Part of the Family 2
Romans 812-17 «= WA AA aK
March 21, 1971

(more is nothing quite so touching as an orphan. No picture tugs at our
hearts quite so urgently as the picture ef a poor, orphaned waif, There are
few people so hardened by life as to resist the very human urge to cradle a
homeless child. This universal human response aqqure because tvery man who
ever lived knows that there is no pain quite like the pain of homesickness;
and no sr sa agony quite like the sense of separation from loved ones and
loving relationships.

Bach of us could document the time when homesickness first struck us:

over he Yesis

the pain is real enough to be remembered 9#4+3.( Perhaps it was simply an
overnight stay with relatives; perhaps it was an extended period of separation
from our parents. In many cases it occured as a result of adversity; something
happened to us and we suddenly found ourselves cut off from those relation—
ships that provide support and secruity, I can recall, for instance, getting
into a scuffle at summer camp, at the age of twelve; and not only losing the
fight but also bearing the wrath of the counselor. And then lying in my
bunk, totally alone, totally cut off from the laps into which I would gladly
have crawlod; surely the most forlorn and miserable little boy in all of God's
creation,

I can recall, several years later, standing in a college parking lot on
a September afternoon, choking back tears which young men don't dare shed in
public, as the green Dodge bearing my father, mother and brother, turned the
corner.

[ima still, for all of us, there are symptoms of that universal malady:
no longer a desire to return to that physical place that used to be "home";
but a very deep and personal melancholy that emerges on occasion: a very
personal grief for the home that is no more and the relationships that exist
only in the recesses of memory. We know what it is to be honesick. |

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4n article in the paper last week told how it is for servicemen in Viet—
nam — who begin counting days the moment they arrive: and for whom "home" is
a growing obsession. In the play and movie, Oliver sings "Where is Love", and
we know intuitively why he's singing: we feel his deep pain. d
roe

One - the most vivid images of homesickness I have ever dtscevered,
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pevanl-ha-in4he-457%b Psalm, partofwhich-we-read-—responsively this
mornings The scene is Babylon: the people of Isracl have been carried away
from their land and are in exile: they are separated from home — perhaps for
good. Listen again to their lament:
"By the rivers of Babylon
we sat and cried when we
remember Zion,
On the willows nearby
we hung our harps.
Those who captured us told us to sing;
thoy told us to entertain them:

'Sing us a song about Zion!!

How can we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?
May I never be able to play the harp again,
if I forget you, Jerusalem!
Hay I never be able to sing again,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not think of you as my
greatest joy!'' [Modern Man in Today's English Version]
That is homesickness: that is a kind of pain and despair I can feel.
dnyone who has ever been separated from home and loved ones knows exactly
what the writer of that Psalm was talking about.
One of the deepest needs of man is the need of a home: a place where he

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belongs, but more than a place, really. in environment in which the sense of
belongingness is present; relationships with others that are supportive and
loving and which, therefore, bring a sense of security. It is a need which,

increasingly, is not met in the framework of our culture and life-style. —fre—

doug—mobitity—of—the—American-peopic: ind in trying to adapt to the reality

of a move every two years or so, people learn to live with a kind of permanent
restlessness and rootlessness. It even becomes difficult to establish friend-—
ships because everyone knows it won't be for long, |Sociologists and psycholo-
gists are telling us that our mobility and its results are fast becoming a
social problem of major proportions. Without a permanent place — a home -
the family itself becomes overloaded with responsibility. Husband, wife and
children look to each other for supportive relationships once stovi tak by the
larger family and circle of friends. Amd many times the nuclear family cannot
stand up under the load. There is in the mobile part of our population a
deep need to settle down; often expressed, in pain and anxiety, by a wife who
delivers the ultimatum: "This is the last move. I don't care where — but
we must settle down and create our home," ~—

| That's a human problem that we are capable of dealing with when we see
it hanes: \I continue to feel that it is in this area that the church, as
a etiugregation of people, can be of service to real human need. We are able,
here, to short-circuit the ordinary processes by which people find friends,
and a sense of belonging in a community. We are able to minister to the
deepest needs of each other by being open to the stranger: by simple friend-
liness: by going out of our way to let the new resident know that he matters ~
and that therefore he is "at home",

(mere is, however, a deeper significance to all of thise There is a
sense in which the common human experience of homesickness exists in all of

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us on a level we might call\ "theological" or "spiritual".§ The restlessness

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of the human spirit: the search for meaning: the periodic despair when all of
uh otk "What's it all about?" , might be called a form of universal homesiok-—
ness. e way of defining the Phe eee is in_terms of separation from
our true homo : our~trre-seit —- or our true fatho

hat's why Paul chose the imago of "Sonship" to describe what happens to
a man in Jesus Christ. | In the New Tostament Losson this morning, taken from
Paul's letter to the Romans, he is trying to set out the particularities of
the Christian life; tho uniqueness of being grasped by the good news. it is,
says Paul, like becoming God's own son: that is the unique and new state of
being into which a Christian is brought by God's graco. He's now part of
God's na tenity. \

Paul would have agreed that all men are children of God, simphy~er~a
rosul+of..their-crdations The race is, in fact, one big family. But in the
"fall", Paul saw the dissolving of the original family ties. Men pull out -
men try to go it alone with disastrous results. 4nd so God has adopted us
back. The word translated "Spirit of Sonship" could well have been translated
“adoption”, and there appears to be little doubt that in writing to the Romans
Paul was using the particular Roman practice of adoption as a mod(ly Thorcin
lies a long but interesting story.

