not from ourselves, but from God. Our happiness and contentment is a by-product of entrusting our lives and our futures to God, as a church and as a people. This is sacred ground because of all of those who have come before us who have known this dependence. You and I may have lonesome valleys in our lives when we must travel alone.

But traveling together and having reunion with our friendsin the presence of God is our ultimate human delight.