Good morning. It’s been a while since I’ve been here in the pulpit. As many of you know, about a year ago, I found out that I was pregnant. That was the good news. The bad news was that I was really nauseous, for a loooong time. So Pastor Dan wisely thought it’d be best not to schedule me to preach until we were confident that nothing but a sermon would come out of my mouth while I was up here.

So now it’s 4 months after the birth of Kyra… Jim and I feeling very grateful for this gift in our lives – and very grateful for the many ways the Bethany community has shown love and support to us during this big change in our lives.

And I’m thankful for the opportunity to explore a text with you this morning – one that I’ve found helpful to reflect upon during this holiday weekend. I hope it speaks to you as well. Today’s text speaks strongly to something that is very much on people’s minds during Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season.

The big questions leading up to Thanksgiving are: Who will we be with, and will we feel “at home”?

In John 14:15-27 Jesus is speaking to his disciples, trying to prepare them for when he won’t be with them anymore… He describes a new kind of home – a home that comes with the promises of God’s presence and peace.

Reading: John 14:15-27

Let us pray… Lord, we thank you for giving us your Word, from which to draw hope and strength and purpose. Show us how our stories are gathered into your story of new life. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing unto you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

One of the first questions we’re asking each other today is: “How was your Thanksgiving?” Some of us are sad that it’s over and that loved ones are going back to their hometowns or back to school. Others of us are relieved that the big meal is over and that everyone’s going back to their own places.

There are so many emotions that surround Thanksgiving/the holidays, but I’d say that most – consciously or subconsciously - will answer the question of “How was your Thanksgiving?” by determining whether or not we felt “at home.”

This concept of “home” is a central one to how we live our lives – or how we feel like life is going. We work really hard to create the home – the life -- of our dreams. How we do that can be different for different people – by finding just the right neighborhood, fixing up a house, carrying on certain traditions, working hard at our jobs to find fulfillment and/or to make enough money to do the things we want to do…

We are bombarded with images of what it means to be “home for the holidays” – warm houses with fireplaces, family and friends gathering together, the golden retriever sitting calmly by his owner.

All this plays to our deep desires for security, peace, a sense that we are loved, cared for, that we belong to others, that we give and receive the perfect gifts – where everything is just right.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these desires. It’s just that the reality is that things on earth will never be “just right.” We acknowledged this earlier in our prayer time. And as we know from what has happened recently in southern California, and is even happening right now in Malibu, that earthly comes can go up in flames in a matter of minutes.

And because “home” isn’t quite like what we had pictured it would be – and because the world can be a pretty scary place -- anxiety creeps in…

- Kids are anxious about what their friends think about them.

- Parents are anxious about how their kids are doing.

- People who aren’t married are often worried about finding the right person.

- People who are married are often worried about being stuck with that right

– or wrong -- person (or at least their habits). The list goes on and on…

I’ve found having a child to be an amazing gift, but I’ve also been surprised by the level of anxiety that comes with being a parent. Especially in the first several weeks when the hormones were… let’s say… extra active. Oh my goodness, I was feeling things a lot more strongly than usual. (I know there are more than a few men in here who are cringing at the mention of… hormones. At one point my husband looked at me and asked, where is my wife? I decided to view hormonal activity as… giving us more opportunities to turn to God for help.)

So in those first weeks with little Kyra, all of a sudden I found myself incredibly worried about wanting to create the perfect home for her.

- Will she have enough room to play?

- Is our street too steep and is she going to go flying down it in the stroller?

- Will she get to see her grandparents and cousins much?

- Is Seattle the best place to raise her? Is this country?

- One day I even found myself worrying about whether or not she’d make friends easily in junior high!

Fortunately, the hormones settled down and much of that initial anxiety subsided, but the desire to be there for Kyra and create the best home possible is still strong.

In today’s scripture Jesus is trying to ease the disciples’ angst by telling him how he will be there for them – even when not physically. He’s not going to leave them as orphans. Jesus is trying to reorient them to a new concept of home. Home for the disciples looked a certain way in the sense that they were hoping/expecting Jesus would establish an earthly kingdom by conquering the Romans.

In v.22 Judas (not Iscariot) asks, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” The disciples are still waiting for Jesus to reveal himself to the world as the Messiah, the one who will conquer Rome (their oppressors).

Jesus responds by talking about a home -- a kingdom -- that’s very different from what they have in mind. Jesus talks to them about a divine indwelling

His answer to Judas is: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Isn’t this amazing news?! Our triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – wants to make a home with us. This is the message I hope we will all come away with today: It’s God’s desire that we are at home with God -- God within us – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus says to them, God has a great gift for you – the gift of not feeling alone – the gift of a home that goes with you wherever you are and is filled with peace and our presence. And here’s how it works - Jesus says – we make our home with you when you keep my word.

It might sound a bit conditional, as though God will make his home with us only if we obey what Jesus has taught. But really the emphasis is on the mutuality of the love between God and us. If we obey Christ’s commandments, we are showing our love for God. The two things go together.

Jesus says three times in our passage, If you love him, we will keep my commandments.” What commandments? To answer that, we need to go back to the previous chapter -- 13:34… a “new commandment” – “that you love one another.” “Love as I have loved you.”

