“GOING HOME"

“GOING HOME”

A sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Fort Dodge, Iowa,

on Saturday, the Feast of St. Sergius of Moscow,

DURING THE FIFTIETH REUNION OF THE F.D.H.S. CLASS OF 1960,

by the Rev. Canon Professor Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.+

Ps. Lxxxvii: 4b “Philistia too, and Tyre, with Ethiopia—“This one was born there,” they say.

How often, I wonder, has any of you heard a minister, pastor, or priest choose as her sermon text or his, a verse from the Book of Psalms? A very close seminary friend of mine whom I’ve known for forty-three years—a respectable space of time even at a high school graduation’s fiftieth anniversary—told me that he couldn’t clearly remember when if ever he’d picked a Psalm verse for his text, but that he’d chosen to do so quite recently—and he’s a well-practiced, top-flight preacher. I could remember clearly only the one time that a verse from Psalm 42 allowed me in my “hammy” way to make a pun on the name of our mutual friend who was the bridegroom on the occasion. John Donne, the poet who I think was the best preacher in our language, preached on them often, but then he was, after all, a poet—(remember Miss Thomas’ class?)—and one might expect a poet to preach on the Psalms, which are, after all, poems—every one of them.

How and why did I come to choose this Psalm for today’s sermon? Those Christian denominations or traditions called, “liturgical,” that is, that order their worship according to an historically determined “script,” if you will, choose their lessons from a selected list laid out on a calendar that is followed year after year, and almost never read a lesson purely because it seems to fit or address a particular occasion, such as a class reunion. For us Episcopalians, today is the Feast of St. Sergius, the Patron Saint of Russia. Now how, some of you must be asking, with an impolite expletive in your question, can he or his feast day have any relevance or meaning for our gathering here at St. Mark’s, Fort Dodge? I asked that question to myself over this past weekend, when scanning the appointed lessons for something at least half way on target. Happily enough—pun intended—I found only one chapter, one Psalm, that fit—that worked!

So here we are together—and here it comes!

Much as some people like to praise the Internet as “the source of all knowledge” for today, it has, as doubtless most of you have noticed, its real limitations. That’s because a lot of the information one would like to get hold of has been gotten hold of over the past fifty years—and thus from books or other sources still under copyright, and it’s hard to get hold of just who has read the book one would like to know about oneself, who has also provided proper credit and citation to the information’s sources. This seems particularly true with respect to Biblical studies—not exactly popular or well-known material. So most sites on my computer at least that offer even commentary rather than hard information about Biblical material seem to date from the Nineteenth or even the Seventeenth Century. And Biblical Studies are one field of knowledge always and ever becoming more up-to-date, more current. Most of you will think that statement odd coming from an antiquarian like myself—but my antiquarianism is very selective, and I’m a bit picky about Biblical knowledge.

I would really like to know, for example, about the poet and I think the prophet who wrote this Psalm, Number 87. The tradition that the Psalms were mostly written by King David is, of course, as wrong historically as it is historic and charming. Whoever the author of the Psalm was (besides the Almighty, in His characteristically very indirect way), he was WAAAAY ahead of his time. The mind of Ancient Israel was on the whole a prime example of chauvinism: a nationalistic superiority complex. Perhaps the central theme of what Christians term “The Old Testament” is the idea of “Holiness,” or separation, set apartness, particularity, being extra-special—the Chosen People. The idea arose among this unique Semitic people, who were just beginning to be called or to think of themselves as “Jews” after their kingdom had been conquered, their leading citizens taken captive, hauled off to Babylon, forced to face the threat of loss of identity due to their being surrounded by foreigners—“Gentiles”—and tempted or even coerced into intermarriage. Then good King Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, their devastated but treasured capital, and to rebuild the Temple—the “House of God—of Jahweh—and to resume their quest for Holiness—set apartness—“Kashruth”—“kosher.” One might say, it became their religious obsession.

But that wasn’t true in the least of whoever it was that wrote this Psalm—87! True enough, his hymn or poem begins by praising Jerusalem—Zion! Indeed, the Lord—Elohi’m—is said to love “the Holy City” not only more than all others in the world, but “more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” It is the center, the capital city, of the nation whose people only, it would seem, know the only true, the only real God: “them that know me.” That sounds self-centered and chauvinistic enough. Indeed, I find it ironic that the Psalm’s second verse was made the basis of a favorite hymn for some of us: “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken: Zion, City of our God.” Most people who know hymns at all know that one as set to the tune by Joseph Haydn, originally worded to honor the Emperor Joseph II of Austria-Hungary. Some know the tune as the musical setting of “Deutschland über Alles.”

But then the author and his Psalm immediately and totally reverse themselves: “with them that know me,” that know God, are listed the Babylonians—until recently the conquerors and captors and enslavers of the Jews, and “they of Tyre,” the super-Gentile international trading center of the internationally venturesome Phoenicians, and the Ethiopians—THE ETHIOPIANS? Distant black Africans? They are in reality—in God’s super-reality—as good as, the same as native-born citizens of Jerusalem! “Of Sion it shall be reported, that he was born (they were born) in her… when he writeth up the people, … he was born (they were born) in her! WHAT!? Does he really mean that these god-awful foreigners are in God’s eyes, native-born. Surprise! It seems he does. God’s special, Holy City is their HOME! When they are with the all-Holy, sacred, set-apart God, they are at home—they have come home!

And today especially, this weekend especially, perhaps here, especially we know just what that feels like. For we have all for however brief a time, come home! We are suddenly wrapped in the reality of a place, places, that are more familiar, more haunted by memory, more shared with more friends, than perhaps any place on earth! Not as luxurious, probably; not as sophisticated, almost certainly not as “with it,” as “mod,” as sophisticated; in my case and in many, certainly not as blessed with an ideal climate—but more OURS, in some ways---indeed, for nearly all of us at least, our hometown! This is a reunion with our town, our past, old places, and each other—our HOMECOMING!

And I wonder, dear friends and classmates, if this occasion in your lives, in our common lives, hasn’t been for you, and/or is weirdly continuing to be for you, a special time for coming home personally, deeply, and inwardly. I trust that I am not just imagining or projecting this. As you see once more long absent, but familiar faces—however much mutual aging may have made them strange—at least for a while—as you see old, familiar places, however altered in many respects, haven’t you had a strong sense of suddenly coming into contact with yourself—newly and more strongly in touch with yourself, perhaps even like “the Prodigal Son,” coming unto yourself? If not, perhaps it’s because you haven’t allowed yourself time to reflect upon yourself, your life to the present, your life as it has emerged and developed out of your past, and in large part from this place, this town, this school, this place that is HOME? If not, might this be the chance, the place, the time to explore that possibility, to allow yourselves that luxury—a time to remember, to reflect, to consider, to think, perhaps even to pray?

There is a deeper, more real layer or level of coming home, beyond coming to Iowa, or Fort Dodge, or your old house, or church, or the High School, whether in the concrete reality of the present, or in sharpened memory. There is a more real way of coming home to your +self, unto yourself, like the Prodigal Son. Remember that in the Parable the young wanderer’s father caught sight of his child “a long way off” and rushed to meet, to embrace, and to hug, re-clothe, and then to feed, feast, host, and celebrate his wayward child. Such a banquet, such a homecoming, such a welcome awaits us all now. The family table is prepared. We are all family with each other and with our common, loving parent—Our Father. We could not be more welcomed or more loved. Come to the Table—come together—come home!

In nomine . . .