Date: September 4, 2016
1
“LET US COUNT THE WAYS”
SCRIPTURE: PSALM 139: 1
–
6, 13
–
18; LUKE 14: 25
–
33
GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC
September 4, 2016
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor
Luke 14:25
–
33
14:25 Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he
turned and said to them,
14:26 “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
14:27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple
.
14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and
estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?
14:29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see
it will begin to ridic
ule him,
14:30 saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
14:31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down
first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who
comes against
him with twenty thousand?
14:32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and
asks for the terms of peace.
14:33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all
your possessions.
Counting the days until I would get home.
Every day, a new math equation in my head
—
23 minus 4 is 19. 19 days until I go
home.
It is not that I didn’t like where I was. It was that my heart was somewhere far from
there.
I was in love
—
and home was wh
ere John was.
2
I had a
year as a mission volunteer in New Mexico almost under my belt and a lot of
unknown ahead in TN. But I was ready to be with him. Everything else could work
out from there.
Over two decades later, I don’t have enough fingers to co
unt how many ways home
has shape shifted.
Temporary places
Fleeting faces
Memories made
Memories fade
My sense of what could be, what would be sifting and shifting
Drifting from what I had dared to dream of before I knew better.
Building a life
Feeli
ng the ground shift under my feet
Change the only sure thing
What is home in a world like that? Like this?
What are you willing to sacrifice for home? For a place to belong? A place to find
purpose, to find your familiar?
A way to feel like you are
where you are supposed to
be?
Today, millions of people wander and yearn, search and set their sites on a place
where they can just be at home.
In fact, we live in a time when there have never been so many displaced people on
our planet. The United Nati
ons reports that 65.3 million people are in exile from
their homes because of war or persecution
or other dangerous situations
. And half
of them are children.
One
out of every 113 people are displaced on our planet.
Those who are sleeping in shelters
—
over 500 in Asheville, over a half million in the
US. And those who are not safe in their own homes
—
the abused, the neglected,
those who have to hide who they are with the people who say they love them.
And we must remember, we must take account of th
ose who lost their lives
searching for home
—
stretching, pushing, soldiering on through deserts, turbulent
ocean waters, crammed in the back of semi
–
trucks or on blow up rafts
—
where such
risk held more promise than staying where they were,
than
staying in a
place that
would and could no longer be home.
