| Homecomings can be a mixed experience. Isaiah's prophecy celebrates coming home from exile, a time of joy and great expectation, a time full of hope. The actual experience was probably a little messy, a mixture of joy, freedom, welcome….and some degree of wariness, suspicion, fear of change. When I think of homecomings and class reunions - there are people I long to see, people I am nervous about seeing. I wonder who has changed. Who will remember me? Will they see me forever as I was forty-five years ago? Homecomings can be a mixed experience. Family get-togethers too - for holidays, for weddings and funeral or anniversaries - all bring a mix of expectation and foreboding.
In our Church we have mounted a "Catholics, Come Home" campaign. This is an invitation to a homecoming. Whatever the reason someone left the Church: a gradual drifting away, a conscious decision to go elsewhere or no where, a sense of being driven out or rejected, leaving angry, hurt or sad or simply disconnected, your Church invites you home. Even for those who are "here" physically but not here mentally or spiritually, come home. Take another look. Know you are welcome; you are wanted; you are loved.
This great public invitation raises an important and challenging question not only for those who might give it a try but especially a challenge for those who have stayed - for the Church as it is, both pastors and people. What kind of home will people find? What kind of welcome? What awaits those who accept the call?
The characters described in this story of the woman caught in the act of adultery help frame the question. Every analogy limps - so I am not thinking of folks who come home to the Church as adulterers, or even sinners, in particular. After all sinners are as easily found within the Church, even within
Its leadership as anywhere else. But work with me here.
We have a person brought into the assembly. We have the "good and faithful" members; we have Jesus. In this story, the good and faithful members - the elders who dragged the woman before Jesus - are judgmental; they are ready to condemn the woman who is obviously a sinner, caught in the act. Their attitude towards Jesus is scarcely more positive. They test him, challenge him. Will he enforce the law or not?
There is the person caught in an act of sin. What is she likely to feel? Shame? Probably. Defiance? Maybe. Fear? Anger? Some degree of embarrassment? She is not in a good place.
And there is Jesus. In the midst of a maelstrom of emotion, Jesus is the still point.
With a simple statement, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy and sinfulness of the elders who then step back from judgment. With a word of mercy and acceptance, Jesus frees the woman from her shame, defiance, anger, fear. With Jesus, she is home. It is with him that she finds peace and the possibility, the challenge of new life.
I suspect that what keeps many from coming home to the Church are the forces that make Church anything but home. The real or imagined concern about being judged, the recognition that the so-called good Catholics are not really better or holier than non-churched folks, the seemingly overbearing presence of the elders with sharp tongues and superior attitudes.
And the forces within: fear, shame, inability to forgive self, a sense of unworthiness that can lead to defiance and anger and reluctance to take the risk. To come home involves letting go of the fears and opening up to possibility.
But there is Jesus - and here lies the key. All - elders, the adulterous woman, saints, sinners, all - stand in need of Mercy. And Jesus who is Mercy offers it freely to all.
"Neither do I condemn you…from now on avoid this sin."
For folks called home, the call is to Jesus. In Him there is acceptance, freedom, mercy and unconditional love. It is about Jesus. I will repeat this again and again. IT IS ABOUT JESUS!
For the rest of us - we who also are called home, even from within the Church - we are not outside the need for mercy and never forget it - our task is to be the embodiment of welcome, acceptance, love and mercy…in short to show forth Jesus.
What do "Catholics come home" to? None other than Jesus -
and if the rest of us cannot reveal Jesus, then we need to get out of the way….
and learn to come home ourselves
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