Under Roman law, adoption was a serious and difficult procedure; but it
could be implemented while a child's true father was still living. Under the
law, a father's power over his son was absolute: a son never "came of ago" in
terms of moving out from under the control of the father. Adoption was accom—
plished by a public ritual, witnessed by seven other mon, in which the real
father put his son up for sale three times, and bought him back twicee The
third time he did not buy him back, thus severing his own power. The adopting
father then brought his own case to a magistrate who consumated the adoption.
It was a very serious step to take.

Under the law, the adopted son became a full heir to his new fathor's

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possessions: if hoe had old debts they were canceled: he literally became a new

person.

[This information from William Barclay, The Letter to tho Romans, p. 110

- 111, Daily Study Biblc]

| Paul has all of that in mind when he talks about our becoming the Sons
of « Im Jesus Christ God has gone through the expense and aiffioulty of
adopting us. But in our casc, it is not a new father and a new home, but a
joyful reunion with t ic and father we left behind long ago. We are part
of the family once again — oe

We are compelled to ask at this point, if we have not, infact, merely
indulged in an exercise of sentimentality. One of the unspoken criticisms of
Christian Paith is that it is for the weak, the soft, the sentimental: that
the true man or woman, will learn to overcome such things as the felt neod
for a home, or for love, or for deep, redeeming relationships. Why, after
all, do wo necd a home — or a father - or any kind of permanent relationships?
Why can't we just muster a little back bone, and go it alone?

Well, we can, and some of us do, and many of us harbor feelings that we
are something less than strong individuals when we segactanes this particular
need. The question, then, is, "should we?" Is that the way life was intended
to be?

[0 Knox, professor of Now Testament at Union Theological Seminary,

[Life in Christ Jesus] tells the story of a young lad, separatod from his
parents, who wrote a very lonely and sad letter to them in which he began,

for the first time, to ask the fundamental human question. "Why am I alive?
I feel as if I have no purpose in life at all?" Knox comments; "His question,
never again to be altogether silenced in his heart, is the human question: and
no philosopher could have asked it more truly and wisely .\. . It belongs to

our nature as men to be capable of asking this question, and at the same time

to be incapable of answering it. We are so made as to necd to know what, as

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men, we cannot know." [p. 95]

[me boy asked the question because he was separated from his parents. 50,
soon or late, we all ask ity | "that is the meaning of my life?" We can
protect ourselves from it: we can avoid it with relentless activity and social
involvements, but we cannot escape it. It is our nature to contemplate our
“2 and to ask "\Ihat does my life mean?"

Othe anxitty of the boy was not so mich that he found himself asking the

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nation’ pect from the supportive love of his parents, apart from the environ
ment in which he knew evon this ultimate, unanswerable question could be asked
in the context of undying love.

}rnox deduces from this ~ rightly, I believe - that our basic malady is
not ignorance but homesickness. We don't need an answer to that question,
nearly so a ae a relationship with One we can trust to have tho answer.

That necd is expressed in a little ritual often played out between parents
and children, Sooner or later children become aware of death, and ask some
pretty trying questions; such as: "When will I die?" and more often than not
I think what is-happening here is not so much an academic inquiry as a plea
for love and scourity. What is expressed hore is not so much the need for
information, as the need for affirmation: affirmation that love is firm: that
the child may be scourc: that there is a strong relationship he can lean on
and into which he can throw every fear, mas x ( care,;in the assurance that the
parent loves and will continuc Loving.| Next time it based: don't give an
academic answer. Give a hug, and see if it isn't sufficient.

yn Good News of the Gospel which comes to each of us, personally, where
we live, is that we are part of the family; that God has adopted us as his
own children: that in Jesus Christ he has brought us into a saving relation-
ship with himself: that it has been witnessed: that it is accomplished.

There is no need to be homesick ever again. There is no need to feel alone,

separate, cut off, lost.

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Jesus, himself, told it that way in the story of the Prodigal son. God
is like that father - waiting, watching, remning down the road to welcome us
home. When that happens there is celebration. In*ORMvéP;"wheretheedi'ttlc
Doped HOTCOHed “In tothe "fami Ly "of thieves..thoreis-dancing- and singingwyand
groabyeutitiiib: ica yjoyws That's what Christian feds ought to be. That's

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what the essential life of the Geoeeh oh Piten- Sharer’ is all about — 4 great
celebration of reunion.

4gain, John Knox, has put it beautifully: "We may, or may not, find the
answers to our questions. But may we not fail to be found of him, who is
himself the answer to more than our questions — the answor to our deepest

need as persons! For to be found of him is breath, and bread, and drink, and

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health, and home." [p. 98]

Our father, you have made us restless until we find our rest in you.
In secking - may we be faund: in asking those difficult questions, may we

be open to you — the answer to all our needs. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

imen.