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In 1939, just as the world was teetering on the brink of a
war, a world fair was being held in New York. In a sense it tried
to push away for a time the threat of impending conflict with
lightness and brightness and visions of a beautiful world to
come. Nations from all over the world came -- the large ones and
the small ones. The tiny eastern European nation of Lithuania had
an impressive pavillion at the fair where one could see the
typical life and culture of that beautiful country. Americans of
Lithuanian descent wore their native costumes and did typical
national dances. During the fair a production team was making a
motion picture to be taken back and shown in movie houses in
Lithuania, but their film was never completed or shown, because
before the fair closed Hitler and Stalin had divided that little
country between Germany and Russia and it ceased to exist.
On March 23, 1992, after 311 days in space, Sergei Krikalev
set foot on earth again and found a few changes. The country from
which he blasted off did not exist any more. The red hammer and
sickle flag emblazoned on his space vehicle no longer denoted a
viable political entity. The space agency that sent him aloft was
broken up, and even his home town had a new name. Because of the
political changes and disputes among newly independent states,
what should have been a routine

three-month stay aboard the Soviet space station "Mir" lengthened
to almost a year, and poor Sergei was stuck up there all that
time.
Some people say that you can never return home. Sergei
Krikalev might agree. Much of what he left ceased to exist while
he was gone. Sometimes we wish we could return home -- home to
some idealized place and time kept sacred in our memory.
Sometimes we try and are disappointed.
Have you ever tried going back just to see some place where
you used to live? The neighborhood looks different. The trees are
bigger. Strangers who live in the house now look at you with some
suspicion as you drive by very slowly, perhaps thinking you're
casing the joint. The scene looks familiar in a strange sort of
way; your house usually looks smaller than you remember it, and
not as warm and friendly. In fact, there is often a nostalgic
sadness at being unable to capture what once was but never will
be again -- even a moment of that time, or a voice, or a loved
one. To remain suspended in time, or to return to a former age,
must remain the stuff of fiction, not real life. At best we can
only look back and recall. We can build upon those events and
experiences, and enjoy them, but we cannot alter them.
A man came to my church study one day and, after a brief
introduction, got out his checkbook. While I thought that was a
good sign, I was not prepared for what came next. "How much for a
pair of candlesticks?" he said. That oblique statement was the
opening to a story of what had happened seven or eight years
before. You see this church had maintained a chapel -- which for
years had been its principal place of worship before a new larger
building was built. That beautiful chapel was open to the public
24 hours a day. There was not even a lock on the door. If that
seems incredible, you also need to know that the church was in
Los Angeles, California. For 20 years it had never been locked.
There had been some occasional minor vandalism, but it remained
unlocked. The people wanted it that way.

Then one day an angry young man came to the church and stole
the candlesticks and a few other small things. They were
worthless to him, but it was done in anger. Things had gone badly
for him. Among other things his marriage had failed and he had
lost his job. He had gone to a church -- not even that one -- and
felt it was of no help to him. So the theft was to get even. The
effect was largely lost because the people at the church didn't
know what had happened to the candlesticks. They were not
especially expensive ones. So they simply got new ones and went
on. And no, they did not put a lock on the door until seven or
eight years later.
In the intervening years the guilt over what he had done
continued to eat away at this man. Now he found himself in much
better circumstances, and looking back realized the stupidity of
what he had done. He wanted to make amends and wanted to be
forgiven, and while the check was not necessary from our point of
view, it was from his. He wrote a generous one. The transaction
completed he asked me if I would pray with him, which I did. Then
he left my study and I watched as a tearfully happy man walked --
almost skipped -- out to his car and drove away. I never saw him
again. Whatever happened to those candlesticks is far less
important than what happened to the man.
Jeremiah spoke in the name of God to a willful and faithless
people, saying:

"I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful. ... Only
acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your
God ... and that you have not obeyed my voice. ... Return, O
faithless children ... and I will bring you to Zion."
-- Jeremiah 3:12b-14, in part

