My favorite movie growing up was The Wizard of Oz. I loved the way the movie transitioned from sepia tones to full technicolor. I marveled at the imaginative characters: the tin woodman come to life, the lion who defies stereotypes and is cowardly rather than brave, and the scarecrow who somehow can dance and talk without a brain. But, I think what I loved most about the movie was the way it spoke to the desire for home and safety all of us have. When Dorothy says, “There’s no place like home,” I can feel my heart beat in agreement. When you are away from home, or away from wherever it is you feel most safe, you may experience a longing for that safe place that aches deep inside. The most basic human need all of us have is the need for safety, and once we find that safety, we want to hang onto it forever. 

Now, before we get too far, this sermon isn’t really about The Wizard of Oz. It’s a little bit about Winnie the Pooh, as part of our Winnie the Pooh sermon series. But mostly, this sermon is about God and about the home God is preparing for us. It’s about home and peace and finding both of those things in the God who loves us and wants what’s best for us. As we explore our two Scripture passages for this morning, we will discover a little bit about what home with God is like, and we will be inspired to look for glimpses of that home in our everyday lives. 

In A.A. Milne’s book The House at Pooh Corner, Milne tells a story about the time when Pooh and Piglet built a house for Eeyore. If you’re not familiar with Winnie the Pooh and the characters in the Hundred Acre Wood, it might help to know that Pooh is the loveable, stuffed bear who belongs to the boy Christopher Robin. Pooh’s dear friend Piglet is a little piglet who faithfully joins in with Pooh on many adventures. Eeyore is a donkey who tends to see the glass half empty. He’s a little on the depressed side, but all of the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood love him and include him as often as they can.

In this particular story, Pooh and Piglet decide it is terrible that Eeyore doesn’t have a house. The weather is cold and snowy, and it just won’t do for Eeyore to be out in the cold. While Pooh and Piglet are trying to figure out how to help Eeyore, they come across a pile of sticks in the woods. They decide that these sticks would be excellent for building a house for Eeyore, so they pick them up, move them, and build a house for Eeyore in a place they think is best. 

Not long after Pooh and Piglet have built the house, Eeyore finds them and tells them with astonishment that his house has gone missing. He tells them where his house had been, and suddenly, Pooh and Piglet realize what they have done. Stick by stick, they took apart Eeyore’s house and then used those sticks to build a new house. The house Eeyore lived in before did not quite look like the way Pooh and Piglet expected it to look, and so they didn’t recognize it as a house at all. They took apart Eeyore’s safe place because they didn’t recognize it as his home, and they built something new and different that functioned like a house but didn’t have the characteristics Eeyore had come to love and appreciate.

So, what is home? And how will we recognize home when we see it? In Isaiah 25, right after a chapter about judgment and destruction, the prophet sees a beautiful vision of a feast the Lord will make for all people. The feast will take place on the mountain where the temple had been, and unlike other feasts, this one will be for all peoples and nations. The prophet lists the menu in great detail, something that is unusual for prophetic visions of feasts. He lists “rich food…well-aged wines…rich food filled with marrow…well-aged wines strained clear.” But the most spectacular part of the feast isn’t the menu, it’s what God does for the people. The text tells us the shroud of death will be torn, God will wipe away the tears from every face, and God will remove the disgrace from the people. Death itself will be swallowed up, and the people will rejoice because they have been saved by God.

This vision provides a picture for us of what home with God looks like. The home God is making for us is one where no one goes hungry, no one feels grief or pain, and no one feels weighed down by shame or disgrace. When we are at home with God, we are safe, we are known, and we belong. Let’s take those ingredients one at a time.

First, when we are at home with God, we are safe. As I mentioned before, safety is the most important human need. If we aren’t safe, nothing else matters. As an anxious child, I was very concerned about safety. I would spend a lot of time thinking about things and worrying if I would be safe. If I went on a field trip with my class, would I be safe? If I tried a new food, would I be safe? And, anytime something went wrong, I would file it away in my mind as something that had been unsafe and should be avoided in the future. For example, once I was helping my mom pay bills. She was writing checks, and putting them into envelopes. I would then lick the envelopes shut and put a stamp on the front. Everything was going well until I managed to papercut my tongue on the envelope. “Ouch!” I whimpered. “Why do they make envelopes like this? These are dangerous.” 

