The Heart’s True Home: in God’s presence

I hadn’t really heard the name, Curly Putman, until I searched the internet for a few songs. Curly was born in 1930 in Jackson County, AL, and it turns out that Curly Putman had quite a career writing songs with a country flavour. You may recall Tammy Wynette’s, “D_I_V_O_R_C_E,” or George Jones, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” but the lyrics I was after were those of Tom Jones, “The Green, Green Grass of Home;” all written by Curly Putman.

I was very young when Tom Jones took the song, “The Green, Green Grass of Home,” to number one but it’s a tune that has stayed with me. I looked again at the lyrics during the week only to be reminded that there’s a dark element in the song. The singer is dreaming. He is thinking of home, “Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly. It's good to touch the green, green, grass of home.” But then he awakens, he is still in his prison cell, awaiting execution. The song may have a dark side, but it sets up a stark contrast between the singer’s plight and the happiest moments of his life. The happiest memories, the place he felt secure and loved was at home with family and friends. Home is like that for most people.

I remember the first time I was away from my family for an extended time. It was to attend theological school in Lexington, KY. While there, I played for the Seminary Soccer team in the NCAA graduate league. It was early November when an opposing player committed a terrible foul that tore up the ligaments in my knee. I wound up in a full leg cast for six weeks. The cast was removed four or five days before Christmas and I remember being in a tremendous hurry to get my very, atrophied leg and stiff ankle moving again. It had to be able to work the clutch in my car for, no matter what, I was going home for the holidays.

There had been talk of a huge snow storm hitting Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York State on Christmas Eve, however. So I had decided to get up at 3:30 on Christmas Eve morning to beat the snow. I hobbled out on crutches, threw them onto the passenger seat and set off in the wee hours, but I had left too late. I barely got out of Lexington when the snow started flying. The highway was covered before I hit Covington. It was several inches deep north of Cincinnati and it was falling so thickly, I could barely see. On the north side of Dayton, I hit a patch of ice on I-75, I lost control, my car did a 360 and another 180, I came to a stop facing the oncoming traffic. For a brief moment, my heart sank, but all the other cars somehow managed to stop. I turned around, waved appreciatively, and undeterred, continued the trek north because, no matter what, I was going home.

If you ever read the opening chapters of Genesis, you will find there a tremendous early account of beginnings and first things. Though the process was probably greater and more complex, the first chapter tells us that God set in motion the things that led to the development of the universe. The second chapter focusses mostly on the first humans and the third tells the story of the Garden. One of the interesting things about God’s creation is that it begins with a very close relationship between God and the human beings who were made “in the image of God.” Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden and, there, God walks with them. Human beings were created for a direct relationship with God. The Garden and that relationship were our first home. It’s where we are meant to be, where our deepest roots are.

Then, of course, you will have heard about the Fall and how going against God’s will led to a great chasm between human beings and a holy God. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden to live by the sweat of their brows in the world. Throughout the Bible, it comes across that there is something unnatural to this, God is continually working to bridge the chasm and bring his creation back home and into relationship. Ultimately, it led to Jesus’ arrival, his work on the cross, and his resurrection. And, we are told, his resurrection was the first fruits of a greater resurrection to come in which the relationship with God that was in place in the beginning will be fully restored.

But there is something very interesting in the gospel that Jesus brings. Theologians sometimes call it “inaugurated eschatology.” Eschatology is the theology around last things and end times. “Inaugurated eschatology” is, however, a recognition that in Christ, the Christian already has and may experience some things that, while they may be fully consummated at the end of time, they are attainable already. In John 5:24, “Very truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life;” it’s present tense. In Luke’s Gospel (17:21) with reference to the kingdom, “You won't be able to say, 'Here it is!' or 'It's over there!' For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” In Matthew, healings take place and Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven has come to you (12:28).” In Colossians 1:13, Paul indicates that we are already in the kingdom of the Son. So there’s this sense that the one who follows Christ is already there, already has access to God and his kingdom, that the Christian can already experience the relationship and the “home” that we had in the beginning with God.

In many ways, Jesus modelled the access and relationship for us. Every now and then, we can read of Jesus drawing aside to pray, to worship, to interact with his Father in heaven. It is something that seems so natural for him, something so necessary for him, something in which he drew strength, comfort, and direction. In prayer and worship, when he engaged with God, he was home and, in his example and words, he taught those who would be his disciples to cultivate their “true home” in their lives.

That subject comes up in John 4 as Jesus speaks to a Samarian woman at a well. Many in that day had a much more localized concept of God and where one could interact with him. Most Jews felt that God was most present in the temple in Jerusalem and they sought him out there. We still see that mind set with the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem today, people will go there to pray. The Samarians, however, went back to an ancient temple of the northern kingdom of Israel at Mount Gerizim. The woman points this difference out to Jesus and Jesus replies, “the time is coming, and is now here,” when the true worshippers will worship God in” neither of those places. They will worship, “in spirit and in truth (4:23).” Perhaps, Jesus is inferring here that there will come a time when the temple and its sacrificial practices will come to an end (which they did) and people will enter the presence of God not in a place but in the Spirit.

William Willimon, the well-known American preacher, once wrote about what he perceived going on in the broader church today. Willimon thinks that we have forgotten the role of the Spirit blowing among us (Jn.3:8). He said, “We build our beautiful churches. We bolt down the pews to the floor, in a vain attempt to keep everything fixed. We have the best music and glorious singing. But in the end, we don’t often produce worship. We don’t make worship. Worship is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Worship occurs in those delicious moments when the Spirit of God blows through our dead, dark, infertile world, and brings life (Gen.1:2ff.).