Jeremiah calls for faithless Israel to return, with the
promise of leading her to Zion -- meaning the habitation of the
Lord. There is no promise that the past will be wiped away. In
life there is no chance for re-takes. The promise is that the
Lord

is merciful and "will not be angry forever." In other words,
there is the promise of reconciliation.
Each Christmas season for the past several years a television
film called The Gathering, has aired. It is truly a classic tale
with Edward Asner in the role of a man who realizes almost too
late his need for reconciliation to the family he loves, but
nearly all of whom he has alienated by his hypercritical,
arbitrary and beligerant manner. When he discovers he has only a
few months to live, he and his estranged wife arrange a family
reunion, to which some of the children come gladly and others
come only reluctantly. The story is that, in the family
celebration of Christmas, the father makes his peace one by one
with each of his children. He is not only able to find
reconciliation with them, and to love and appreciate them for
what they are, but to allow them to return from their own guarded
stance of rebellion and its accompanying guilt. Asner's character
was able to come home, not to the situation as it had been, but
to one he chose to see with new eyes. "I will not look on you in
anger," says the Lord, "for I am merciful. Only acknowledge your
guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God."
Ah, that's the hard part! Admission of guilt! In recent years
we have learned a great deal about denial. The alcoholic denies
he has a problem with alcohol. The cancer patient denies the
illness. In much the same way we deny our own complicity in the
situations that alienate us from one another and from God. Moving
past the stage of denial is necessary before coming to a healthy
acceptance of one's own part so as to get on with life. You can
come home again. The wayward son in one of Jesus' stories found
that out. But one must come to the admission of one's guilt in at
least contributing to the problem in the first place. The
admission and acceptance of one's own responsibility for the way
things are is so much more difficult than it is to assign the
blame to someone else, but Jeremiah tells us it is a necessary
step. It is the turning point to life in a new direction.

Jeremiah adds an important idea to the necessity to accept
one's own guilt, and that is "I will not be angry with you
forever." No one wants to come back to constant recrimination. A
runaway child will not come back to constant reminders of guilt
and lingering mistrust. A wayward spouse will not return to being
constantly reminded of faithlessness. And yet that often happens.
"I'll make him come crawling back!" If those are the conditions
of coming back, he won't. "I'll never trust him (or her) again!"
Who can live with that? No, Jeremiah tells us God deals with us
differently. "I will not be angry with you forever," he says.
Indeed, if we invite one who is alienated from us to return home,
there must be an end to our anger and mistrust, or it won't work.
You can return home, but on your part it has to be with new eyes
-- the eyes of acceptance of one's own part in the problem. It
also must be with forgiveness on all parts and the willingness to
move forward into a new relationship. Nothing will erase the
past. The only answer is to cover it with love.
A priest in Los Angeles has worked for years with runaway
young people who, for reasons of their own, are unable to live at
home. Some wanted an unrealistic situation of no parental
restraints. Others actually suffered under unreasonable
limitations and even abuse. But they came face to face with the
harsh reality of trying to make it on their own, and like the
prodigal son in Jesus' story, and with the help of this street
priest whom they came to trust, some were willing to risk an
attempt at reconciliation with parents. Oft'times attempts at
reconciliation do not work. The same old reactions take over and
the situation blows up again. But in a surprising number of cases
a counselor is able to work with both parties and help them to
build skills for getting along and being sensitive to one
another's needs. When several of these reconciliations are ready
to take place, they are celebrated with a brief service, ending
with the Lord's Prayer. It is a time of high emotion and anxiety,
wondering if it is going to work and hoping and praying that it
will. As the final prayer is prayed, standing in a circle, all
are holding hands. By the time they pray "forgive

us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us," people are
usually finding it difficult to speak, and before the prayer ends
tearful parents and teens are in each other's arms, vowing that
the prayer will be fulfilled. "Return ... I will not look on you
in anger ... I am merciful ... and I will bring you to 'the
habitation of the Lord.' " Yes, it is possible to return home.
Alienation is a time of darkness in which we long for light.
There was a man named John, who was sent by God to be a witness
to the light who was coming into the world. The light, of course,
was Jesus. The light was reconciliation and forgiveness and love
to cure the darkness of bitterness and alienation and mistrust.
To those who decided to accept the gift he gave the power to live
as children of God.
We cannot re-live the past. Even if we could we wouldn't do it
any more perfectly than we did the first time. We'd just make a
different set of mistakes. What we are offered in the name of God
is better than that. We can come home forgiven. We can return to
where we are loved. We can shoulder our share of the blame for
whatever is past and then let it go. Let it drift away and
eventually sink out of sight. And we can choose to live as
children of God -- children of the light. That doesn't guarantee
there won't be other times of peril and even darkness. But the
promise is that the darkness will never swallow us, and life can
go on.
John's gospel gives us that wonderful assurance at the very
beginning of the book as he speaks of the coming of the Word into
the world in Christ.

"What has come into being in him was life, and life was the light
of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
[shall not] overcome it." -- John 1:3b-5

That assurance is to every one of us when Christ comes into our
lives.