October 14, 2007: AN ABUNDANT LIFE: HOMEMAKING
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19; Psalm 66:1-12
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

Maybe it's a planetary conjunction, but the subject of "home" has been coming up a lot lately. Every fall, my interim-pastor friend suffers through the Parade of Homes in whatever community she's serving. As she lives out her call to accompany congregations through their transition between pastors, her life is by necessity that of a nomad. Her gift to the people of God comes at the cost of living literally Jesus' comment about foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere. She's homeless for Jesus. Another friend commented recently that she has spent 25 years wandering as a corporate nomad, never setting roots anywhere. What confused her were the military families who move every couple of years and, in contrast to her, seem to nest wherever they land. To baffler her further, they seemed as settled as the people who lived on Century Farms. What, she wondered, does it take to make a "place" a "home"?

And well she may ask. Generation Xers, 20- and 30-somethings, like Not-Dorothys from the Wizard of Oz, live as if "no place is home." Waiting until later and later in life to "settle down"-to marry, to have children, to decide what they're going to be when they grow up-they too are functional nomads. The Oregonian's review of Garrison Keillor's reading this week in Portland said his appeal was that he expressed for Baby Boomers what home used to be (and which is no more). All of which accentuates that each generation defines "home" distinctively for its own time and place.

Jeremiah has a radical definition of home for the Jewish exiles languishing in Babylon. Those aliens to Babylon long for a home, which is symbolized by Jerusalem. Last week we learned from our peacemaking speaker, Alter Wiener, that exiles after World War II were called "displaced persons." Victims of the upheaval of war, they lived in camps in Europe and Israel until they could find a home. After the Vietnam War, we called such persons "refugees." Today, there are "refugees" in the world who have raised generations of children and grandchildren in places where "home" means camp and waiting for a place. In our country, we call exiles "aliens." Time was, to be an alien meant you longed to return home. Now, they are here because "home" is dangerous or a dead end way of living. Jeremiah tells the Jewish exiles to make Babylon their home.

When the Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia were sent to 19th century Baker, Oregon they were the fourth religious order sent to the new territory. The other missions had failed to survive the harsh frontier living, so the three Franciscan sisters arrived with apprehension and one trunk of belongings between them. After three grueling months, abused and harassed, they wrote their superior seeking permission to return home. To which their superior replied, "Remain in obedience." Which they did, going on to educate countless children, later founding the Franciscan Spiritual Center in Portland. Never quite "home" to those sisters, Oregon became "home enough" for ministry.

I left home when I married in 1970. Like most college students, we defined home as "where most of your junk is," which for most of us was our parents' attic. You knew you had made your own home when all your boxes were at the same place you slept most of the time. I wonder if my college-age working definition of "home" can be applied to Christians: home is where most of your junk is. You know the song-"This land is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through." Maybe it's not so bad to be an outsider. In the story of the healing of the ten lepers, it's the outsider who can see that a miracle has occurred. Jeremiah tells his readers they will always be outsiders, but like the Franciscan sisters in Oregon, Babylon will be "home enough." Based on concern, home results from forging relationships, investing in future generations, connecting to their community in compassion and prayer. Sounds like peacemaking to me.

Henri Nouwen writes of peacework (in the book of the same name). In a world in which many people feel alienated from culture, from each other, and from the past, peacemaking must first create a "free space" for strangers to become friends. "Hospitality," he writes "is not to change people, but to offer space where change can take place." And that's where hospitality becomes a virtue, where it functions as the heart of the Christian way of life. Because hospitality builds community, it is peacemaking in its deepest sense.

Diana Butler Bass believes the consequence of hospitality is community, which she says is the purpose of church. As she travels the country observing vital mainline congregations, she finds that Christian communities which practice hospitality change the world in real, concrete ways. These congregations form community by treating all humans with dignity, as true brothers and sisters. Thus hospitality becomes not just an ordinary homemaking skill, but a real way to practice peace (Christianity for the Rest of Us, p. 86).

I'm reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which she recounts her family's adventure in eating locally for a year. Many of you may wonder, "What's so big about that?" But for the majority of Americans who don't grow their own food, much of what they eat is based on petroleum products. Some of it's packaging, but most of the petroleum is used to produce the food in the form of fertilizer, pesticides and the means of shipping food across continents and oceans to satisfy an insatiable desire to eat out of season. Kingsolver contends that if every American family were to eat just one seasonal and locally grown meal each week, we could save 1-1/2 million barrels of oil each week. Think what that means in terms of war for oil. Homemaking literally as peacemaking.

OK, so (in Kingsolver's words) June Cleaver has left the building. Regardless of our gender and life situation, we can still do peacemaking as homemakers. There's no need to learn how to starch table linens or can tomatoes. In fact, it is probably more effective if we practice our peacemaking hospitality in a style indigenous to ourselves. Allow me to speak theologically. The prophet Jeremiah says home is where our concerns are, which means that homemaking isn't about sparkling windows, culinary arts and strategically placed objects d'art. Homemaking is about connecting to each other and to the world around us. There's nothing gender-specific about that. William Martin (The Contemplative Pastor) talks about Christian homemaking skills as tolerance, dignity, kindness, and acceptance. By naming homemaking skills this way, hospitality becomes a practice accessible to all of us. Not "Let me help you fit in," these are practices of, "Because you are here we are brother and sister." And therefore worthy of love and respect as you are, not "as soon as you are like us." Hospitality that gives permission and room to be who you really are. And that means the tenth leper has an important place. That outsider who noticed the miracle. It looks like we need him-the guy who doesn't know the religious rule book well enough to allow the practice of it to distract him from the main event, the miracle. Peacemaking is a practice of hospitality so radical that we just might notice the miracles, too.