Mission and the Longing for Home
I’ve been back in Oz for almost a fortnight now. Overall it’s been a far easier adaptation than the Big One in January – more like flicking a switch than crashing and burning in the atmosphere.
By and large the entire trip was awesome. My team were a crack squad that took to all of the challenges with humility and gusto, and I’m sure glorified God in all they did. It was, however, interesting watching them adapt and cope along the way. One of the golden moments was the look on everyone’s face when we walked into our little House On The Hill in Santo…as Joyce put it, “I was trying to think of all the ways I could tell you I couldn’t do mission anymore.” We make light of it now, but the coming to feel comfortable in a strange place got me thinking about ‘home.’
I’ve never really been one for homesickness, having a knack for getting comfortable in most places I’ve visited so far. Yet, for me – and I’m sure for most – there are places or times we look back on and think ‘that Felt Right – that was Home.’ But when we revisit these places (as I just revisited Santo) they don’t live up to the memory, the feeling we are sure we had before. I’ve come to think of this discomfort as a sort of ‘sanctified discontent’ that is to keep us from getting too comfortable in this world, to keep searching for true rest, true fulfilment… to keep searching for Home.
It so happened that while all this was bubbling away in my head, my team and I were teaching at two bible schools in Santo: Talua Ministry Training Centre and Santo Presbytery Bible School (housed on the grounds of Navota Farm). Joyce and myself taught on Isaiah, and the others on 1 and 2 Timothy at Talua, and were pulled into various teaching spots at Navota in our free times. The time we spent in the Bible preparing for these led me to think that the idea of ‘home’ is one of the threads running through the whole Bible that is not often tugged out and examined. ‘Place’ is very important, from Adam and Eve’s ultimate curse in Genesis 3 being exclusion from the Garden; through the dispersion of the nations at Babel (Gen 9); the importance of the Exodus and claiming of the Promised Land; and the potency of the punishment of Exile to Assyria and Babylon. I’ve been reading Ezra and Nehemiah in my devotions and was struck by the sheer joy of the people at their return to Jerusalem as well as their distraught displays at the state of their land. Skipping forward a few centuries, Jesus declared Himself the true Temple, and in His death the powerful image of the riven temple curtain declared the end to separation of God’s place and man’s. The writer to the Hebrews assures us that a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people, a Promised Land at once ours and yet not for us fully yet. 1 Peter write to the “elect exiles” and encourages us as “aliens and strangers” to live as those awaiting their true home. This home we are brought to long for, yet do not even glimpse until the very last moments of Scripture, indeed, the very first moments of the New Creation as heaven and earth are gloriously rejoined in Revelation 21. Phew!
Perhaps most poignantly, I was struck by the pathos of the third parable in Luke 15 – the story of the lost sons (but that’s another post all together…).
Why haven’t I heard much on this biblical theological thread before?
Posted: Aug 5, 01:54 Category: Reflections
Tags for this article: bible, credo, doctrine, preaching, talua, vanuatu
Apple · Oct 10, 15:03
you know.. you actually write quite well ;)
I think that we actually do get glimpses of our ‘home’ or eternal rest here in this world, not only in Scripture. Moments in church, or at a conference, or when fellowshipping with our brothers and sisters.. or when you meet someone from a totally different country, but you have such a connection with them because you are bonded by Christ, even if you can barely understand each other. Maybe it has to do with our place of rest being also to do with the people. the people being the temple.
I love Lk 15. It took me forever to understand it.. for the longest time, I was like, “that’s just not fair”,and it would get me angsty.. and then one time as I was reading it I was like, “oh.. that is awesome!.” :)