The theological school that I went to is called Asbury. It is on the south side of Lexington, KY and is one of the largest seminaries in north America with around 1,500 graduate students. Much of the strength of Asbury, goes back to an event that took place in 1970. One morning, without warning, what has been described as a “divine visitation” occurred in Asbury College’s 10 am chapel service. Dr. David Hunt, a Louisville physician who was then a student said, “When you walked into the back of Hughes Auditorium there was a kind of a glow about the chapel, you just walked in and sensed that God was there. The service was supposed to be routine, about 50 minutes. Instead, it lasted 185 hours non-stop, 24 hours a day. Classes were cancelled as young students and faculty prayed and worshipped and interacted with God. Another person said that it was as though electricity was going through the air. What was significant for me, years later, was interacting with people who were there. Some were, then, my professors across the street at Asbury Seminary and it had transformed their lives. Even though they were academics, intellectuals, people not prone to see spiritual things around every corner, they could not explain it in any other way. It had transformed them, such that they had a depth, a power, an assurance that is not always evident professorial staff in theological colleges.
Now I don’t want to say that this is how all works of the Spirit will occur, and I’m not saying that we need to stay here for 185 hours non-stop. Just that there can be movements of God’s Spirit even today; movements in the lives of individuals, movements in groups, movements that would deepen our worship, transform us, movements that would lead us home into that relationship with God that we were made for. We need an openness to God, the Spirit, and “our true home” in our lives.

So, Jesus said this “home” has something to do with the Spirit. Jesus also said that this home has something to do with truth. Part of the truth is that connection with God, let’s call it communion or worship, involves connecting with One far greater than anything we have ever engaged.

Earlier this week, scientists announced that they may have proved the theory of inflation, that 13.8 billion years ago, a big bang occurred that led the universe to quicken and expand at a uniform rate. Where the scientist often doesn’t go, however, is into the question of how this occurred, and who caused it? Some of us are still bold enough to see God there, but if we do, surely our estimations of God must increase.

Andrew Murray, the South African pastor and writer thought about God as maker of all that is out there in the starry heavens. Murray wrote of how one could see incredible sights with the naked eye from some parts of the world. When you look through a telescope, you see so much more. Murray also spoke of the value of a then developing photographic industry, and how a long exposure of a photographic place under a telescopic lens could reveal much, much more than the eye could even see through a telescope.

A minister friend of mine is an amateur astronomer and has a substantial telescope of his own. He once took me out for an evening and explained elements of the universe, our solar system, and the stars. The distances involved between our sun and the nearest star are staggering. The distances between that and the next star incredible. He spoke of how God created the universe or was the prime-mover behind the big bang. Thus, the truth is that when we speak of a relationship with God, it is with one whose depths are unfathomable, whose height is un-scalable, whose breadth cannot be imagined.

Many times, in churches, people treat worship lightly. In some places, they treat God like a good buddy. In others, people come into worship and, it’s as if they’re saying, “Hey God, I’m here today, aren’t you glad I’m giving you some of my time.” The truth is that God is immense, so much greater than we can ever get our minds around. In entering the presence of God, we are entering the presence of a force that ought do nothing but inspire awe. It’s the type of thing Isaiah experienced in the temple. An awestruck Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (Is.6:5).” God created us for a relationship with him but at the root of it, we are not dealing with an equal, our home is with the Lord of hosts.

The truth is also that our worship and relationship with God must take account of Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Through Jesus work on the cross and his resurrection, sin and death have been defeated. And all that he went through for us tells us something about the incredible love of this God who inspires awe. There are a couple of things that Jesus’ work means for our worship and how we relate to God. If you think about it, the victorious nature of what God has accomplished ought, first, to inspire praise and thanksgiving. Perhaps, today, we would term it, “celebration.” Second, the fact that Jesus work is done, accomplished already, means salvation is here and that should inspire feelings of peace, well-being in our lives, assurance, and security; some of the very things we associate with being home.

For four years, I ministered in Ottawa in the 90s. A number of people in my church had family in the little town of Campbell’s Bay, over the river and up the valley, in QC. I remember going to a funeral in Campbell’s Bay one time, a funeral that still sticks in my memory. I was from the city church, supposedly the theologically astute one. As I glanced over the Order of Service before this funeral, I was quite astonished. It seemed to me that there was little room in this service for solemnity and grief. Someone had died for goodness sake, it was not a happy time. But as the service got under way, I began to think that it was me that was out of order. The service was a celebration of life. It was upbeat. It started with the gospel hymn, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I’ll be There.” The readings were of eternal life. The speaker recounted the strong faith of the deceased, how she had lived a long life in Christ, and that now she was “home.” The other hymns, I don’t think they are in the United Church Hymnbook, were, “He the Pearly Gates Will Open,” “When We All Get to Heaven” – we’ll sing and shout the victory,” and “In the Sweet By and By – we shall meet on that beautiful shore.” There was a tremendous assurance in the service. Christ’s work was done. They atmosphere was upbeat, victorious, and I left a funeral of all things, uplifted.  I felt “Happy,” “my level was too high”as Pharrell Williams sings. But isn’t that the truth. That we have a God who inspires awe, a God who accomplished so much he inspires celebration, a God who loves us so much that we know we are safe, that things are going to be okay. It doesn’t matter what is going on in life, it doesn’t matter about all the noise and the clatter, it’s all going to be okay. In God’s presence we are “home.” It is a presence we can experience even now, and something we ought to cultivate a whole lot more of.