I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 15, 2024 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Mark 8:27-38 and Proverbs 1:20-33.
I want to tell you a story—a true story—about a young man who ran away from home. And, first things first, this is NOT a story about me, though it might ultimately be a story about all of us.
So there was a young man. At a fairly young age, about 18 or so, his parents died, and he found himself alone in the world, except for a younger sister for whom he was now responsible. But this young man, who was full of idealism, had a struggle within him. He knew that he should settle down and grow up, especially now that tragedy had struck and responsibilities had fallen into his lap. But he was deeply troubled by the world around him. He was not sure he could bear the life he was expected to live.
You see, he lived in a particular time when society was going through a period of decline. There was political intrigue, and widespread poverty, and rumors of war. Conspiracies and coarseness dominated much of public discourse. And this young man did not want to be part of it, of any of it.
He had been raised a Christian and he had a sense, nurtured from a very early age, that he was destined for a holier sort of life, something purer, something unstained by tears or bloodshed, something uncorrupted by the accepted order of things. He believed that God wanted him to leave it all behind.
And so he dropped off his sister with some caretakers and he wandered out into the wilderness, convinced that the pristine solitude of an empty space would fill the void in his spirit, that it would mend the cracks in his heart.
He knew, he just knew, that if he could purge himself of disappointment and attachment, if he could just find a way to make the pain go away, if he could shed the calamity of human flesh, he would finally be worthy of the peace for which he hungered. By leaving the world behind, he would become worthy of seeing God.
But a funny thing happened on the way to enlightenment. Somehow, people found out about this young man—brave, holy, or simply out of his mind, no one was quite sure—and certain people came to find him. They would not leave him be.
They camped near the places he had sequestered himself, waiting to catch a glimpse, waiting for a word from his lips, wondering what he had discovered in his solitude. And as they waited, they made for themselves impromptu communities out in the wilderness, communities, ironically, born of the young man’s initial rejection of communal life. Communities that were formed in the desert at the edge of loneliness, at the border of emptiness, made intimate and strangely alive by the search for another way of being.
The young man, by the way, was named Antony, and he lived in Egypt in the 3rd and 4th century CE, and those travelers who followed him into the wilderness were the first monastic communities in the Christian tradition. Antony is now known as St. Antony the Great, the father of all those called into religious life as monks or nuns.
But I am not telling you his story as a lecture on Church history. I am telling you Antony’s story because there remains, in each of us, I think, a bit of the impulse to run away from home—to look at the disappointments and the pain and the callousness of whatever is around us, our broken relationships or our broken politics and to say, “no thanks.” I am done with all of that. I am seeking something else, I am seeking something better, something unstained. I am walking away from the world as it is. Peace out.
In our own age of fractured social bonds and conspiracy theories and coarseness, this is a daily temptation. A cave in the desert might sound pretty good to some of us right about now. And of course there are circumstances and seasons, in our own lives, when we do need to walk away and free ourselves from unhealthy situations.
But what Antony discovered, in his accidental creation of monastic communities—when all he thought he needed was to be alone—what he discovered is that the sacred path, the way of Jesus, might be liberating, but it is never an escape. Choosing God is not the same as opting out of the world. Because God’s love will always, in one way or another, lead us DEEPER into the heart of the world, not further from it.
The plot twist for Antony was that, after many years of battling his demons in the dark and silent chambers of his soul, he emerged, not as a detached saint who had transcended human flesh, but as someone finally comfortable in his skin—and as someone deeply, deeply committed to the flourishing of others. He traveled back into those cities he once hated to debate theologians and take on emperors, challenging their corruption and their rejection of the truth, insisting, always, that the God of Love was more powerful than any partisan agenda, and that this God will hold all of us to account for the ways we form or deform our common life.
And that is what we must discover, or rediscover, if we are to live faithfully now. We have to remember that a life of faith is not about running away from home, but about realizing that everywhere is home, and that our task is to ensure that everyone experiences a sense of home in this life, no matter how they differ from us or where they have come from.
In this same vein, much has been debated and preached about Jesus’ invitation for his followers to take up their cross and follow him. What are we taking on? What are we leaving behind? There is one certain perspective, promoted by some, that Jesus wants us to reject our own humanity, to discount our own needs, to leave behind all that is familiar, and brazenly follow him out into some barren place of suffering for its own sake. To grovel and winnow ourselves down into a thin sort of holiness.
But that would only be the case if Jesus’ story ended with his death on the cross. And, spoiler alert, it does not. The story of Jesus is the story of resurrection—it is the story of what lies on the other side of rejection and despondency.
It is the story of a man and a God and a people who say, no, I am not running away. I am not running away from myself. I am not running away from what disappoints me or scares me or makes me feel small. I am going to face it, by God, and I am going to live a life shaped by something other than fear. I am going to let love make me courageous and alive in ways nobody dreamed possible. This is the story.
This our story: to charge headlong, with singing and tears and laughter and clarity, into the courageousness of a love that cannot be killed; into the public square where Wisdom still yearns for someone, anyone, to speak a word of truth. It is to venture into the places we once feared to go and the places we feared to return, until we discover, as Antony did, that God makes everywhere home.
We are at the beginning of a new season in this community—this fall we are resuming and expanding the ways that we connect with one another and with Christ in this place. We are welcoming new friends into our midst as they seek a home in this parish. And we are navigating, as best we can, a fractious and tense time in the life of our country.
My invitation to you, and to myself, and to all of us, is this: in all that we do this year, let us be a people who are running towards something, not running away. Running towards each other, even in our differences, not retreating into a corner. Running towards the needs of our neighbors. Running towards a joyful and clear and public witness to the Gospel of Love that is Jesus’ true message. Running towards that sense of community that God invites us to build together, we who are still dwelling at the edge of loneliness, at the border of emptiness, and yet who are made intimate and strangely alive in our continued search for another way of being.
And in all these things, running towards God–who has been running towards us across the wilderness of time since before time began. Running to say, beloved, you don’t have to keep running. You are here. I am here. We are already home.
By Another Road 