Listen to the sermon here
This week, as I was thinking about Homecoming Sunday, I couldn’t help remembering all the various places I that I have called home. To say that we moved around a lot when I was a kid would be a massive understatement. Sometimes, it felt like every time I got comfortable enough to think of a place as home we were on the move. I was always the new kid in school. Being the new kid is not a pleasant experience. The stress of a new school, the confusion of unfamiliar ways, and strange kids to get to know could be unbearable at times. To this day, the pain of homesickness that all that moving around created in me can still move me to tears. Moving from house to house, country to country, school to school, classroom to classroom, was traumatizing. I suppose the stress of trying to find my way in new places together with the fear of meeting new people is what inspired a recurring nightmare that can still invade my dreams.
The nightmare was always the same. I was always breathless from running away from some frightening experience. I would arrive at what I believed to be the front door of my home. The door was the only thing that ever changed in the dream. Sometimes, it was a blue door, sometimes a red door, sometimes a green door, sometimes a brown door, but somehow, I always knew that beyond this door I would find relief from the pressures of the newness in which I found myself. Beyond the door, no matter what the colour, beyond the door, I would be safe. All I needed to do was open the door and I would be home.
We were latch-key kids. For those of you too young or too privileged to remember, latch-key kinds were kids whose mothers worked. So, we fended for ourselves when we got home from school. So that we wouldn’t lose them, we carried the keys to our home on chains around our necks. In my stress induced nightmares, I would arrive breathless at my new front door, take the key from around my neck, so that I could let myself into the safety of my home, only to discover that the key never fit into the lock because the key that I carried was always the key to the last house that I had lived in. Upon discovering that I was locked out of my home, I would wake-up in a cold sweat terrified of what the next day might bring me.
This recurring nightmare fed my longing for the home of my dreams. Looking back on my younger self, I can almost feel the ache of that longing that I can only describe to you as a kind of homesickness – homesickness for the kind of home that I never really had. The kind of home I longed for was a place where I was safe and secure from all my deepest fears, a place I could count on to always be there, full of people who would love me and keep me safe.
So, this week as I was working on this Homecoming sermon I felt something of that old homesickness that haunted my childhood nightmares. The longing that I felt for the safety of the home of my dreams was accentuated by the fact that in addition to this being Homecoming Sunday it is also the Third Sunday of the Season of Creation that focusses up the Wilderness. The task of combining Homecoming Sunday with Wilderness Sunday is daunting to say the least. Try as I might, every idea I had about celebrating the beauty of the wilderness, was spoiled by the reality of what is happening in wildernesses all over the planet. Creation is groaning under the weight of generations of abuse. Wildernesses around the world are on fire.
This summer my beloved British Columbia is on track to set an all-time record for wild fires as more than one million-one-hundred-and-ninety-three-thousand hectares have burned across the province. Records are also being broken in the Northwest Territories and vast portions of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Northern Ontario are on fire even as I speak. In the United States 5.8 million acres of land has been scorched by infernos. Enormous fires are also burning in Italy, Romania, Portugal, and Serbia. Spurred on by temperatures that have caused the media to name the current heat-wave in Europe: “Lucifer.”
In Ireland, my old homeland, this they have experienced 75 percent less rainfall than normal and for the first time in generations the Irish are also battling forest fires. Wildfires are burning in large swaths across Brazil. Earlier this year the fires in South Africa, New Zealand, and Chile caused some commentators to speculate that Hell may have sprung a leak. Scientists are warning us that the infernos of 2017 are just the beginning and we should expect more and more as the effects of climate change continue to disrupt the planet we call home.
