| June 15, 2008
You are welcome to reflect on this message
“You Can’t Go Home Again,” Thomas Wolfe’s classic, is an intriguing title. But you can go home. It just won’t be the same. Time sees to that. Anytime you go back through home you meet with ambiguity; encountering both light and darkness, kinfolks who make you proud; and some who make you blush! Going back through home forces you to deal with the mixture of good and bad that exists in all our backgrounds.
Jesus learned a hard lesson about home when he was invited to preach in his local synagogue. “No prophet is without honor, except in his own country.” And they kicked him out of town because his religious congregation thought he was out to destroy all things good and holy. All he said was,“You’ve heard it said in the old days, but I say unto you...today.” Religious folks fiercely resist having their religion up-dated. The Apostle Paul encountered the same religious undertow, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child and understood like a child. But ... when I became a man, I put away the kid stuff.” Home’s never a place you can go back to and it be like it was. Nor is it something we should jettison and become rootless. We’re all a part of who we used to be. Even though a whole lot of homes, depending upon the circumstances, bring conflict instead of comfort.
Going through home allows you to make peace with the culture that spawned you, the parents that shaped and misshaped you, the people who loved you and used you, the institutions that blessed and distorted you. It helps every now and then to go back through home. So says our text: “And Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham. The Philistines stopped them up after Abraham died. And Isaac gave them the same names which his father had given them.” When Isaac moved his family back home, there was continuity and discontinuity. For continuity, he reclaimed the choked-up wells dug by his Daddy. So he brought something back that was no longer used.
Two kinds of reality constantly face us in the world. And any progress depends on both. There are new gains that have to be won and old gains that have to be re-won. The need for new wells is obvious as time goes on and more people populate the planet. This can be stimulating and exciting. And sometimes for the good of all, it has to happen. Likewise, old and venerable things that blessed us in the past need to be recovered and embraced. Both kinds of experiences make up life as we know it. New wells dug. Old wells re-dug.
Isaac is portrayed in mid-life, re-digging proven wells. There were other oases, had he looked for them. But these were the ones he knew; that once satisfied more than just his thirst. Abraham’s clogged wells in Genesis symbolize those things in life that stood the test of time. Life never begins brand new in any generation. Rather it flows like a tributary. And we jump into the river of history in midstream, never at the mouth. We’re heirs of a long past -- a 232 year old nation, a 2000 year old church, and millenniums of human experience. Wise are those who see value in where they came from.
At least Isaac had the common sense to recognize what his Daddy found to be good, might be worth a try for him too. Philistines are always around to spoil our water. But given that opposition, it would take less labor for Isaac to empty the rocks from a previously dug well, than to start from scratch and dig a new one. So it is in uncovering the waters from which faith has already drunk. Sometimes the living waters of religion get congealed by old dogmas and petty disputes. But seeing Isaac re-digging his father’s wells shows that the streams of God can flow again where they used to flow.
But before that, somebody’s got to clear away the stodgy ideas and stony barricades that stifle good religion and hinder God’s “living water” from slaking our spiritual thirst. That’s always a risky undertaking. Isaac honored his father, and loved the things his father loved. He revered his proud background. And maintained a deep appreciation for his heritage and pride in the gains his forebears made.
Contrast Isaac with today's “with-it types, who don’t want to re-dig anything. Or feel no sense of indebtedness for what went on before them. So contemporary they’re content to live in the shallow puddle of last night’s rainfall. But Isaac returns to the deep wells of his ancestors, because he realized the value of keeping connected to the dependable things in his tradition. Isaac found something noble his father did that was undone by the Philistines. So he cleared the way for the water to flow again.
Each time I go to church, I’m re-digging a well my Daddy dug. When I drop my offering in the collection-plate, or show up at the ballot box, or reach out to the little people, I’m clearing out some of his wells. Whenever I try to tickle somebody’s funny-bone, or make ‘em think or serve somebody, I’m opening up one of his fresh springs.
Sometimes things happen that show us the need to do what Isaac did. It may be an illness that slows us down. Or listening to music that stirs a reminiscent chord inside from days gone by. Or a visit back to a place where we grew up that reminds us to appreciate some things that ought never be forgotten. The aging saints in a retirement congregation used to say: We like progress, not change. Of course you can’t have progress without change. But this text is about restoration, the re-emergence of something dormant. Isaac wasn’t just cleaning out a dammed-up hole in the ground! He’s reconnecting with his meaningful past; reviving his old associations; recapturing the faith he learned from his Daddy -- whose principles were ingrained in a home that took the Lord God seriously. Would that we have more of it.
