A new “Star Trek” film has arrived for the summer season, and with it the next generation of analysts musing on its mysterious appeal.  The media pundits explore the genius of Gene Roddenberry, the relationship between TV fiction and real physics, and the chemistry of the casts and characters in the various series.  But always, there is recognition that a fundamental element in the mix is that syntactically-challenged phrase, “to boldly go.”

Exploration—seeking out new worlds, encountering strange customs, surviving the attacks of misguided aliens—this has been a classic plotline for a good yarn ever since a scout ventured a little too far in search of dinner.  There are variations on the model, of course: for example, there is the heroic quest for the prize—the fleece, the special wisdom, the glory.  And there is the Return, featuring the series of grueling trials the protagonist must meet or survive in order to take his or her proper place as heir to the kingdom.  There is sword-play in these tales, and seduction, and magic, and the risk of annihilation.  And because the patterns are so deeply rooted in our collective experience as a human race, we listen happily to these stories over and over, served up through an unending repetition of sequels, prequels, and re-translations.  The heroic journey, which is the nutshell name for these quests and explorations, is considered by many to be the fundamental human narrative.

Maybe or maybe not.  There are arguments about whether that pattern really reflects the experience of all human beings, or whether it might be a peculiarly Western motif, the product of a people congenitally on the move and infected with a disposition to keep on  expanding.  But that is who we are, for the most part, in North America, and so for the most part the classic narrative fits.

The Christian story of the Passion falls pretty neatly into this pattern.  We are on a journey with Jesus, culminating in a drama full of intrigue, suspense, terror, betrayal, and violence.  Then there is the great surprise, the astonishing impossibility of the Resurrection, with miraculous appearances and sudden revelations of the Lord’s true identity.  Our sacred story has a gripping plot.

Not long ago I was called upon to preach on John 15:7-9, a snippet of an Eastertide text that contains the word, “abide” three times, “love” five times, and “joy” twice.  A happy little pericope, it would seem.  But where, exactly, does one take hold of it?  Heroic journeys get your adrenaline moving, get your imagination activated, without any trouble—but abiding?  Relating to the quest is a lot easier, it appears, than enjoying the final destination–home.

I don’t have much trouble coming up with descriptions of home.  As I began thinking about this essay, I asked each of my senses what they would most associate with “home.”  And so I summoned the smell of a casserole in the oven, the sound of the spring stretching on the screen door, the distorted reflection of my hand reaching toward a warm chrome toaster, the wet breeze of a quiet thunderstorm enjoyed from the shelter of a deep porch.  But as I continued to contemplate home, the place where one abides, I realized  that the images and sounds and scents came to me not from the place I live now, happily ever after, but the place where I spent my childhood.  In some mysterious way, home seemed necessarily connected with memory.

That is truly odd.  I enjoy the house I live in, and I am happy in my marriage, the relationship that fills that house with activity and stabilizes my comings and goings.  Just now I took a break from my writing to fix myself a cup of tea, and I became more aware than usual of how content I am in this environment where I spend so many hours of my life.  But I also realized that while I am here, sitting in this chair at this desk, I rarely think about the fact that I am “at home.”

Curiously, it is beginning to dawn on me that “home” is outlined most clearly in my mind when I am not there.  The pattern of the heroic journey reasserts itself: being at home does not create the material for a good story.  But longing for home is just the thing.  The memory of a distant childhood combines with the stress of being on the road, fighting the monsters, and you have nostalgia, aching for home—the bait that beckons the reader to keep reading, or the listener to stay awake.

But that “home” of our imagination, our memory, our nostalgia—is that home always better, or more perfect, than any home we have actually “abided” in?    Does the longing for a distant place of rest necessarily sweeten it into an impossible ideal?  Is it possible, as Tennyson suggested , that once the suitors had been slain and he was peacefully united with his beloved Penelope, Odysseus got bored, and just had to get on the move again?  And if there is something to this, an inherent restlessness in our gut-level sense of the human narrative, what happens when we are called to contemplate making our home in God?

{quotes align=right}When we imagine God as our home, more often than not we think of that time of abiding as somewhere in the future—after our earthly life is finished.{/quotes}  If our life is especially painful or lonely, we may yearn for that home as a place of rest, perhaps populated with loved ones from our past, or filled with the sounds and smells and other associations of a time in our lives when we felt loved or fulfilled.  But again, “home” is where we are not—not right now.

But you know—Jesus commands his disciples to “abide in his love” not sometime, but now.  It may be true that John’s emphasis on “abiding in Jesus” originally refers to the solidarity and loyalty of the Johannine community that made their survival possible in the face of persecution.   But we have appropriated that language to ourselves, to our own discipleship.  And that means that as preachers we are called to take on that notion of “abiding” and wrench it out of its comfortable association with otherworldliness and nostalgia.

Our Christian “home,” where we “abide,” is not a cozy idealized existence on some cosmic back porch.  Our home is not static, and exists neither in the future nor the past.   Our Christian home is now, in ministry with Christ and through Christ, as members of his living Body.  And that means that we are constantly on the move—not because we are on a quest for some distant prize or goal, but because we share Christ’s continuing mission of service.  That is the Christian definition of “home,” where we “abide” in the love of Christ, where his joy and ours is complete.

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1. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses.
2. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 55.