Home
Anne and I have been up to Seattle and back many times in the last year, mostly attending to health crises for our various parents. Seattle is truly our hometown. We were raised, met in high school, got married, had careers, three kids were born...all in Seattle. And then on top of it, an eleven-year chapter in ministry back in Seattle after six years away. So when I hear “home,” I think–Seattle.
Things change, though. Time marches on. My elementary school and our high school no longer exist. Familiar landmarks are gone. The Supersonics NBA basketball team moved out years ago. There’s an increasingly large new light rail system snaking through the city. The house I grew up in still stands, but most of my old neighborhood has been rebuilt. My mom has moved out to a suburb near my brother. Still, when I hear Seattle...it means home.
The whole idea of going home raises emotions in many people, both good and bad. It’s complicated, because not all memories of home are positive. Some are really bad. Yet, there’s often a draw, a comfort, a connection. When I drive down the alley of the house I grew up in, I’m almost home. I’ve been up and down that hill a million times, walking, running sprints, chasing the dog, biking, driving. When I come close to the driveway that used to be marked by an old cherry tree, and upon turning in and hearing the gravel under the car wheels...I’m home. Home stirs so much in us that we even talk about death as a “homecoming.”
The core truth, though, is that “home” has far more to do with people than geography or buildings. If I drive by that childhood house, it’s interesting but there’s no one there that knows me. Our daughter reinforced this for us as a college student. Having experienced several cross-country moves with us in her growing up years, she observed with wisdom beyond her years, “home is when we’re all together.” Time has proven that to be true. When we are with our kids, we could be on the moon and it would feel like home, which I guess says home has more to do with feelings and memories and especially relationships, than anything else. A house isn’t home, a location isn’t home. You need people and relationships, the care and attention of people you love and are loved by. Put another way, the Bosnian writer Alexander Heyman once said, “Home is where people notice when you're not there.”
This took on new meaning recently as I re-read the Luke 15 Prodigal Son story. The pain of the rebellious young son not only leaving home, but essentially spitting at it on the way out. The mental anguish after he hit rock bottom and began to imagine going home–though by that time he was thinking of it merely as a resource and security because he knew he had blown up the relationships. The joyful greeting of the father in welcoming his son, his forgiveness reminding him he was at home, not a house. And the resentfulness of the elder brother, which threatened to turn a home back into a house.
When I think about it, home is a great image for hospitality. The way we reach out to others, or care for them, or notice when they are absent mirrors a sense of homecoming that is missing in the lives of more people than we could imagine. It’s especially acute right now in our country as the new administration prepares to throw out hundreds of thousands, block others from legal entry and build more walls to keep people out. I’m eager to see what the Church of Jesus will do to truly practice hospitality in such an environment. We’ll probably need to start with the dozens of Bible texts with divine provision mandated for foreigners, strangers, exiles, aliens, those without families and the lonely. Those provisions are not just about physical structures to live in, but helping others find real home...which brings us back to people.
The truth is, we can create home through our words and actions, no brick and mortar required. Frederick Buechner’s little book The Longing for Home, includes these words: “...the first thing the word home brings to mind is a place, then the next and perhaps most crucial thing is people and maybe ultimately a single person.” Or, I would add, a single Person. In every teaching, every action, in his life and death and resurrection, Jesus pointed us towards a true home, on earth as it is in heaven.
Maybe the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy really had it right when she tapped those ruby slippers together and kept repeating... “There’s no place like home.”
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and formerly served as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.