Sadly, we’ve bred a generation that’s lost the desire for such wisdom. We can make all sorts of excursions here and there in our time. But I doubt we can ever be whole if we dispense with the instinct that takes us back to drink again from our forebear’s wells. This scripture story has to do with the power of memory. That Isaac would dig the debris out of his father’s wells, shows how much he appreciated his family’s values.
Perhaps Jesus’ most famous story is about a Prodigal Son, who came to appreciate his father’s legacy. Out in the far country, his buddies split when the money ran out. And he was left to eat hog-rotten potatoes! Then one day he got homesick, but only after he started to remember. The ol’ Man and home didn’t look so stifling from the perspective of a pig-pen. The discrepancy between his present squalor and the home where he grew up was glaring. What living wells this father had dug on the inside of his boy, that no Philistine could trash! His memory saved him. It wouldn’t allow him to keep on living that way. After “he came to himself,” he too decided to go back and re-dig his Father’s well. That’s what gave him the resolve to get up out of that slop bucket, because he didn’t belong there.
Are there some old wells that have served us well in our past that need to be reclaimed? Like a new commitment to integrity? To care of the planet? We better be digging some wells for peace, for faithfulness and responsibility in our home life, for going to church, because these modern superficial wells don’t seem to be going anywhere but backwards. But the re-emergence of something tried and true can still cut the mustard. It takes both ... like your word meaning something. Like some old-fashioned discipline. Like self-control and character and cutting others some slack. Having a purpose in life, serving somebody instead of me, me, me. Having your truth with bark on it and your spine with steel in it.
After 9/11, NFL defensive back Pat Tillman, decided to forego big bucks to sign up with the U.S. Army Rangers. Sadly he was killed in action in the Middle East. In spite of an attempted cover-up, the truth came out. Tillman died from “friendly fire.” Some of today’s young people make sacrifices too! Valuing love for country over making millions and a life on easy street? Forfeiting your life to back it up? That’s re-digging a well dug by our fathers.
What do we say to a “You Tube” generation hooked on American Idol-atry? How about the old steady well of our fathers called and common decency and making something out of yourself? Or stop making excuses and stand on your own two feet and quit moochin’ off Mamma? Or doing what’s right, whether there’s anything in it for me or not? Plenty of good ol’ wells that need going back to. What about: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me?” We sure need to re-dig that one. Or “Thou shalt not kill.” “Or commit adultery.” “Or steal.” “Or bear false witness.” “Obey thy father and mother.” Or even better,“Turn the other cheek, go the 2nd mile, forgive 70 x 7!” How much better the world would be if we re-dug some of those that served us well. God forbid that any Philistine should clog them up! Because somebody always does, that’s why the church has to keep on digging! We’re never finished with it because in wells from the past God still speaks to our thirst for today.
What is the Bible, but a living well from the past? Where God speaks most clearly through his Son, Jesus -- the best of the breed. In Samaria, he broke the taboo when he sat on the edge of Jacob’s ancient Well one day and commenced to dig a new one. He created a scandal by talking to a woman at the wrong time of day about a new kind of water that never runs dry! This old Meeting House still exists to see that we keep mining from that well: reviving old memories, O yeah! But also making new ones. Because what happens today will be the only spiritual food you’ll have one of these days. Keep filling that well and it’ll be enough. Because life can only get out of us what it finds in us.
Pastoral Prayer:
To Father Abraham you made a made a promise that from him would come a tribe who would bless all the peoples on the earth, a light to the nations. Forgive us that we haven’t always shined that light. But you kept your promise ... most fully in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom you poured new wine into old wineskins.
Bless the ministries of our church in all the ways we try bring the power of his invigorating spirit to heal the hurts both near and far ... proclaiming your good news, lifting up the fallen, unbinding the guilty, releasing the captives, and providing hope for the hopeless. So that our witness on college hill will not become a brittle wineskin.
With gratitude for the past, and faith in the future, help us to minister to all who struggle with each, those who grieve, for whom life is more of a burden than a blessing. Lift them up in this worship and bless them with a vision of your joy ... that’s already on the way.
We express our thanks for our forebears who preside over our homes as well as those who bequeathed to us this special family in the faith. We pause in this hour to give thanks, as we recall those who are no longer with us, to whom we are indebted. For those who loved their children, and taught them to serve somebody, and cared for them enough to make a place in their lives for religious faith. May this day stand as a reminder to us who take God’s kingdom seriously, that we must never take our homes lightly. Amen. |
