You Can’t Go Home Again

 The phrase, you can’t go home again, has been on my mind quite a bit this week.  This phrase, from novelist Thomas Wolfe, generally encapsulates the idea that you may return to the place which was your home but it will not be the same.  Things about it will have changed from what you remember and that’s putting aside the reality that your memories do not reflect how things actually were.

The phrase came to mind when I was thinking about the COVID restrictions, and dangers we have been under for the last two years, are finally lifted.  Things are not going to be like they were even if stores and restaurants and churches open up fully and even if we no longer have to wear the all-pervasive masks.  This idea was crystalized by the Gospel reading which we heard on Sunday.  It was Luke 4: 14-21 in which Jesus, who has begun his public ministry in Galilee, come to his hometown of Nazareth and holds forth in the synagogue reading from Isaiah which declares that the year of the Lord’s favour – prisoners set free, good news to the poor and more - and proclaims the scripture has been fulfilled. 

Things went well for Jesus initially but the crowd turned on him when he declares that there were foreigners more worthy of salvation than then they were.  They responded as you might expect – rather badly - and were going to throw him off a hill but he managed to miraculously avoid the people and puts them in their proper relation with God.  Jesus certainly found that he couldn’t go home again.  I don’t know if he expected a warm welcome and to be embraced by the people as the local boy who has made good.  Probably not, because he quotes the aphorism that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.  Indeed, he wasn’t accepted by them.  Perhaps he would have been smart to quit while he was ahead and the crowd was cheering him?  However, this is not who he was and would not have been true to his ministry.

But turning back to our present situation where COVID sets the all-pervasive parameters of day-to-day life, what can we take from the reality that we can’t, as Thomas Wolfe implies, go back to the way things were?  Are we going to bemoan the fact that COVID or some variant will be endemic and will probably be with us permanently in one form or another? Will we be more mistrustful of our institutions?  Will we be more resentful and punitive to those who question authority or protest against government restrictions in our lives?  There certainly is a possibility of all those things and more coming about. 

Of course, I have no way of knowing – my record of prognostication is mixed to say the least.  However, I do know that our response as Christians should be to follow the commandment to love our neighbours.  If non-Christians don’t want to follow that advice, perhaps following the Golden Rule will work – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – or to put it another way, treat other people the way you want to be treated.  If we do that, we will all find our new home a much better place to inhabit. 

May we all be blessed on that journey to our new home.