As Jesus says in today\u2019s reading from Luke, \u201cI must be on my way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We Americans are a restless and mobile lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ask around your parish community some Sunday morning at coffee hour, and you are likely as not to find fellow parishioners who are transplants from down the road and across the country. Some will have found their way to this community for work; others, for marriage or retirement. Still others may even now be charting their next family or career transition and the move it will entail. Home for many of us today is at best a loose and elusive geographical term: here today, there tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In many societies life is far different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In such cultures, home is where you are born; and home is where you die. The span between birth and death is often spent in familiar village or countryside settings, raising a family, plying a trade, and working the fields. The land itself is home \u2013 and it does not change all that much from one generation to the next. After all, land is not exactly exportable. Home is permanent, fixed, and local.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the ancient world, the gift of land from king or ruler was itself the gift of home \u2013 of identity and belonging. It was certainly so for the ancient Israelites, who traced their ultimate origins to Abram\u2019s epic journey from a place far away, to the land which the Lord promised to give him. \u201cI am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans,\u201d the Lord tells Abram in our first reading today, \u201cto give you this land to possess.\u201d In taking possession of the land and inhabiting it, Abram \u2013 later Abraham \u2013 and his descendants become the Lord\u2019s own people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus treads this same land centuries later, \u201ccasting out demons and performing cures,\u201d as he reminds the Pharisees and Herod, and by extension us, in our gospel account. He makes his way from his home in Nazareth \u2013 where he is rejected by his own townspeople \u2013 to the holy city of Jerusalem. In some sense, his passage serves to remind us of Abram\u2019s journey centuries before. But the land promised to those who will heed Jesus\u2019 voice does not consist of acres and square footage but of the very kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abram marks the Lord\u2019s covenant with him and his descendants by a sacrifice of heifer, goat, ram, turtledove, and pigeon. The Lord, present in \u201csmoking fire pot and flaming torch,\u201d passes solemnly among Abram\u2019s gifts and once again affirms his covenant and the gift of land \u2013 of home. But the sacrifice that marks our Lord\u2019s new covenant and the gift of the kingdom is not that of young, unblemished animals, but his own death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday, tomorrow, and the next day, I must be on my way,\u201d says Jesus in recognition of the fate awaiting him in Jerusalem. Not even the warnings of presumably friendly Pharisees that \u201cHerod wants to kill you\u201d can dissuade him from his work and mission. His poignant pronouncement over Jerusalem, \u201cthe city that kills the prophets,\u201d becomes prophecy of his own death on the cross. \u201cOn the third day,\u201d concludes Jesus, \u201cI finish my work.\u201d His journey comes to its end. But his death and resurrection mark also the beginning of faith and redemption for us as his people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lent is our annual reminder of this reality \u2013 of the lasting covenant that has been forged with us at the cross and of the \u201cland\u201d that has been given to us as our heavenly home. As Paul tells us in our second reading from his Letter to the Philippians, \u201cOur citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.\u201d Abram\u2019s faith in God\u2019s promise was reckoned \u201cto him as righteousness.\u201d Today, our faith in God\u2019s word and promise is reckoned to us as sign and assurance of our true citizenship in heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether we are inveterate homebodies or weary road-warriors, our Christian faith nevertheless calls us away from places of comfort and the familiar \u2013 just as the Lord\u2019s word millennia ago called Abram forth from his home in \u201cUr of the Chaldeans.\u201d Like Abram, we too must be on our way. As followers of Christ, our journey is a sharing in the way of sacrifice, in the way of the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first reading begins: \u201cThe word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, \u2018Do not be afraid.\u2019\u201d The same words are spoken to us. We have nothing to fear. \u201cAs a hen gathers her brood under her wings,\u201d so our Lord has gathered us, his people. We are the Lord\u2019s own people, and our heavenly citizenship makes us all \u201cbrothers and sisters\u201d to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Christ, we are at last home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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