If only the fires were all we have to worry about. While record droughts spark fires, record breaking storms are dumping epic amounts of water and millions of acres have been flooded in Texas and Florida, the Caribbean, Mumbai, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and China. This very morning floods are only beginning to recede in Vietnam, the Philippines, Croatia, Cameroon, and Sierra Leon. The earth is groaning and humanity’s anxieties are rising almost as high as the floodwaters. I can feel the stress as we gather for Homecoming looking for safety in the presence of one another, longing for relief from the fear that is inspired by all we know about the disasters that are wreaking havoc on our planet. It’s almost as if we have arrived breathless at our own front door desperate to get in so that we can feel at home, so that we can relax and take refuge from the storms in this sanctuary. The groaning of the Earth, the turmoil of our planet is almost more than we can bear. We are so tempted to hunker down in the familiar patterns of old so that we can fortify ourselves in the safety we find within the walls we have built. But, look closely and I think I you will see that we have the wrong keys hanging around our necks. Can our old keys save us from all that haunts us or are they the keys to houses we must move beyond?
A long time ago, when the stress in my life was almost more than I could bear, I told a friend of mine that I wasn’t sleeping very well because every time I drifted off to sleep my old recurring nightmare was there to meet me. I couldn’t bear standing in front of that door not being able to get in because I had the wrong key. The friend I told, was someone I’ve told you about before. Henry Myair is a Jewish Rabbi that I met years ago when we were both working in the travel business. Henry is a wise man whose many kindnesses have touched me in ways that continue to bless me to this day. After asking me a few questions about my recurring nightmare Henry suggested that I try summoning up my nightmare as a “daymare.” I’d never heard of a “daymare” before, so it took a while for Henry to convince me that I should try to walk around inside my nightmare in the middle of the day to see what I might discover. I agreed to venture into my fears, on the condition that Henry would come with me into my “daymare.”
We began by talking a little about the various anxieties that were creating my stress. It didn’t take long for us to arrive at a very large, imposing, black, door. I reached for the key that hung around my neck and just like always that key didn’t fit. Henry invited me to toss the key away. After all, that key belonged to my old home and so, it wasn’t the key I needed. I protested that I was so homesick that maybe I should just try to find the door that the key fitted into. Maybe if I found the right door, I’d finally be able to go home.
Then Henry asked me a question that tipped me over the edge, “Where are you when you have your nightmares?”
At first I didn’t understand, “I’m running away.” I almost pleaded to Henry.
“No, That’s not the question. The question is not what is happening in your nightmare.
The question is: When you are actually dreaming your nightmare, where are you?”
I still didn’t get it. So, Henry offered me an answer. “You are at home in your own bed. You are already home. You are already safe. Now, look around, see if you can find a window. Resist the temptation to hide away. Go to the window and look outside. What can you see? Now look at the door. You don’t need that old key to get into your home, you are already there, you are already safe. Open the door, open the door and go outside.
As I peered through the window I saw a hallway full of people. The people were carrying back-packs and books. I imagined that the hallway was a school. Henry encouraged me to dream may way out through the door so that I could look around. I dreamed I was walking onto the campus of a university. My nightmare became my daymare and my daymare became my dream.
Sometimes, when fear rises in me, I long for a home that never really existed and the old nightmare returns. But now I know that the door in my nightmare opens both ways and I don’t need the key around my neck because I’m already home, I’m already safe. I can take comfort from the familiarity of my home and the LOVE that dwells in and around my home, comfort that gives me the strength to go outside.
Dear friends, look around, we are home, we are safe. We don’t need to escape our anxieties about what is happening in the world. We are home, we are safe. We can share our fears trusting that the LOVE that dwells among us is strong enough to hold us. Look around and take comfort from the LOVE that dwells among us and draw strength from the familiar surroundings. Know that you are home. Know that you are safe. Safe even if we do have some old keys hanging around our necks; keys that no longer work their magic. Take strength from one another, give one another the courage to set those keys aside and look out through the windows. What can we see out there? Remember you are already home. You are already safe.
The LOVE that dwells among us also dwells beyond us, beyond the doors and walls that we have built. The LOVE that soothes us here at home, that same LOVE also calls us out into the world.
What can we see out there? What dreams are waiting to be dreamt? The nightmares exist and they are frightening. But in the bright light of day, we can see that we are already home, we already safe. The Love that dwells among us also dwells beyond us.
Together, let us have the courage to experience the realities of our daymares, so that we can dream dreams that will carry us out into the world out there. Let us dream beyond our fears. Let us dream into the LOVE that is God.