30th May 2020

I have a funny story.

Well, when I say funny it probably depends on what you find funny. Maybe bizarre is more appropriate. Or miraculous. Or depending on your standpoint, probably some kind of venn diagram of all three.

Anyway. A few years ago we were at a gathering (so very last season), and we were praying for some friends. And as we prayed my husband was praying and as part of his praying he found himself repeating over and over this word that he didn’t recognise. So like all situations when you find yourself needing help, he put the word into google translate.

And the translation he got was “hearth and home”

The word was ‘oikos’; a Greek word meaning household. But more than that. Both a place of dwelling and the family, the kith and kin, who reside and journey together, rather than share a front door.  

Oikos was the primary way that the first church spread and grew and became established.

Yes, that’s right -  the very space and place we find ourselves in when we can’t go to church on Sundays was in fact the very place it began. Funny the way God works isn’t it?

I think it’s something many of us have been contemplating recently as we think about what we have both lost and gained in our enforced hometime. But today my heartbeat started to accelerate its pace with anticipation.

On Sunday we will remember when God first sent the essence of himself to be present with us. It was the start of church as the first disciples knew it, and as the world had seen it.

God literally lit a fire as they sat shut in their oikos. He breathed his life, his courage, his words, his power into a community to enable them to be all that Jesus was – multiplied!

This week many of us have sat round our firepits, some of us with our household, others watching the flicker of light across a screen joining together for wildfires online. He is always with us and has been since that first sound from heaven that the disciples experienced that Pentecost day.

But there is a momentum gathering that is not the increase of activity in readiness for routine.

There is still the ever present allure residing in the air of an invitation that has been given. Like when you’re invited to a wedding of friend that does not live close by, and you may not be part of the work party, but you know that there is an extended household of focused activity, planning, preparing, readying, looking forward.

This weekend, the same inexhaustible invite and warm offer is kindly extended to you.

Will you let him set a fire in your hearth, in the heart of your home? A fire that brings warmth and comfort. A fire that illuminates, that makes dark places no longer dark. A fire that radiates. A fire that you can invite others to join you and gather round. A fire that cannot be hidden.

The fire that the disciples encountered that day was holy. The arrival of all that encompasses God from the heavenly realm into the oikos where they sat.

From heaven to home. God with you. Where you sit. Comforting you. Healing you. Empowering you. Speaking words of life to you. Bringing peace to you. Freedom to you. Hope flying in to your home.

See he lights a fire in our hearts, in our hearths, in our home so that we can invite others to share in the joy and wonder of it being alight. Fires draw others in. They offer warmth. Light. Endless marshmallow toasting opportunities.

In the midst of isolation, God is restoring the centrality of hearth and home to the way that we work and live and connect. He is saving our oikos. It’s not that we won’t gather again to feast and celebrate– but that this is our primary space in which we encounter him, and in which each of us finds a place to belong.

Family has never been about who resides in your household. Restoring the dwelling places of our city, rebuilding community looks like keeping your fire lit and inviting others to share in its warmth. It looks like cultivating your yeast and baking bread to feed your family and feast with friends. It looks like investing our greatest talents and time in our partners, our children, our siblings, our neighbours.

Those who you gather round the fire with. Who you cook and eat together with. Tell stories and roast marshmallows with. Stay up into the night chatting with. Those who you sit and stare at the lapping flames and glowing embers with.

Heaven in our homes.

So this weekend will you make a space for him. Invite him into your space, your place. Encounter him so that you can share the story of how he came into your heart, your home, and how there is a fire burning in your hearth. Come and see, come and sit, together round the fire.