A Home for Sara

A Sermon by Pastor Eun-sang Lee
preached January 2, 2005
Epiphany Sunday (Communion Sunday)
Isaiah 6:1-4; Matthew 2:1-12

I want to play a song.
I’m doing this for Sara.
Maybe, really it’s for me.
Maybe, for all of us here today who gather around the Epiphany, the divine Light came to dwell among us.

Sara did not wake up from sleep one morning two weeks before Christmas.

From what we know, she went home peacefully, feeling no pain.

The news was difficult for me at first, partly because of my own sense of failure, but now I am at peace with the thought that Sara is finally home, she’s found peace in the loving embrace of her Creator

As a close friend of hers said at the memorial service, she fought many inner demons.

She did not make it through bipolar and chemical dependency.

The song I want to play is “Give a Man a Home,” by The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Give a Man a Home

(Music & lyric by Ben Harper)

Have you ever lost your way
Have you ever feared another day
Have you ever misplaced your mind
Watching this world leave you behind

Won’t you
Won’t you give
Won’t you give a man
Give a man a home

Have you ever worn thin
Have you ever never known where to begin
Have you ever lost your belief
Watching your faith turn to grief

(refrain)

In a world that is unwhole
You have got to fight to keep your soul
Some would rather give than receive
Some would rather give up before they believe

(refrain)

At Sara’s memorial service I read from a small book called “A Whole Person in a Whole World” by Harvey Potthoff:

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Yesterday has been lived. Tomorrow is still unborn. But today is now ours…..

Each person brings so many things to the present moment. There are influences from out of the past—we all have our histories. There are memories and hopes, loves and hates, doubts and beliefs, joys and sorrows. We bring past successes and failures to this moment. We bring our friendships and our loves to this moment—but we also bring loneliness, and sometimes the memory of friendship and loves which no longer are ours.

This morning each of us woke up in the awareness that “I am I and not someone else.” Sometimes we are on good terms with ourselves. Other times we feel like Dwight Moody when he said, “I have had more trouble with myself than with any other person I have ever met.” We all understand that. We are problems to ourselves. Yet, the gift of life brings with it the call to make something out of ourselves—to be who we are with integrity. Every living person is handicapped and limited in some way. But every living person also is a unique center of experience and center of influence. We are both bound and free. There is possibility in every person’s situation.

That is the truth we proclaim.
Epiphany means manifestation, revelation, illumination.
God’s true nature was revealed in Christ.
The true light in Christ in turn reveals the truth about ourselves.
The true nature of our being is revealed.
Through the love and grace of God revealed in Christ
we realize what a precious treasure we are.

This ordinary human being
    with a fragile body,
    with all the emotional scars over the years,
    with all the successes and failures,
    with all the shortcomings and doubts about self, about life,
within me is a treasure,
    the divine radiance,
    the wellspring of eternal life,
you are the object of God’s unending, unconditional, loving,
as unique and precious as diamond.

The wise men brought the treasures from afar to the Christ child.
Christ brings out the treasures from the depth of our being.
I want you to know that.
I want you to feel that.

I also want you to know, this small church meant a great deal to Sara.
Many of you did not know her personally, but this church was a spiritual home for her.
She felt at home here, even when she was down on herself, even when she smelled alcohol Sunday morning.

To the precious few friends she had on this earth she talked about this church, about you.
She felt at home here.

A home for Sara, a spiritual home for you and me:

won’t you give a home to all who need one, to all God’s children, no matter where they find themselves today, because the divine light shines in all of us, and in our journeying together in that light, there’s healing and wholeness?

So, happy new year!

This will be an exciting year for you, and for this church.
Because God has made a home among us.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth….And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God….And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
God will dwell with them;
they will be God’s people…
God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first thing have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1 ff.)