Going home

I had this inkling, this urge, to return to my hometown a couple years ago.

I was the Curate at All Saints with Christ in Oakville at the time.

(Oakville is a village in Watertown.)

Each Sunday, I would travel up Route 8 a bit up to Oakville and I got to thinking about Ansonia, the town I spent many of my childhood years growing up in.

Route 8 is the main causeway that cuts through the Valley.

And it’s known as the Valley, just the Valley.

You might have heard of the Farmington Valley or the Connecticut River Valley or the Apple Valley and so on, but the Valley is the Valley; formed by the Naugatuck River following a path perhaps formed as the glaciers receded at the end of the last Ice Age.

So, I have roots down there and I felt a calling one Sunday to visit.

I crossed under 84 and headed south a ways then hit Ansonia.

I got off on the Wakelee Avenue exit and headed into town.

To my right was the building that housed the craft shop my mother owned for a few years.

Heading further, I passed Griffin Hospital where my grandmother volunteered and where I was born, (I don’t remember that bit, though.)

After driving around for a while I headed downtown, past the place that used to be the comic-book store my brother and I would go to after church.

The Big Y that was built on land that used to be the Ansonia Mall.

I even drove by the Town Fare Tire where my father took me once to see that machine that removes the tire from the rim.

That spinny machine with the metal bar thing slides around between the rim and tire that still fascinates me to this day.

And then I ended up at the Shop Rite which used to be Bradlees which is technically in Derby but we can overlook that for now.

I exited my car. I walked into the store.

I tried to picture how it used to look, where the cash desk used to be, where the checkout lines were.

I seemed to remember the jewelry section being in a front behind a square of glass cases with a cash register in the middle.

I headed to where the toy section used to be; it’s the freezer section now.

I got to the spot where I used to covet Star Wars figures and GI Joes and then it hit me.

This urge, this want for nostalgia suddenly turned into a sense of, “What am I doing here?”

Seriously.

I was standing in a freezer section trying to get a sense of what used to be.

Memories from long ago that no longer echo; everything had changed.

My hometown was now miles away from where my family was; where my children once played; a home my wife and I have created.

Thomas Wolfe wrote in his book aptly titled "You Can’t Go Home Again” this:

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

That was my realization that day.

Time and memory, two things so very important to me, cannot be relived.

We cannot return to the safety we once felt, maybe not all of us, but a lucky number of us once felt.

We cannot return to a storefront and see their mother working at her craft store, we cannot enter a restaurant and find the comic books we remember, we cannot stand in a freezer section and expect to see the latest line up of Matchbox cars arrayed before us.

Sometimes, the magic is lost.

But if we bring those memories, if we hold them dear, care for them, write them down, then they continue to be a part of who we are.

Actually, forgotten or not, our past can define our very selves.

Jesus returned home again.

He was performing all of these miracles in his adopted home of Capernaum and the surrounding area but in this morning’s gospel, we hear of Jesus returning to his birthplace.

I imagine he, or maybe his disciples if Jesus knew what was going to happen actually happened, might have been a bit surprised at his reception.

Because he was performing those miracles; he was teaching at synagogue; he was a known commodity.

But he left Nazareth and in the time when we leave a place and return to it, it changes.

Not sure if they have freezer sections back then but places change, more perceptively so when we leave those places.

Nazareth changed too, I am sure, as did Jesus.

To the Nazarenes, Jesus was the guy they knew, the guy they grew up with.

They knew Jesus as small town folks know people.

They knew his kin.

They knew his mom and dad; his brothers and sisters; they probably even knew his mom’s mom and his dad’s dad, well, his earthly dad’s dad just to be clear.

So, maybe there was some skepticism in their response to Jesus teaching in the synagogue.

Maybe there was this sense of him putting on airs when he dared to teach there.

Maybe.

Maybe in the time he was away, the town had changed just as Jesus had changed.

And Jesus was amazed at the response.

You truly cannot go home again.

And as if in response, he tells his disciples to leave him for little while.

Jesus has since left Nazareth and is moving from village to village teaching and he calls his disciples over.

He tells them they have the authority to exorcise unclean spirits and they are to go, two by two.

They were to spread out and seek out those who were sick and those who were bothered by demons.

Only before they left, he ordered the disciples to take nothing on their journey.

Nothing.

Not one bag.

No food, no money, no passport, no phone, no iPad, nothing.

And pack light the other things.

Just one tunic.

One walking stick.

One pair of sandals.

Pack light and go from house to house.

If they let you in, great, if not?

No bother.

Move on to the next place.

Why carry such burdens that might distract them from the mission at hand.

If they had enough food, would they feel compelled to go from house to house?

If their shoes were comfortable, Nike Air Max comfortable, would they keep walking past houses that might need their ministry?

And yet, there is this too.

Pack light so that you can carry more.

Pack light so that you can carry with you the lessons Jesus taught you, in fact, pack light so you won’t be distracted from recalling those lessons.

Pack light so you can carry the instruction and only the instruction to heal the sick and free the possessed from their demons.

If we take on too much of the physical we are then unable to carry the spiritual.

And I look back to the lesson of Jesus returning to his land, to his people.

He was amazed at their reaction, but he did not condemn the place for that was the place he was raised.

That was the place that taught him scripture; scripture that told him to love God and love each other as God loves us.

His response was amazement, yes, but he did not curse the people nor the place.

Sure, you might not be able to go home again, but you can carry home with you.

You can take with you the better parts of home and carry them as you travel from door to door sharing the love of God and the promise of Christ’s kingdom arrived.

We can change, and we can change radically; we can change so much in fact that those who knew us when, who knew Jesus when he was just his mother’s son might turn away.

Still, turning away does not change the past that made us wish to return in the first place.

So, if you ever find yourself standing in the freezer section looking for a memory, know that things change.

Home changes.

Life changes.

The memory does not.

That which made it good, remains good.

That which teaches us to heal the sick and expel evil does not expire.

That to which we hold on, the physicality of the thing might change, the memory does not.

We might not be able to go home again, but we can always take it with us.

Pack lightly; carry the Word.

Amen.