The Fifth Sunday of Easter-Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg

The Fifth Sunday of Easter-Year C

May 18, 2025

 

        How many times in our lives have we said, “I just can’t wait to be home!”  We say it when we are away on trips of various sizes.  We say it when we have a stay in the hospital.  We say it sometimes even mid-way through a long day at work.  Even in the midst of adventures, this longing for home may steal upon us.

        I’ve talked to a number of different people this week about what makes a place home for them.  Home seems to indicate a place of familiarity, of comfort, of peace, of refuge.  It’s a place where we feel like we belong in our truest selves, and it is often a safe place where we can mourn.  Many folks associate home with family and friends, and for some, home encompasses a multitude of generations who figure out how to get along in ways that sometimes stretch us.  I wonder what makes a place home for you?  When you say “I just can’t wait to be home!” for what are you longing or looking for?

        In our reading from Revelation for today, we’ve got the very end of the book of Revelation.  Now, we’ve had readings from Revelation for the last four Sundays and surprisingly, none of our preachers have chosen to engage them, myself included!. 

        So, here’s a bit of context on Revelation from the scholar Diana Butler Bass.  She writes, “We often forget that the Revelation of John is exactly what it claims: a revelation, a vision. It isn’t predictive, it isn’t fortune telling, and it certainly isn’t writing the future. Above all, it isn’t literal.

        Like all visions, it reveals truth of things through symbols, poetry, visual and auditory suggestions, and dream sequences. The writer wasn’t a soothsayer. The author was certainly intuitive. And by the text’s own admission, the writer was a contemplative visionary. This person heard voices, paid attention to dreams, and prayed through images. And then, whoever this was wrote down what had been seen. Sort of like an ancient dream journal. A record of visionary experiences…”

        She continues, “Revelation was written many years after Jesus’ execution. Most scholars, even conservative ones, think it was composed some six or seven decades later. The popular predictive interpretation of the end times isn’t accepted by serious academics, even if it is the familiar view held by casual Bible readers and fundamentalist Christians.

        [Instead] modern interpreters have emphasized that Revelation was a message of comfort to a persecuted church. Some suggest that it emerged in the midst of internal Christian conflict, others think it was a warning aimed at Christians who had become collaborators with the Roman Empire.

 

She concludes, “Catholic biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza insisted that Revelation be read ‘from the margins’ and is best understood as a kind of Christian version of the Jewish story of the Exodus. As such, the book stands in the tradition of scriptural liberation, reveals the struggle of early believers with Rome, and proposes a hoped for future of justice for all.”[i]

        Our reading for today gives us a glimpse into this vision, this dream for God’s church in the midst of conflict or persecution or collaboration with Empire. In the vision, God is making God’s home among mortals, and it is clear that in that home, we all belong together with God.  And the main thing that this passage shows us that God does in making God’s home among mortals is to offer comfort for those who mourn, to take away all sadness and suffering.  And in that home together with us, God makes all things new. 

        It’s a compelling image of God, if we really think about it;  That God chooses to not only make God’s home with us but also, that one of the ways that God makes home is by comforting those who mourn and by even removing the sources of that grief or mourning. Perhaps that is why this passage is one of the suggested passages for our Burial liturgy—to remind us of this image, this promise of God.

        And I can’t help wonder what this means for us as the Church?  If we the church are the body of Christ, God’s way of making home among mortals, how are we called to further this work of God?  How are we called to create a space of home or belonging for others, both inside our walls and outside?  How are we called to care for those who mourn, both inside our walls and outside?  How are we called to make things new in partnership with God? 

        Because it’s not enough to create a space where we and others feel comfortable.  There’s an aspect of home that nourishes us, cares for us, even as we get called outward to make our way in the world.  Poet David Whyte captures this tension beautifully in a portion of his poem WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF.  I’ll share it with you in closing, and invite you to consider this week, how we are called to make home for others.

WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF

I know this house

so well,

and this horizon,

and this world

I have made.

from my thoughts.

 

I know this quiet

and the particular

treasures

and terrors

of my own

silence

 

but I do not

know the world

to which

I am going.

I have only

this breath

and this presence

for my wings

and they carry me

in my body

whatever I do

from one

hushed moment

to another.

 

I know

my innocence

and I know

my unknowing

but for all my successes

I go through life

like a blind child

who cannot see,

arms outstretched

trying to put together

a world.

 

And the world

seems to work

on my behalf

catching me

in its arms

when I go too far.

 

I don’t know what

I could have done

to have earned

such faith.

 

Watching

the geese

go south

I find

that even

in silence

and even

in stillness

and even

in my home

alone

without a thought

or a movement

I am forever part

of a great migration

that will take me

to another place.

 

And though all

the things I love

may pass away

and all the great family

of things and people

I have made

around me

will see me go,

I feel they will always

live in me

like a great gathering

ready to reach

a greater home.

 

When one thing dies

all things

die together,

and must learn

to live again

in a different way,

 

when one thing

is missing

everything is missing,

and must be

found again

in a new whole

 

and everything

wants to be complete,

everything wants

to go home

and the geese

traveling south

are like the shadow

of my breath

flying into darkness

on great heart-beats

to an unknown land

where I belong.

 

This morning they have

found me,

full of faith,

like a blind child,

nestled in their feathers,

following the great coast

to a home I cannot see. [ii]


[ii] From WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF  In The House of Belonging © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press.  Share on David Whyte’s Facebook page on May 7, 2020.

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