I want to begin the message today with three remembrances
of my granddaughter, Riley.
Riley, our daughter Shannon’s six-and-a-half-year-old daughter
is the sweetest little girl I know: funny, pretty and bright.
But then again, Riley is Kim’s granddaughter, too.

The first is a little story I told on Mother’s Day in 2006.
It was a Saturday morning.
Kim and I left Barrie and headed for Sudbury.

Shannon and her four-year-old daughter Riley left Moran, Michigan,
the same day, an hour earlier, starting their four hour trip.
   They arrived in Sudbury and pulled their car along side ours
           in the Pizza Hut parking lot.

What a happy reunion.
Kisses and hugs and laughter.
Riley was excited.
Excited to see us, I’m sure.
But more excited about the trip she and grandma were going to take  ~
the big plane trip with Andrea and Pierson to Newfoundland.

After lunch we took Riley to our car,
got her settled in her booster seat,
got our goodbye hugs and kisses
and then started the three hour trip back to Barrie
as Shannon headed in the opposite direction back to Michigan.

Riley wasn’t in the car five minutes when she said it.  Not f-i-v-e minutes.
“I want my Mom.”
And every few minutes after that
that sweet little voice said those same words, “I want my Mom.”

I slipped a CD into the CD player.
        Music has a way of quieting us …
                of soothing the soul.
                        Well, some music does.
                                It was a Michael Bublé song called “Home.”

It’s a lovely song.
        It’s a love song about a man who just wants to go home … needs to go home …
                has to go home … who sings ”let me go home” …
                        and who finally is “coming back home”
to the one he loves.

Good song … but a bad choice, as I think about it.
Riley listened to that song.
                And then her refrain changed from
                        “I want my Mom” to “I want to go home.”
                                And at her often-repeated request, “I want to hear it again,”
we must have listened to that song a dozen times or more.
                                                And all through it, her little refrain
was clearly heard: “I want to go home.”

The second remembrance happened this past summer
when we vacationed in Florida with our grandchildren  ~  4 of them  ~
a 13, 10, 6 and 3 year old.
We made the discovery, as we do when we take the kids on their holiday,
that God was pretty smart when he designed us,
that parents would have their children when they were young.
But that having been said, it is wonderful in these older years,
to be able, in many ways, to be a kid again and to play.

We had our meals together in the place we had rented …
wonderful meals prepared by Grandma.
And it happened often, at almost every meal,
after the portions were served up,
that Riley would look at her cousin Gavyn’s plate of food
or bowl of ice cream
or bowl of munchies later when we were playing cards
and in an unhappy voice say, “Gavyn got more!”
“No, Riley,” I said, “ Gavyn didn’t get any more that you or Patrick or Lucas.
I counted every chip out and you all got the same.”
Her persistent reply came again: “Gavyn got more.”
And no matter how I tried to explain it …
no matter how I tried to even things up …
Riley would look at the plate or bowl and unhappily say, “Gavyn got more.”

And the third remembrance is from a couple of years ago.
As a part of our Florida holiday time
we stay for a few days at Kim’s sister’s home in Orlando.
Her home backs on to the 14th fairway of a golf course.
And their pool is a large, screened in pool …
screened in to keep us from getting hit by any stray balls.

The kids were in the pool
and they all had rules of the pool to live by.
No running on the deck.
No holding people under water.
No roughhousing that would put anyone in danger.
They were Papa’s rules and they were pretty good at following them.

But on this particular day Riley was breaking the rules.
“You’re breaking the rules, Riley” was the warning.
Riley broke the rules again.
“If I have to tell you again, Riley, you’re out of the pool.”
Riley broke the rules again. “Okay, Riley, out of the pool.”

As I gestured for her to get out of the pool she did, reluctantly.
And as she stood on the deck with a towel wrapped around her
she look at me and said, “I hate you, Papa.”

I didn’t say a word.
I just kept on doing what I was doing.
I didn’t make an issue of it.
And a minute or so later, Riley came over to me,
arms stretched out towards me,
and as I held her in my arms,
in a teary yet hopeful voice said, “I love you, Papa.”

Three little moments.
But in those three moments of “I want to go home” …
of “Gavyn got more” …
of “I hate you, Papa” and “I love you Papa” …
we see the unfolding story of little Riley’s life.
And in her unfolding story we can find our own.
And in those stories we find ourselves in God’s story,
for they each reveal the great themes of scripture.

Those “I want to go home” words
echo the story of the children of Israel’s exile in Babylon
in the 6th century before the birth of Jesus.
It is the story a people living in a strange land
living under an alien empire.
They longed for the safety of home …
for familiar places and familiar things …
that brought them security.
They were separated from those things.
They longed for a way out.
They longed for home.

Those “Gavyn got more” words echo the story of the Exodus.
The children of Israel, after the death of Joseph in Egypt,
and after the remembrance of his work of saving Egypt from famine
had blown away like desert sands  ~
were slaves of the pharaoh.
And in their slavery they longed for home.
They lived in a land of bondage,
they lived a life of powerlessness and victimization.
They longed for more.
Less of that which sucked the life out of them …
more of that which gave life to them.
And they longed for a way out.
They longed for home.

Those “I hate you, Papa” and “I love you, Papa” words echo a third great story.
It too is a story of separation
that comes from being separated from God,
the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” …
separated by willfulness and sinfulness,
feeling unclean and unworthy.
And the longing is for cleansing, forgiveness and acceptance.
There is a longing for a way out.
There is a longing for home.

I believe that the stories of our lives are wrapped around these stories.
We long for a way out and a way home …
for more, not less …
for the home that finds itself in the love of God.

