Sunday 16th March 2025 – Family Service led by Mike Findley
I think we’ve often wondered what our Services would be like without an organist. Well today we found out. All credit to John Knott for finding the appropriate CDs, but there’s nothing like a live organist!
After a busy period of preaching engagements over the Christmas New Year period, Mike had been ‘relegated to the benches’ for the last 5 weeks, noting that on at least 2 occasions the preacher had forgotten there was a congregation there, and mumbled to him or herself. We were encouraged to shout out and tell him that he was not speaking loudly enough – but of course now that Joan G has her new hearing aid………………….
Mike’s theme for the day was about home and where our home was. Was it here on earth or in heaven. Not just our personal home, but our Church home as well.
Mike told us about his research into the history of the great-great-grandfather of a friend, a man called Samuel, who had been born in in a small village in Leicestershire and seemingly never left the village in which he had been born. Mike didn’t know whether to feel happy for him or sad as he tried to visualize that life. And then he’d thought, “I’ve lived in the same place for 44 years now”. Mike had thought about moving from his 4-bedroom house but decided against it because he knew too many people in the locality and didn’t want to move. Now, his 2 daughters and sons in law came around to help with chores, and by staying put he now saw his family more often than he’d ever had done before.
But it still caused him to think, “Where is my home? Am I too comfy where I am? Have I ceased to be challenged? Have I got myself into a negative state of just looking after myself?” From Psalm 27 we’d had “I want to dwell in the House of the Lord all my days”. And in John’s Gospel we had Jesus saying, “God will make his home with us”, Corinthians, saying, “We have an eternal home in heaven”, and in Philippians, ”Our citizenship is in heaven”. What did it all mean? Where was; where ought to be home for us? He’d heard it said in the Bible that we should be in the world, but not of the world. We were here, but then our hearts were somewhere else.
There was an American country Gospel song called ‘Home away from Home’ which said “We live now by faith, but then we shall see him face to face. This is just my home away from home, because real home is heaven, not the home we built with our hands on earth”.
Mike had no idea how long his life would last, but he would often think – and maybe this was wrong, in putting God to the test – that as long as he was needed, was contributing and had a purpose here, God would carry on with him, wanting him to be here. But was he needed? Because his physical roots had to come up at some stage and finish, and yet his spiritual roots should be getting deeper and deeper.
In the Gospels Jesus spent most of his life with people, with the apostles, healing people, speaking to people, doing good deeds, teaching and confronting. But at times he’d had to withdraw, to pray and to strengthen himself again for the future. There needed to be a balance between doing things and being alone – being in the marketplace and being in the desert. The marketplace was the place of action, of meeting people, trying to teach other people about the faith that we had, trying to show to other people through our lives about the faith that we had. But we also had to strengthen ourselves, to be alone, to pray, to reflect, to gather our strength to go back out again. We had to be outward-looking: Mike had come to realize that his possessions, including his home and abilities, were not just for him: they were to be used for a purpose.
There was something else, too. The Psalmist had said, “I will live all the days of my life in the house of the Lord.” It was not a future thing, it was a present thing, it was now to live in the house of the Lord. Our home, our citizenship, might be in heaven but we started living that citizenship now, not in the future. It was not something to be hoped for, or to be dreamed about. It was something to be lived now: walking with God was something to be lived now. God dwelling with me, me dwelling with God now. Mike told us of Holman-Hunt’s paintings of Jesus standing at the door knocking. There was only one handle on that door, and it was on the inside where we were, so it was up to us to open that door to let Jesus in.
We were in Lent, a period where we needed to think more deeply about our lives. This year It coincided with Ramadan, and a Muslim writer talking about Ramadan had said that it was the time when we brought the weather- beaten boats of life up onto the shore, out of the storms, and we repaired them. We reflected on where we’ve been, and where we wanted to be going to in the future. We mended our boats fit for another voyage, so that after Ramadan we could set sail again on the boat of life.
Lent was like that, too, for us.
And that’s what we should be doing, repairing our souls, strengthening ourselves, making ourselves fit for the future, thinking about where our home was. Was our home with our possessions here and our physical home, or was it just home away from home? Was our home, our citizenship somewhere else? Should we be reordering our lives with that priority?
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 