Luke 13: 31-35; Philippians 3: 18-20

Getting our house in order

Last we talked about spiritual housecleaning.  Today we continue with our house metaphor.  While last week we started thinking about the stuff in our garages and the nature of our emotional and spiritual baggage, today we think about the kind of “house” we live in and the kind of house we offer to God.

The distinction between “house” and “home” is disappearing.  Language changes. We don’t know when to use the word “lie” or “lay.”  “I think I will lay down for a nap,” is not a possibility, but people say it all the time.  We don’t wait “for” anything anymore, we are waiting “on.”  This makes it sound like the person speaking is sitting on top of the thing or person they are waiting for.   But the overlapping meaning of house and home is a commercial invention.  If you could think of a –potentially hideous- building for sale as something where you can feel at home, then you might be more likely to buy it.  A home is somewhere where you belong and where you make others belong. Jesus makes it very clear in His strong reaction that He does not consider Jerusalem or any other place on earth for that matter His home.  The reason why it is not a good home for Him, for God, is that it is a place of deceit. He calls Herod who is plotting to kill Jesus a “sly fox.”  He is even stronger about the city itself:” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”  In Philippians Paul echoes the theme: We are citizens of heaven through our faith. Of those Who oppose the Christ he says:”I have often told you of them , and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction.  Their God is in their belly and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

So let’s talk, friends, this is a good time, about our hospitality to God.  How are we as a community, or as a family or as people a place where God would feel at home.  We have already talked about that already: what are we like as a house?  Instead of asking: if you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be or if you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be, what if would ask: what kind of house would you be? Perhaps it’s a lot like your house now, maybe not. What this strange question does is take the question of hospitality to a personal level.  Now this may still be hard to do:”how can we be welcoming to God.  We can think of giving God time, approaching God with humility, but I think it has a lot to with how we are hospitable to others.  In “Small Wonders: Essays,” Barbara Kingsolver writes about writes about her home city: “Tucson, the city where I live most of the time, is often to be said to be a Mecca for homeless people.  I don’t like to use this word “Mecca” because it suggests a beautiful holy land and a trip undertaken to fulfill the needs of the spirit, whereas thousands of men, women and children undertake the long journey to Tucson for one reason only: to fulfill the need of the body to lie on the ground overnight without freezing to death. They come here for raw survival; their numbers swell each October and then remain through each following summer a little higher than the year before. Increasingly they have become a presence among us, ignored by most of us, specifically banned by our laws from certain places where the city council has decided their panhandling may interfere with commerce. They are banned mostly, I think, because their presence is a pure, naked shame on all of us.” Friends, how well do we provide a sense of hospitality to people in our lives?  How do we welcome?

Beyond that, friends, how do we welcome God in our lives?  Would we be more hospitable to Jesus than Jerusalem was?  We have talked of the odd concept of ourselves as a “house.”  Whenever we have bought furniture for our house, we were always surprised that the space to put them in gave us very little options.  There were at mostly two.  They both looked boring. Unless, unless we put the furniture diagonally, which we did. This makes you lose a corner, but it opens us the spatial imagination.  A famous architect was once asked what great architecture was supposed to do and his answer was: ”to lift our spirits.”   What God wants to do is “heal our spirits.” So the question I have today is: can we change the architecture of our lives or more modestly, can we rearrange the furniture in our lives so God will feel more at home.  Can we change the routines and the habits of our life so that they become more God-friendly?  Can we put the routines and habits of our lives at an angle? Can we create time for speaking and listening for God and finding God between the lines?  Can we arrange our schedules to fit God and the service to God and people or are we going to expect God to fit in the left over spaces.  Are we going to give God room or must God take whatever is left at the end of the day?  May The Holy Spirit inspire us as we ponder this.