Transcript
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in Thy sight, O Lord, my Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen.
The text I’m preaching this morning is a half-verse from the second-to-last chapter of the last book of the Bible: “Behold! The home of God is with humans.” I’m preaching it because it’s this year’s theme verse.
- Words we put on the back of our Annual Report
- Words we memorize all together
- Words that offer us a ‘controlling’ or ‘uniting’ metaphor for the life and work we believe we’re called to.
- Explain what it means
- How I envision us taking these words on
What point does John make by writing these words?
POINT ONE
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
What point does John make by writing these words? The home of God is no longer far away, in the heavens.
- Salvation isn’t being taken up out of the world, but God coming down to make all things new.
- Rev 21. 1, 2, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
- “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
POINT TWO
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
I want you to imagine this. A neighborhood. You live in it. So does everyone else you know. What John is saying is that, in the incarnation, God moved in. He has his own house. In his own words, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1. 14). Or, as the late pastor Eugene Peterson paraphrased it, “God moved into the neighborhood.”
→ Social imagination of the Scriptures is a three-home neighborhood: conduct in the house of God, your neighbor, and yourself.
POINT THREE
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
These words also capture the full story of salvation. What do I mean by that? I mean the promise — that God has made his home with us — puts everything else about salvation into context.
Take, for example, the forgiveness of sins. We know that God sent his Son to live and die as one of us, and that because of his sacrifice we have the forgiveness of our sins. But the forgiveness of sins is just one plot point in the greater story of salvation. God forgives us, but he also commands us to forgive other people. At one place, Jesus even says, “If you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6. 15). What’s that about?
Earlier in this section of teaching, Jesus explains himself: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he says — the forgivers, the reconcilers — “for they will be called children of God” (Matt 5. 9). God forgives us to show us how to conduct ourselves as his children. Forgiveness is a plot point in the story of our adoption. And adoption, in the Bible, is adoption into God’s household.
To explain what I mean, I want to walk us through the Book of Exodus, which is a story about two houses.
1. Exodus begins in Egypt, where God’s people have been held down by Pharaoh and his taskmasters. The title, “Pharaoh” — from the Egyptian, pair–AHH, simply means “great house.” I think Exodus retains this title ironically. Throughout Exodus, Yahweh calls Egypt, “the House of slavery.”
John sees the corruption of Egypt replaying itself everywhere else in the world. So when he describes the darkness into which God comes to make his home, he simply calls so he simply calls this darkness, “the world.”
2. The ‘rising action’ in Exodus comes when God hears his people’s cries, sends Moses to address Pharaoh head on, and delivers them out of the so-called ‘Great House’, through the waters, and into a new land.
3. But the Book of Exodus doesn’t end with this deliverance. It ends with the creation of a new house — God’s house. Across thirteen chapters, God describes his new home in painstaking detail — down to the color of the curtains. He calls a designer and several craftsmen. He stirs up generous donors. He pours out his Holy Spirit on the builders. And, in the final paragraph, the true climax of the Book of Exodus, God himself descends in a cloud, enters the tabernacle, and makes his home among his people (Exod 40. 34).
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
Here’s what makes that good news.
→ You may be stuck in a ‘Great House,’ where you’re being treated the way the sons of Israel were treated by Egypt. The way Paul says it, “our struggle is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness” (Eph 6. 12).
If that’s where you are, you aren’t alone. That’s where the story of salvation begins. So cry out to God for help. The message for you is that God listens. God delivers. And God has made his home among us and has invested his whole being into bringing you home.
→ Or maybe God has already set you free, but, to use a figure of speech, you’re still wandering in the desert. Israel wandered in the desert, and they had two big problems.
One, they longed for home. They longed for home so badly that they were even nostalgic for Egypt. At least Egypt had good food, they said. It’s incredible and twisted, isn’t it — the urge to go back to a horrible place because of the comforts of home.
Two, they kept behaving like Egyptians. You’ve heard it said that ‘Hurt people hurt people.’ What the Church calls sanctification, or formation, is the process of learning how to conduct yourself in a neighborhood that God lives in — in God’s house; in your own house; and in your neighbor’s house.
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
That’s what these words mean.
And now I want to talk about how we can make these words a controlling metaphor for our life and ministry at Good Sam. And I’ll use three categories: I’ll talk about church growth, our ministry, and our life.
First, thinking about Good Sam as God’s House helps us think rightly about church growth.
Good Sam is growing. The numbers bear that out. But numbers aren’t that the goal.
Over the summer, I drove to Louisville, KY for a conference on growth in the Episcopal Church. One of the keynote speakers was Bishop Jenny Andison, Rector of St Paul’s Bloor Street Toronto. She made her point plainly: “Healthy things grow.”
That’s why we’re paying attention to the ordinary work of keeping this house, God’s house, in order. On the professional staff, we’re working on clearer communication, more consistent procedures, and more strategic plans for campus use. We’re trying to become better stewards, and better hosts. When we installed a state-of-the-art sound system, for example, we did it to be better hosts. We’re wearing nametags, greeting people we don’t know, getting better at using the connections table.
Behold! The home of God is with humans.
These words can also help us think about our ministry.
I’ll start with baptism. In just a moment, Fr Ellsworth will baptize Bea (Alethea Lindquist). At the end of the liturgy, you will say one important line. You’ll say, “We receive you into the household of God.” The clergy may do the baptizing, but the rest of us carry the responsibility of receiving the people they baptize. We’re like the innkeeper in the story of the Good Samaritan: We receive the people Jesus brings home.
This same logic shapes much of what we’re trying to do together this year.
Beginning this Tuesday, we launch Tuesdays at Good Sam. Every week will follow the same simple rhythm: dinner, program, prayer. We begin at six. We end at eight.
This week, after we eat dinner together, there will be a worship service, youth group, adult education, and Alpha. Speaking of Alpha, Fr Matthew and the team are working on their hospitality, removing obstacles that might keep people from coming to Alpha. Speaking of adult education, Christie Purifoy will start a five-week series on reading the Bible like a poet.
Next Sunday, we’ll have a presentation from Good Works — a ministry many of you know — whose mission is to repair homes and restore hope here in Chester County. Come learn about Good Works. If we really believe that God has moved into the neighborhood, has made his home here, what better work to do.
Third, these words can help us think about our daily life.
I want to end here by talking about your houses.
At the beginning of Epiphany, we bless chalk. We invite you to take this chalk, mark your doors, and bless your own homes. But I want to ask you not to let this become a merely sentimental practice.
In Scripture, when God blesses something, he gives it a purpose. When God blesses Adam and Eve, the text says, “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’” (Gen 1. 28). God’s blessing is never just a nice word. It’s a charge.
So when you bless your house this year, bless it the way God blesses things. Tell your house what its purpose is. Take time to talk about that purpose with the people you share life with there.
→ If God has really made his home in your neighborhood, what kind of place do you want to see your home become this year?
→ What might that require of you?
