Homecoming
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10 “Hear the word of the Lord, you nations;
proclaim it in distant coastlands:
‘He who scattered Israel will gather them
and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’
11 For the Lord will deliver Jacob
and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they.
12 They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion;
they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord—
the grain, the new wine and the olive oil,
the young of the flocks and herds.
They will be like a well-watered garden,
and they will sorrow no more.
13 Then young women will dance and be glad,
young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness;
I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.
14 I will satisfy the priests with abundance,
and my people will be filled with my bounty,”
declares the Lord.15 This is what the Lord says:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”16 This is what the Lord says:
“Restrain your voice from weeping
and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
“They will return from the land of the enemy.
17 So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
“Your children will return to their own land. -
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. -
Heaven
CS Lewis said being hungry does not prove that I will get food, but being hungry does prove that there is such a thing as food. Likewise, we have a longing within us for something more to life than what we experience here, and now it points to a reality that we have a home beyond this earthly pilgrimage. An old Jim Reeves song: 'This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through' or another Johnny Cash song 'Some glad morning when my time is Over, I'll fly away.' These are pictures of a longing for another place, a better place.
This Jeremiah reading got me thinking about three things,
There is a Longing within is,
Secondly, what does a Homecoming mean and,
Thirdly, can we have Home-visits before we go there?
Longing for Home
I've been listening to a lot of W.W.1. Centenary stories recently. Some personal accounts were written in letters and journals sent back from the battlefield.
Some expressing the harrowing accounts of life in the trenches – caked in mud from head to toe – no washing, rats and then the bombardments followed by the craters and the bodies of soldiers – colleagues who didn't make it back after going 'over the top.'
It sounds like a different planet to what we can imagine, aliens to anything people back home could imagine. Then when they returned, they were again alienated because the euphoria of Armistice Day quickly turned into living on rations and living as survivors when many had not returned, and in fact, the community they left had changed, and they felt alienated again. They had a yearning for change and a better place.
The scene we come into in our bible reading was 580BC. Israel had been invaded by the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar. Significant groups and people had been taken into exile, alienated from their own land. They wrote psalms like Psalm 137 'By the rivers of Babylon, where we lay down and wept.'
70 years later, history records a homecoming of sorts, but the home had changed, and the 70 years later return didn't seem to fulfil the many prophecies in the Old Testament of the ransomed returning.
‘They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord …They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. … I will turn their mourning into gladness; … declares the Lord’. — Jeremiah 31:12
‘The ransomed of the Lord will return…sorrow and sighing will flee…eyes ears opened...lame leap for joy. Waters gush forth, streams in the desert.’ — Isaiah 35
‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh…35 desolate land will become like the garden of Eden.’ —Ezekiel 36:26,35
In John 14, when Jesus spoke to his disciples on the night before the cross, he spoke about a home, his father's house. He said he would prepare a place and come again and take us to himself so that we could be where he was going. What I'd like to propose to you is that within us, there is a longing for home that this world can never provide.
Philosophers like Karl Marx, Heidegger, Freud would never agree that there is a God placed longing within us, but they do talk about alienation. Tim Keller says alienation is 'a sense of not being home in this world.' He suggests the world cannot meet the deepest needs of our hearts. There is a God placed longing within us for a home, and that longing is not satisfied in any way apart from faith and trusting in the one who said 'believe in me, I am the way' — John 14:6.
If you rent a gite for a week's holiday you will rearrange it a bit to make it more like home, how you like it, that suits you, that fits you. When God created us, he gave us a home. That sense of home is deep within us, deeper than you realise.
It goes all the way back to Genesis Chapter 2 and the garden of Eden when humanity was in harmony with God and ourselves, but we lost it in Genesis Chapter 3, choosing to be our own boss, and we lost our harmony with God and ourselves. That was our first experience of exile or alienation from home because self became the Lord of all.
So when we have this longing and won't acknowledge it, we do things avoid thinking about it – we travel, we work, we drink, smoke, watch TV. Our funerals tell the story of the life lived to the full but rarely celebrates the homecoming. A funeral I conducted recently of Janet who had visited a quarter of all countries in the world. She loved to travel. This world is not the home we are made for.
Within us, there is a longing for a home where God is our dwelling place, and that has always been so. The Psalmist in Psalm 90:1 said,
'Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.'
Home-Coming
So if we have a God placed longing for home, how do we find our way home?
I believe the answer is in the tears of Rachel verses which express weeping Jeremiah 31:15-17 , then 31:16 comforting and finally 31:17 hope. This is one of the strangest prophecies in the Bible!
'a voice again is heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted.' — Jeremiah 31:15
There are three places in the Bible where Rachel's weeping is mentioned. Genesis 35, Jeremiah 31 and Matthew 2. The references to Rachel all lead back to Genesis 35, but in that passage, Ramah is not mentioned, and weeping is not specifically mentioned. I was so intrigued by this prophecy in Jeremiah 31 and also the statement in Matthew 2 that Herod's slaughter of baby boys in our Christmas narrative was a fulfilment of the Jeremiah 31 prophecy that I had to dig deeper. What actually are Rachel's tears? How can they be linked in any way to our longing for home and indeed our homecoming? Very mysterious indeed.
Look back to Genesis 35. Jacob is bringing his family home from exile (to Bethlehem).
