The Crowded House

Steve Timmis is involved in The Crowded House, an initiative to plant a network of household churches throughout the city of Sheffield (see the October 1998 issue of EN).

Its aim is to reach and disciple people for whom traditional church holds no attraction, and who dismiss it as having no relevance to their lives. In two consecutive articles, Steve explains the biblical and cultural reflection that lies behind the initiative.

'Swing low, sweet chariot'

The date is any time between, say, 1930 and 1989. The place is somewhere, anywhere, in the vast empire of the Soviet Union. The occasion is a Sunday morning church meeting, situated in a forest just outside the city limits. The singing is both melodic and heartfelt, after which you listen, along with 200 or so others, to three sermons. You notice a common thread running throughout the hymns and each of the sermons. You're aware of it because it's quite unusual from your perspective as a visiting Westerner. They seem somewhat preoccupied with the theme of the Second Coming. Not the detail in any academic sense. Simply the reality that one day Jesus is coming again. As you think about it, you realise that the reason is obvious: the difficulty of life here makes them long with a greater intensity for that 'home of righteousness' of which the apostle Peter writes (cf. 2 Peter 3.13).

The date is sometime around 1780. The place is South Carolina. The occasion is no occasion at all, just an ordinary working day. You find yourself walking down a lane beside a cotton field, and you hear an incredible sound: voices, deep and melancholic. You look, to see around 15 black men and women, working hard and singing in harmony. The music moves your heart, and the words sink into your soul: 'Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home.' Once again, suffering brings clarity to the truth of eternity.

But if the chariot is coming to carry us home, then this world isn't our home. Which, if true, means that in some sense, we are homeless!

Sensing homelessness

Without a corresponding expectation of heaven as home, interestingly many contemporary people, non-Christians at that, often speak about a sense of homelessness. Part of the reason lies in the seismic changes that have occurred and continue to occur within society. Now, it's not only nostalgia that says 'things ain't what they used to be'; they really aren't! Morality is relative, history is debunked, science disappoints, opinions proliferate. People just don't know who they are any more. They have no sense of where they're from, much less any idea of where they're going.

It's this sense of dislocation from the past, with no clear idea of the future, that contributes significantly to people's sense of homelessness.

Nearer to God in a garden?

But analysis is pointless if there's no clear idea of response. If this admittedly superficial assessment bears any resemblance to reality, then what, if anything, can be done?

The least that can be said about it is that it shouldn't surprise us! The Bible has a lot to say about this idea of home and homelessness, and the gospel offers a reality that promises to satisfy the legitimate longing of so many of our friends and neighbours.

Unsurprisingly, the story begins in the Garden of Eden.

In Genesis 2, the creation account of chapter 1 is retold, with the man and woman as the central characters. The world is created out of nothing (2.4), but then in the midst of that perfect world, God plants a garden in the east, in Eden. This garden is to be home to the man and the woman, the place where they live life to the full, a place of abundance, significance and identity (2.15).

However, this idyllic state is short-lived, and as chapter 3 shows, the man and woman declare independence and grasp after autonomy. The tragic events culminate in their being expelled from the garden, and so significant is the expulsion that the author sees fit to mention it on two occasions (cf. 3.23, 24). Consequently, Adam and Eve leave their home, with no prospect of return (cf. 3.24), and travel east, away from the garden, away from home.

The impact of this betrayal quickly becomes evident in chapter 4 in the altercation between the sons of the first couple, Cain and Abel. When Cain is punished for his petulant crime of fratricide, it likewise involves the element of banishment, and in 4.16, the writer, with delicious irony, informs us that Cain settled in the land of Nod, or literally 'the land of wandering'! But, as the author is quick to point out, this 'Land of No-Fixed-Abode' is also 'east of Eden'.

The migration from home continues, and the theme is picked up in chapter 11.1, 2: 'Now the whole earth used the same language and same words. And it came about that as they journeyed east. . . .'

These geographical references are not mere detail to 'flesh out the story'. They are pointers in the narrative to alert us to something very significant. The human race is continuing its journey away from Eden and therefore away from home. Away from the purposes of God. Away from their identity as God's people in God's place under God's rule!

Home, sweet home

The relevance of this lies in what it tells us about the human condition. Even in the perfect world of Genesis 1 and 2, God made a place for man to live. Eden was not co-extensive with Planet Earth. It was a specific place, a defined location (cf. 2.10-14), and it was their place. It was home. As the story shows, part of the consequence of sin, therefore, is 'homelessness'. The human race subsequent to the expulsion is not only not what God made it, it isn't even where God put it! And we know it. There's something insistent about our need of a home, a yearning for somewhere to live, somewhere to call our own. Pictures of young people inhabiting cardboard boxes, old-before-their-time men in a drunken stupor under a pile of rags, refugees crossing the border to a dispossessed future are often portrayed as symbols of a nation's conscience.

Yet, it's not merely a matter of a roof over our heads. Home is a metaphor that evokes images of security, identity, purpose and provision. Even those of us from broken homes, or homes where there has been abuse, still know something of this longing. Perhaps even more so?

A place of belonging

We try and find this 'home' in many different places. For some, it is in the family unit, and many people still enjoy home as Mum, Dad and two kids. It also expresses itself in nationalism, and Hitler knew how powerful that was with his evocative language of Germany as 'the Fatherland'. Over the last 10 years or so, we've seen the re-emergence of this in radically diverse expressions from Serbia to Scotland. For others, it's in a particular group, such as the Freemasons. Many young people talk about the club or rave scene using terms and ideas of family and home. But in all of these, it's a 'place' of belonging, of being rooted. Somewhere to let your hair down, know who you are, be and express yourself.

As the process of globalisation gathers pace, and technology and commerce blur the boundaries between cultures and territories, more and more people will wonder who they are and exactly where their place is on the earth. And more and more people will look with greater intensity for a home that will give them meaning and significance.

It's this point that the gospel addresses relevantly and poignantly, as we'll see in our concluding article next month.

Steve Timmis discusses an initiative to plant a network of household churches in Sheffield (part 1 of series)

'Swing low, sweet chariot'

Sensing homelessness

Nearer to God in a garden?

Home, sweet home

A place of belonging

Steve Timmis

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