And it doesn’t matter how we got there,
whether by our own willful foolishness
or because of our victimization by others.
We’re there. 
And we long for home.

And in the midst of our stories comes a word,
a word of promise and hope in the Hebrew scriptures …
a word made flesh in the person of Jesus
who brings us home to the heart of God.

That word comes to life in another story I am about to tell.
It is a story of coming home …
a story of more, not less …
a story of reconciliation and forgiveness and redemption.

You all know the hymn Amazing Grace which we will sing at the end of the service.
Let me tell you about the man who wrote it?

His name was John Newton.
Thirteen days before his seventh birthday, in 1732, his mother died.
She had been his teacher … care giver … and friend.
After her death, with little formal schooling,
young John Newton went to sea with his father,
the captain of a merchant ship.
And from that day he began a decline into rebellion and degradation
that lasted until his mid-twenties.

His willful and wanton disregard for all that was right and good
led him into a life plagued with despair,
                                                dangers at sea,
                                        abuse,
                                public floggings,
                        destitution,
                depression
        near drownings
and miraculous escapes.

Newton’s misfortunes were largely the result of his own choosing.
On one occasion he became employed on a slave trader in North Africa.
                He soon fell sick, was unable to care for himself, and nearly starved to death.
                        He was so ill that the slaves in chains pitied him,
                                sharing their meager portions with him.
                                        Yet, he still remained stubbornly wicked,
                                                and in his degeneracy tried to influence others to live as he did.

During those years he often entered into a state of spiritual awakening,
        but those moments were short-lived,
                and he invariably lapsed into a more wicked and loathsome direction.

Even in his youth he became, almost inexplicably,
        the captain of a slave ship,
                landing at least one load of human cargo in Charleston, South Carolina,
                        where hurricane Hugo and Ike are soon to appear.
                                It is reported that at times he was so wretched
                                        that even his crew regarded him as little more than an animal.
                                                He seemed oblivious to the plight of the poor black slaves
chained in the hold of his ship.
                                                                                       
That’s the kind of wretched life John Newton lived.
As we reflect on that life, think of this:
                if ever there was a wretch, he was …
                        if ever there was a lost soul, he was …
                                if ever there was blindness to the world around him, he had it …
                                        if ever there was a man whose heart was hardened, his was …
if ever there was a man undeserving of anyone’s love,
never mind God’s, he was.

What he needed was a promise fulfilled in his life.
What he needed was salvation.
What he needed was grace
that would bring him home to the heart to God.

When he was twenty-three,
        he found himself on a small island
                off the coast of North Africa.
                        He had contracted an illness
                        that left him burning with fever, miserable, listless.
                And it was there that he came face to face with God’s grace.
And it was then that he began to improve, both physically and spiritually.
It was there that his blind eyes were opened and his hardened heart was softened.

Two years later, he married his childhood sweetheart.
During the next fourteen years, he studied for the ministry,
and in 1764, at the age of thirty-nine, became a minister in Olney, England.
When he was fifty-four, he published a hymnal “The Olney Hymns”
in which he included 281 of his own works, including “Amazing Grace.”

“Amazing grace,” he wrote,
“how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see.”

And that is why grace is so amazing:
it could embrace a man like John Newton  ~
and became the way for God’s world do something to his world.

And as he acknowledged before God his own miserable condition,
as he accepted God’s grace into his heart,
as he allowed that grace to work its way into every area of his life,
he became a man transformed by it:
he let God’s world to do something to his world.
But it is important to understand his transformation.

The slaves he had carried in the hold of his ship over those years …
those whom he treated as less than human
even though they too were God’s children…
those he took into their Egypt and their Babylon,
uprooting them from home and family and who longed for home …
they too needed grace to save them.
For they, too, were lost and longed to be found …
they, too, hungered and thirsted and needed food and drink …
they, too, were in bondage and needed liberation.

And so with William Wilberforce he worked tirelessly
to bring an end to slave trading and slavery.
The redeemed man didn’t take this amazing grace for granted;
he used it for the redemption of others.
The man saved by grace through faith knew that faith, without works, is dead.
The grace of God, which redeemed him, called him to bring that redemption
to the places where he lived and moved and had his being.

John Newton died in 1807 at the age of eighty-two.
These are the words written on his grave.

“John Newton, clerk,
once an infidel and libertine,
a servant of slaves in Africa,
was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
preserved, restored, pardoned,
and appointed to preach the faith
he had long labored to destroy.”

And here we are at Collier today at the beginning of another season.
We have come home.
And what is more remarkable
is that the grace which reclaimed John Newton’s life
is the same grace that can and has reclaimed yours, and mine.  Amazing, isn’t it.

It was said of Florence Nightingale that “She looked like the grace of God.”
That is the high calling we have in this place:
not just to accept the grace,
not just to be saved by it,
but to be the grace of God for others  ~
to let our transformed lives transform our worlds.

So let us, with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength, do just that.
For when we do, we come home  ~ 
not just to God
but to all that God loves
and would have us love.
We come home.

SOLI  DEO  GLORIA

Scripture  ~  Selected Verses

The psalmist wrote these words of sadness and longing
while exiled in Babylon:
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked of us songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?”

But the psalmist held on a hope even though, at times, he was lost in despair.
He wrote:
“The Lord is my light and my salvation  ~
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life  ~
of whom shall I be afraid?”

And at another time he wrote:
“Weeping may remain for an night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.” 

And it was Jesus through whom God spoke
and Jesus spoke words of comfort, hope and promise
to those who found themselves in  difficult times and difficult places.
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

And to those who had lost their way, Jesus said,
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Jesus is the way to the truest kind of living that can be found.