In God’s peaceful kingdom, we are safe. Tears are wiped away, death is no more, hunger and all needs are taken care of. This is what we look forward to with hope and joy. And while we wait for the day when everything is made right, we are called to offer glimpses of God’s safe and good home everywhere we go. Can you think of some ways we can do that? We can offer a listening ear to someone who is hurting. We can sit with someone so that they aren’t alone. We can share what we have with others. In a tangible way, we can feed people. Every Thursday evening, meals are served out of our fellowship hall to those who come for food. In God’s kingdom, we are safe, and in the meantime, we can offer safety to others by the way we live our lives. We can join our voices together with the words of Isaiah 25:9: “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

When we are at home with God, we are safe, and we are known. In Philippians 4, Paul closes his letter to the church with some instructions. He urges Euodia and Syntyche to “be of the same mind in the Lord.” We don’t know much about these two women, but Paul says that they “struggled beside [him] in the work of the gospel.” Since that time, something has happened that has caused these two women to disagree with each other strongly enough that word has made it to Paul. He knows the heart of these two women. They have worked hard with him to share the good news about Jesus, and yet they seem to be stuck at an impasse. He reminds them to be of the same mind, to find agreement, or even to seek after the mind of Christ. He knows them, and he knows their hearts for God, and so he reminds them to return to who they are and what’s important to them.

Remember the show Cheers? I love the theme song, especially the line that says, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” We are at home with God because God knows us. God knows us by name, and God knows our hearts. God knows our struggles, and God knows the deepest parts of ourselves that we keep hidden. In God’s kingdom, in God’s peaceful home, we are safe, and we are known. 

A mother and child were leaving the church after a funeral service. They walked down the steps, and they walked past a woman with a mourner’s veil covering her face. The woman said, “Hello, Mary,” as she passed by. The mom and daughter continued down the street. When they got on the bus to head home, the little child said, “Mom, I saw God today outside the church.” Surprised, the mom asked, “How did you know it was God?” “Well, said the child, “No one has ever seen God’s face, but God knows your name.”

When we are at home with God, we are safe, we are known, and we belong. Imagine the feast table set high on the mountain in Isaiah 25. I imagine that the table extends farther and wider than the eye can see. Around the table are people from all around the world, people who are rich and people who are poor, people who have never been invited to share a meal with others before and those who have had a lot of practice at it. Around this table, every person has been invited, and every person belongs. 

I would imagine every person here has had at least one experience where you felt like you didn’t belong. Growing up, I didn’t know the first thing about make up or doing my hair. In fact, I resisted letting my mom brush through the tangles in my hair so much that she eventually took me to get a short, Dorothy Hamill haircut. I didn’t make friends very easily because I was shy, so my mom suggested I try Girl Scouts. I resisted. I told her I just knew I wouldn’t fit in. She told me not to be so quick to judge, and so I decided to give it a try. On the way to my first meeting, I told my mom, “If all they talk about is hair and makeup, I’m outta here!” 

I walked through the door where the troop was meeting, and the first thing that was said to me was, “Welcome, April! Today, we are talking about personal grooming and haircare.” I felt my face turn red, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to fit in very well. Looking back on it, I wish I had given it more of a try. Instead, I had to wait until I was in my 40s and had a daughter who knew proper haircare techniques before I learned any of that for myself. In any case, at that moment, I had that distinct feeling that I didn’t fit in. Have you had that feeling before? Or, maybe you weren’t chosen for the team, or you were skipped over for a group project. Or maybe you were the only one who was under dressed or over dressed at a party. We’ve all had at least one experience where we felt like we didn’t belong. When we are at home with God, we will belong–our whole selves. We will be safe. And we will be known.

Singer and actress Idina Menzel has a song called “At this Table,” and I just love the words. They remind me so much of the vision in Isaiah 25. She sings:
At this table, everyone is welcome. At this table, everyone is seen. At this table, everybody matters. No one falls between. At this table, you can say whatever. At this table, you can speak your mind. At this table, everything’s forgiven.There’s enough for everyone. So come as you are. Remember that the door is always open. Yes, come as you are. The perfect gift that you could bring is your heart. So come, come as you are.”

Dorothy was right that there’s no place like home. And Eeyore was right that what looks like home to one person might not look like home to someone else. Our calling is to offer home to others–safety, understanding, and belonging–while we await the day when we are fully present and at home with God. May we work together to do God’s will here on earth as it is in heaven.