On Our Way Home

On Our Way Home--October 11, 2017

"Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." [Philippians 3:12]

On their very last album, the Beatles had a lesser-known gem of a song called “Two of Us.”  It wasn’t a love song—at least, it’s not necessarily a song about romance. (Whatever else you could say about the late Beatles, they had at least matured beyond the sappy bubble-gum sentimentalism of rhyming “Let me be your man” with “I want to hold your hand.”) Rather, it is a song about friendship, long-time friendship in fact, and the sense of belonging it creates. And at the same time, it’s about how that comfortable sense of belonging lets you keep on keeping on, even into somewhere you haven’t been before.

The opening verse begins, “Two of us riding nowhere, spending someone’s hard-earned pay; you and me Sunday driving, not arriving, on our way home.  We’re on our way home.  We’re going home.”  And then the bridge comes, “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.”  In a very real, honest moment it feels as though Paul (McCartney, not Saint) and John (Lennon, not the Gospel-writer) are looking back on their friendship.  And because they look back and see the safety of each other, the security of the friendship, they can look forward, too—to the destination, “home” and to the “road that stretches out ahead.”

Well, even if Paul McCartney and John Lennon didn’t actually feel that way toward each other at this point (this was near the end of the Beatles’ era, and they didn’t always get along, or know how to deal with Yoko, either), this is actually a pretty good picture of the way Paul sees himself in relationship to Christ.  He is on his way, so to speak: headed somewhere, headed toward a goal, but not by himself.  He is on his way home, you could say, and he is pressing on with Christ at his side already.  In other words, he travels with a sense of belonging.  He goes, knowing that he is beloved on the way and will be beloved when he finally “reaches the goal,” because “Christ has made me his own.”

That is a really significant train of thought, one that puts the whole Christian faith into right perspective.  Paul—and all of us followers of Jesus—keeps on keeping on with his walk of faith, not in order to get acceptance from Jesus, but because he is already accepted!  Notice where Paul uses his past and present tenses—“Christ Jesus has made me his own,” as in done deal, mission accomplished, no-need-to-try-and-prove-anything.  It is a fait accompli.  But even though Christ Jesus has (past, accomplished) claimed Paul, there is still something more to be done moving forward—“I press on,” Paul says, to reach the finish line.  It’s like the familiar sidewalks of home are coming into view, and that gives him the energy to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.  Sometimes the promise of homecoming has a pull that leads you onward, like gravity.

So often, we Christians get this all backward.  We act like the Good News is something like, “Keep on running, and if you ever even make it to the finish line, then God will let you into his club and his company.”  We sometimes act like we are on our own for the journey, only to really have God with us when get to heaven, but not here and now.  We sometimes forget that we have a history with this God, “memories longer than the road…” so to speak, of times where God has accompanied on our journeys into strange places before.  And we forget that we are headed to a “goal” that is our home in the truest sense of the word.  We forget that ultimately it is God who is leading us into the promised future.

In other words, the whole Christian life is rather like this late Beatles’ song: we are on our way… but with Christ at our side, accompanying us all the way home. As Teresa of Avila put it, “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the Way’.” It is because we know we belong, because we know we are beloved, that we can keep putting one foot in front of the other ourselves.  Christ Jesus has made you his own.  Lutherans like me (and, here’s a surprise, I am unapologetically a Lutheran on this point) will say we can count on it in the invisible traced watermark of the cross on our foreheads from baptism.  You have been (past, accomplished) given belonging, belonging to someone whose love is so fierce as to get nailed between thieves for you.  If that is true, then in this day we keep on at it.  We keep on at the journey, whatever surprises or bumps or sorrows or joys come in it.  We keep on going where Jesus leads—to love and serve the people placed in our path, to share Good News with them, to do right even when nobody’s looking—because we know Jesus is with us, as he has always been whether we recognized or appreciated him or not, while we are both on our way home.

Lord Jesus, be both our guide today and our friend.  Be with us, and give us such confidence and security from knowing you are with us that we can head into unknown territory on our way home today.