For Your Consideration: A Spiritual Home

Sunday’s sermon will prompt the question, where is your spiritual home? Where is the place that makes you feel safe? When life gets chaotic and uncertain, where is the place that calms you and brings you peace? Spirituality doesn’t always point to church. Spirituality can mean many different things to many different people. In my case, the place that makes me feel safe, the place I go to when life becomes uncertain and chaotic is in nature. However, for me, in that space, that is also where I feel the presence of God all around me. I see God’s beautiful creation in the birds, deer, and life skittering around me. I see death and creation renewed in the trees that have died and fallen on the forest floor, now habitat to animals, fungus, and moss. The word home can prompt many feelings for people. Those who have a strong connection to their hometowns can be hit with nostalgia, feelings of comfort and peace of days gone by. How often have we uttered the words, “remember when…” when we try to connect to memories that spark joy in us. For many, there are not positive memories attached to the town they grew up in, the church they grew up in, the college they attended. In the Gospel reading for Sunday, Luke 13:31-35, we see Jesus lament over his spiritual home and what has come of it. The spiritual home that he connected so deeply to, despite it not being a physical “home” to him has rejected his ministry and he is aware of what is to come. Jerusalem to many was the spiritual center that provided a sanctuary, a place to travel to for the holiest of days, a place to connect with God and God’s word. Jesus ran as a teenager to the temple, away from his family, to learn, teach, and be a part of the Temple. This was a place that was dear to his heart because it was a place of formation to him and a place to connect with God. We also see some unlikely people step in to warn Jesus of what is to come- people that we normally see as argumentative and tense with Jesus throughout his ministry. As Christians, we can easily put the concept of a spiritual home into context of church. However, spritual well-being can be any place that gives your spirit a feeling of peace, love, connects you with God, and goes well beyond a building with four walls and a steeple. One of the things that our Youth learns in Confirmation in 8th grade are different ways to connect your spiritual well-being with practices, and we call that, well, Spiritual Practices. These can be meditation, spending time with the text in different ways that bring out creativity, prayer beads to help guide you in prayer, and other aspects. But at the end of the day, as Christians, we need to remember that our spiritual home is truly in God, on account of Jesus Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit. When we are in nature, we see the gospel (the good news) in death and renewal within nature. When we are out in the world in our everyday vocations, that spiritual home becomes a reminder of all of the beautiful teachings of Jesus Christ and the ministry he showed us- to love our neighbors as we love God, to be humble and compassionate and kind, to be hospitable to strangers and those who may not have the same belief system that we do. Like Christ, we can fiercely love our spiritual homes within church and Christianity as a whole, by fiercely protecting our places of peace by following the beautiful ministry of Jesus Christ by ensuring we are doing what we can to provide a spiritual home to others that makes them feel safe, loved, accepted, celebrated, and part of the center of what we are all about- a community in Christ. And sometimes, our fierce love is accepting there are problems in the home we love so much and in order to follow Christ and Jesus’ teachings, change is needed and necessary to bringing peace, love, and the gospel to all people. Questions to ponder before Sunday:

1. In what ways have we rejected the teachings of Jesus in the way we are church and community together?

2. Does fiercely loving our spiritual home in church mean accepting things as they are and defending even the wrongs that other people and disallow them to feel safe in our spaces? 

3. Have we ever rejected the help of people who may not believe the way we do, to fiercely protect our brood as a mother hen would and in what ways have we rejected them in our spaces? 

4. Have you ever lamented over people feeling rejection from their church? Has that prompted you to enact change or start conversations on how to fully live into the ministry you are called to serve?

Siblings in Christ, remember that you are loved and remember that sometimes loving and remaining loyal to our spiritual home means ministering like Jesus did- acknowledging imperfections, fostering love where we have not before, and realizing that in all spaces we can do better to create spaces that bring peace to all, including those who fundamentally disagree with us.

God loves you, and so do I.

Blessings,

Sommer L. Loar