Sermon: "Into the Depths" (Luke 5:1-11)

Have you ever been homesick?

With all my camp counseling and camp directing experience, I’ve worked with a number of kids who were homesick. This has made me realize that when homesickness is severe, it’s more than just missing the comforts of home. It’s more than just missing mom and dad. Kids affected by severe homesickness find it very hard to function. They may even have physical symptoms, such as upset stomachs or headaches.

Our strategy is usually to help the camper get through one day or even one activity at a time. A week is too long for the camper to think about, but maybe we can get through one activity, engaging ourselves in the activity and being part of the camp atmosphere.

This usually works. The camper manages to make it to the end of the week, feels loved and supported by campers and counselors, and proud of their own accomplishment of lasting the whole week. They’ve gained a new sense of independence and maturity, and even though they are happy to go home, they also look forward to returning to camp the following summer.

But one time, a few years back, there was this one camper who had a case of homesickness more severe than any I had ever seen. He was in tears constantly. And the surprising thing is that this was a middle school camp; most cases of homesickness that I’ve experienced are at younger ages, but this kid was practically a teenager, yet the experience of being away from home for a week was just too much.

I worked with him, helping him through one activity at a time. Occasionally there would even be a smile on his face. But the tears quickly returned.

Eventually I made a decision that I never thought I’d make as a camp director, and that was the decision to let this kid go home. It wasn’t getting better for him. He was crying himself to sleep each night. And I didn’t want his only memory of camp to be miserable.

When I called his parents, they said they were expecting my call, and that they were surprised that I hadn’t called sooner.

A few hours later the parents arrived to pick this camper up and take him home. He was all smiles now. He said he had fun at camp, but that he just missed being at home too much.

Whether or not you’ve ever experienced this kind of homesickness, there is a homesickness that we all feel. There is this longing in the human soul that is common to all people.

It often feels like a kind of restlessness. Sometimes it feels like loneliness or isolation, a longing or sadness, or even a kind of depression.

Great writers of epic stories understood this. How many of the great stories of literature involve the main character leaving home, then finding his or her way back? Isn’t that what the Odyssey is all about? Or the Wizard of Oz? Or The Hobbit?

We see this in the Bible. The story of Abraham: he left Ur and went to Canaan, then he traveled on to Egypt but soon returned back to Canaan. His grandson, Jacob, took his sons and their families to Egypt because of famine, but by the time of their descendant Moses, there was a longing to return back out of Egypt to the Promised Land. And then, later, the captivity in Babylon, and again the deep longing to return home.

Yet the leaving home in the first place is necessary. Just like going to camp; we must leave home in order to discover ourselves, discover who we are. When Jesus called his disciples, he led them away from home, and taught them, often as they were walking from place to place.

And it is when we leave home that we discover just how important home is. It wasn’t until she left home that Dorothy realized that home is where she really wanted to be – not in some far off land over the rainbow.

Spiritually speaking, our home is with God. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish mystic in the 16^th century, said that “home is when we find God in ourselves, and find ourselves in God.”

Until we can find God in ourselves…

Until we can find ourselves in God…

We are homesick.

I’m sure you’ve experienced that spiritual restlessness that I’m talking about. I myself have felt that the faith that I long for is inside a simple room, yet I am just standing at the window looking in from the outside. How I long to climb through that window and live in that room, experiencing the entire height and depth of faithful living!

This is our longing to be home in a spiritual sense.

Our journey home has begun. But it is a long journey. It is a long, winding path that leads there. It is the yellow brick road on which Dorothy travelled, facing many tasks and challenges along the way. It is the journey of Odysseus, begun after the fall of Troy and seven years of captivity, sailing through storms and encountering many other obstacles.

The thing is, on this spiritual journey home, we are always looking for shortcuts, aren’t we? And we are always getting distracted. The yellow brick road may lead us one way, but look: there’s a beautiful field full of poppies. It is both a shortcut and a distraction!

Our shortcuts and distractions take the form of addictions. And addiction to substances is only one type of addiction. Many of us are addicted to electronic distractions. The TV always has to be on, or we always have to be checking our facebook or snapchat. Or, we try to fill this emptiness, this longing, this restlessness, with shopping trips, thinking that new clothes, a new outfit, a new car, a new iPhone, a new house, will fill the emptiness within.

We’re always looking for something we don’t have, to make our life complete. A new boyfriend or girlfriend. A new pet. A new job.

Maybe we need to go on a cruise – will that fill the emptiness we feel?

You feel that restlessness, don’t you?

But where is God in all this? How do we find God?

The first thing to understand is that God is not in these superficial distractions. There is no shortcut to God. You have to go the long way.

We heard this morning a story about Jesus telling the disciples how to fish. The thing is, Jesus wasn’t really a fisherman. He was a carpenter. And a carpenter telling some fishermen how to fish is like me telling Victor how to make coffee, or Victor instructing Ioane on the aloha spirit.

Jesus is no expert on how to fish. However, this story isn’t really about fish. It’s about finding God. And the first thing to know about finding God is that God is not found in the shallow, superficial distractions of life. God is found in the depths.

And, in order to find God, you have to embark on a journey. “When the disciples had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.”

“We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.” Wholeness involves your heart, soul, body, and mind. Last week I talked about heart; today I talked about soul.

To be whole in your soul means finding your home in God; and finding your home in God is a life-long journey.

To be whole in your soul means going deep. We need to recognize our distractions and addictions for what they are, and set them aside. We need to recognize that so much of life is superficial, at the surface, and look for ways to really go deep. We need to pray, even if our prayer is nothing more than sitting silently in the presence of God. We need to read the Bible, and talk with others about what we’ve read. We need to engage in all the other spiritual disciplines that lead us along the path.

These things will help guide us on our journey. Dorothy had guides to help her make the journey, did she not? Our guides include the church, the sacraments, and most of all the Spirit. The Spirit guides us. The Spirit prays for us when we don’t know how to pray ourselves. The Spirit is our Advocate and our companion.

Augustine said: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.” We long for God. We are homesick. But on the journey to find ourselves in God and find God in ourselves, we have the Spirit to guide us, if we will but take the time to listen, and let the Spirit lead.