His wife Rachel is heavily pregnant with their second child (the first was Joseph, the second was Benjamin). On the way home, his wife Rachel goes into labour; it was a difficult labour. She gave birth in tears and sorrow; she named her son 'Ben Oni' – son of sorrow (Jacob changed it to Benjamin). Tragically Rachel died in childbirth, in tears naming her second child before she died.
The place is Ramah, and it is about 8 miles north of Bethlehem, 5 miles north of Jerusalem.
580BC prophet Jeremiah says ‘a voice is heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children’ — Jeremiah 31:15.
Centuries after the Genesis account, Ramah is a transit camp, a refugee camp for Israelites being taken to exile in Babylon, and the cries and tears of the mothers would have been very real.
Think of Bangladesh, Turkey, Lesbos in Greece, Syria and Rachel's tears echo the tears of everyone who ever wept over the inhospitality we feel in this world, even the spiritual inhospitality in the religious world! Tensions and persecutions against our deepest desire to worship and serve our Lord as we journey home.
So what does it mean in Matthew 2 by quoting Jeremiah 31:15, saying that it is connected to Herod's brutality in trying to kill baby Jesus? Jesus escaped, and himself went into exile in Egypt. In fact, Jesus' whole life was exile, 'foxes have holes, birds have nests but the son …has nowhere..' — Matthew 8:20.
We read in Matthew 23:37 and Luke 19 that Jesus, on Palm Sunday, wept over Jerusalem, saying, 'I wished I could take you under my wings' (like a mother hen). Here we have Jesus weeping and referring to himself like a mother - weeping. I believe he is the ultimate Rachel. Six days later, He died in labour giving birth to you and I so that we can be born again.
This is our homecoming
not only that one day I'll fly away but that I am in him as he labours to pay our penalty and was exiled outside the city walls on Calvary, preparing a place for us inside his father's house. The home he spoke about in John 14:1-6 (words from the Last Supper and the night before he died).
Notice all the way through it is God's initiative, I will prepare a place for you; ‘I will make, I will put, I will write… I will be their God' — Jeremiah 31:31.
It's a New Covenant (Covenant is another word for relationship). It's a new relationship of intimacy closer than anything could ever be.
Atonement in the Old Covenant was sacrificial lambs and scapegoats sent off to die in the desert. It wasn't pretty; it was brutal and awesome and fearful, but when we gaze on Jesus weeping like Rachel, giving himself for me dying in labour so that you could be born spiritually – surely that touches you. The Holy Spirit takes your heart of stone and melts a whole new covenant (relationship) into your heart of flesh. That's your homecoming, or that's where your homecoming starts in that new covenant.
Home-Visits
So how do we apply this to our lives?
Johnny Cash tells me, 'I'll fly away to that home on God's celestial shore.' Let's talk about home visits.
Having worked in a hospice, I know Home visits are a big thing. Patients get so comforted and so pampered and supported and feel so safe in the Hospice that they become unsure about returning home. Home visits keep the bed available but let the person go home (for an afternoon or a night or a weekend). What is happening is that the Home visit is preparing them for home. In Healthcare jargon, for discharge.
Home visits are preparing you for that place that is prepared for you. We home-visit through prayer, by reading the word and in worship.
'God made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ.' — 2 Corinthians 4:6
What this means is that, in the Spirit, even though we are not Home yet (not dead yet), we can home-visit. Through the Holy Spirit, we get to visit home – we get to experience his love, his presence, to know his peace and gaze upon the beauty of holiness and say 'Lord I am yours' and hear him say 'you are mine', 'we belong to each other, I am in you and you in me, I am yours you are mine.' This is intimate. This is not a list of prayer requests, it is not even a prayer of confession, but in his presence, we adore him, praise him and give him thanks.
That's how it is when we visit home.
The more often you visit home in the Spirit, the more peace you will know and the more stability you will feel as a person and as a Church or Christian family.
If you visit home regularly, you will grow in courage to stand and speak out when things are wrong. You will be guided on how to react when there seems to be no way forward.
You will be given wisdom and the resources to be kept as the 'apple of his eye,' hidden in the 'shadow of his wing' when your foes surround you (Psalm 17:8). You will be prompted to bless others as you give in your service and in money offerings.
As a Congregation, be encouraged, know that you are not just singing hymns. You are engaging in-home visits, so don't hold back when you worship; enter into that holy place (Hebrews 10:19).
There is a longing within each one of us;
There is a place prepared for us and until we see our Lord face to face, visiting home is the most important thing in your life.
Sheila's story: When I am dying, how will I die? Song of Solomon Chapter 1:3 ‘His name is like ointment poured forth’.
Sheila had some Home-visits, sharing Holy Communion on Tuesdays and occasional prayers and bible reading. I even prayed, 'Lord, if I could have one big miracle per year, I'd use this year's up on Sheila. Two months Sheila died as she said Jesus' name. His name is like ointment. Safe and secure in the Lord's welcome embrace.
“There is a day that all creation's waiting for,
A day of freedom and liberation for the earth.
And on that day the Lord will come to meet His bride,
And when we see Him in an instant we'll be changedThe trumpet sounds and the dead will then be raised
By His power, never to perish again.
Once only flesh, now clothed with immortality,
Death has now been swallowed up in victory.”— There is a Day, Phatfish