And to help us do this - love one another – Jesus makes two promises:

First, he says he’ll ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with them/us forever. This is the Spirit of truth. It can be hard to love each other, and to know what people need and how to best care for each other. So Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to be our Counselor, to guide us in the best way.

Second, Jesus says he will give them/us peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Again, Jesus stresses that what they’re looking for is different from what he’s offering. The disciples want peace from their oppressors. Jesus offers peace that comes from his victory over sin and death.

Loving God is about loving one another.(which leads to God making his home in us). When I thought about this in light of the anxiety I mentioned earlier related to providing a good home for our daughter, I realized just how true it is – how it really does work this way… that by loving one another and receiving others’ love we are loving God, and we find God in us and a deep sense of being “at home” can happen.

I can think of two examples when I experienced this recently. Twice I had plans to travel and be with my biological family after Kyra was born, and twice I had to cancel those plans at the last minute.

The first time was a trip to Colorado for a family reunion that we’d been planning for 2 years. Kyra was just a few weeks old, and a couple days before we were to leave we took Kyra to the doctor and learned that she hadn’t gained any weight in the previous week. So along with being anxious about her health, I was crushed that we couldn’t go be with my family and fun cousins.

Then for my last week of maternity leave I was going to visit my sister and her family in Tennessee and then hop over to Houston where my folks and my brother and his family live. And days before that trip, I had a bad flare up of blood clots in one of my legs. Once again, we couldn’t be with my family.

But each time, I was amazed at how God was with us – mostly through how God’s covenant family reached out to us. Friends brought over meals, came by to visit... Our home group supported us in so many wonderful ways.

One of the most poignant examples of someone listening to the nudging of the Holy Spirit was Lynne Baab calling from New Zealand. She said that she sensed the Spirit saying to call me – and that she didn’t want to because she wasn’t feeling well – but that the Spirit kept nudging her to call. We had a great conversation that really lifted my spirits.

I’m certainly not saying it’s a bad thing to want to be near our biological family, but if it’s the main way that we are seeking to fulfill the longing to be “at home”, then we could be missing out on experiencing the power of God’s presence and God’s purpose for our lives.

God also addresses this in Jeremiah 29, when he speaks (through the prophet Jeremiah) to the Israelites who are exiles in Babylon… “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce… seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you shall find your welfare.”

Following Christ and embracing the new life he has for us sometimes means leaving the home of our past… in the past. Craig Barnes wrote a book called, Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls. In it he writes:

If you keep referring to the place of your childhood as home, you’ll never leave home, which is a necessary step in leaving childhood. The place you were raised is not your home. It never was. At best it was a pale approximation of the real home for which you yearn deep in your soul. God alone can lead you there. But to get to that sacred place you have to leave that pale approximation behind, not geographically but emotionally. Even if you stay in your ‘hometown,’ even if you never leave the house into which you were born, it is necessary to detach from the childhood illusion that this is the place where you belong. It is the only way the soul will be free to search for its true home with the Holy Family of Father, Son and Spirit. To refuse that journey is to commit idolatry…. The heart isn’t yearning for familiarity. It is yearning for God.

And he continues:

It was for this reason that, through the prophet Jeremiah, God told the Hebrews living in exile to stop pining away for Jerusalem…. It is precisely when we are not where we want to be, where we feel unknown, uncomfortable, and not at home, that our souls are opened to receiving the blessed gift of being at home with God.”

In a way these are hard words – but they point to the hope we can receive when we let go of the dreams and memories to which we cling. Then there’s room in our hearts to respond to others.

Jesus said he would not leave the disciples as orphans. The best way Jim and I can provide a home for Kyra – and you for your loved ones – is to help them understand this – that our true home is with God.

And we know from the rest of scripture that the call to love one another goes way beyond our immediate circles – and that the call is to address both spiritual and physical needs. James 1:27 says: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

I’ve heard the figure that every 14 seconds a child is left orphaned by AIDS. Here at Bethany, one of the areas of ministry the church leadership believes we are being called to is to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic – particularly in Africa, and even more particularly in Kenya.

This coming Saturday, December 1 is World AIDS Day. As you heard earlier in the announcements, we’ll be working with World Vision to host an exhibit which features a mini Africa hut. The hut is a symbol of the shakiness of earthly homes. It will teach us about the harsh realities of how God’s children are being affected by AIDS. And there will be ways for you to learn about how you can connect with and be part of what God is doing in Kenya.

That’s one way to respond. There are many, many, many ways to follow Jesus teaching – to help others experience God at home with us. Each of us can call upon the Holy Spirit -- call home, so to speak – to ask for guidance about the best ways we can respond.

We long to be home. God longs to be at home in us. These two desires meet when we obey Jesus’ command to love one another. Then -- wherever we are -- we can experience a home with God’s presence, a home with God’s peace. A home for the holidays and for eternity.

Let us pray… Thank you, Lord, for sending your Spirit to be with us to be with us and guide us into all truth. We pray that during this holiday season you’ll help us introduce people to the home that only you can provide—that your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.