On Our Way Home

Luke 21:5-19

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

 ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

This scripture reminds me of a book that was on bestseller lists in the early 70’s titled  “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey. This book convincingly linked scriptural passages with current events of that time and predicted with great confidence that the end times would definitely occur in the 1980’s.

Whoops. 

Obviously, the world is still very much with us. I think I’ve said this before but it’s my personal belief that if someone stumbles on some esoteric key to accurately predicting the time of the apocalypse and Christ’s return, God will immediately change the time. In Isaiah God says, “Now I am revealing new things to you, things hidden and unknown to you, created just now, this very moment; of these things you have heard nothing until now, so that you cannot say, ‘Oh, yes, I knew all this.”

The fact is, when the end times will take place is none of our business. The Church does not bring these scriptures to our attention to scare us or make us start looking around for obscure, or not so obscure, signs that the world is in a complete downward spiral and God is pretty much winding things up. We need to remember that “…this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.” (Heb. 13:14) and in 1 Peter, chapter 2, right after he tells us that we are a royal priesthood, Peter says that we are ‘visitors and pilgrims’.

In other words, we don’t belong here. We're visitors. Don’t get too settled.

In the Nov. 5^th second reading, Paul says , “But our citizenship is in heaven and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3.) We need to understand that we belong to another country and it is from that country that our Savior came, comes and will come again. We don’t belong here. We are naturalized citizens of this world but everything within us wants to go home. That’s why we experience vague (and not so vague) feelings of dissatisfaction and unnamed longings. That’s why, no matter what we do and accomplish in this world, there is still a hole within that wants to be filled. Whether we recognize it or not, everything within us aches for Jesus to come and take us Home where we belong, where we fit, where we are loved and valued simply for who we are, not for what we do and accomplish.

Do we have to wait until death frees us from this world in order to find out who we really are? Absolutely not. Jesus is always coming to us, calling us by our true names but we are too often listening to other strident voices and other false names and we miss his soft and beautiful voice. It's hard not to allow the values of the world to name us and define us. We are encouraged to seek our identities in our roles, vocations, natural talents and accomplishments and it’s contrary to how we’ve been taught to think to grasp that God does not value us for what we do but for who he created each of us to be. It’s difficult to wrap our heads around that one when all our lives we have been taught that our value depends on fitting into the norm, whatever that norm may be.

It is good to be responsible citizens of this world and of the Church. It’s good to strive to use our gifts and develop our capabilities. It’s good and right to discern our vocations. Finding our true value doesn’t mean dispensing with these things. It means going beyond them. It means going higher, deeper and wider. If we do not discover our individual spiritual identity, the rest of it will never satisfy and it will never ever feel like we’ve done enough. You could be totally called to be a dedicated single, a spouse, a parent or a Religious. But these vocations will not fill up all the chasms in your heart until you know your true Name - the name God calls you by.

I need to emphasize this: if you don’t know who you are, you will always feel like you’re not quite measuring up. No matter how much you try to do and accomplish what you feel is expected of you, it will never feel like you've done enough or that you've received enough. You can avoid facing these feelings of inadequacy and inner hunger by keeping really busy doing everything you feel is expected of you but eventually when you stop – or when something like illness stops you – you will still come face to face with the knowledge that all you have done and everything you thought was validating you and defining you was not enough and never will be enough.

Stop! Stop and take time to realize that not only did Christ come into the world and not only will he be coming again but also that he is coming every moment of every day. He is coming NOW. There will one day be a day of worldly apocalypse and then Christ will come riding on the clouds one last time but before that time we are all going through our own large and small apocalyptic-like events where we are wounded, where our insecurity is uncovered and we are threatened, frightened, exposed and made to feel we are not good enough.  These upheavals in our lives make us cry out for Home. And Jesus comes. He comes from Home and as he comes he calls us by Name. He never comes to punish. He comes with vindication that the world can never give. He comes to say, “Take heart. You’re on your way Home. I know you lost your way because you’re alien to this world but I know who you are and I haven’t lost you. You are in my sight and in my grip. You are not alone.”

You do not belong here. You do not ‘fit’. But Jesus came and showed us all how to make it through as a stranger in a strange land. He knew his True Names and he knew exactly who he was. It is now his desire to come and share with you the ultimate joy and full satisfaction of knowing your name. He comes to bring Home to you until it's time to come and bring you Home. When you hear him call your True Name it will be like receiving a piece of Home to carry with you in your heart until the end.

And it will be enough.