Rowing Toward Home

The only ticket I could get to watch The Odyssey was for an 8:00 showing on a Sunday morning. I walked into a theater that seats at least a couple of hundred people, and for a time I had the place to myself. Eventually, I counted about 8 of us in that theater. I guess most of the city was either sleeping or getting dressed for church.

As the credits rolled, I had a revelation that made me chuckle. I thought I was skipping church, but what I discovered was something different. I didn’t skip church at all; I was simply sitting in a different sanctuary. You see, the movie's message was similar to the one I had preached for some 30 years as a United Methodist pastor.

Somewhere between the gods and monsters, the storms and shipwrecks, and one weary man rowing across a dark sea, something clicked. The Odyssey isn't really a story about a war. It isn't even a story about a voyage. It's a story about a man who wants to go home. Amazing! A story that has survived for nearly three thousand years is built around one of the simplest longings we know.

Odysseus has already tasted glory, and it cost him almost everything. He doesn't want another victory. He wants his house, his wife, his son and his dog. He wants to lay his head on the pillow in his own bed. More than anything else, he wants to stop being away. He simply wants to go home.

As I sat there, another thought surfaced. Christopher Nolan seems to tell this same story over and over again. In Interstellar, Cooper crosses galaxies trying to find his way back to his children. In Inception, Cobb cannot go home until he faces the guilt he's spent years outrunning. Bruce Wayne eventually discovers that saving Gotham isn't enough if he never learns how to live as Bruce Wayne. Even Oppenheimer becomes the story of a man who creates something so world-changing that he can never truly return to the person he once was.

Different men and different genres of movies, but all with the same ache and yearning.

Which made me wonder if this homesickness isn't really about geography at all. Maybe it's the oldest ache we carry. Maybe underneath our ambition, our fear, our success, our failures, and even our regrets lives one quiet prayer. I want to go home. However we define it. Whatever it costs to get there.

This longing, this ache doesn't just show up in movie theaters. It shows up everywhere people tell stories, including some of the oldest ones we have.

There's a scene early in the Exodus story where a fugitive named Moses, a man who has been running for decades, hides out as a shepherd in the middle of nowhere. One day, he comes across a bush that's burning without burning up. A voice tells him to take off his sandals. Most sermons I've heard focus on the holiness of the ground, and I think that's certainly part of the story. But I also wonder if something else is happening too.

Think about what we do when we finally get home. We take off our shoes. We stop looking over our shoulder. We rest. We breathe.

Maybe, after years of running, Moses wasn't just standing on holy ground. Maybe he was finally home.

That raises a question that's been following me ever since I left the theater.

What is home?

For some of us, home is another person. Maybe it's a relationship that needs tending, or a conversation that has waited too long. Maybe it's reconciliation. Or maybe it's making peace with the fact that reconciliation will never happen this side of heaven.

For others, home is something deeper than any single relationship. It's the quiet conviction that our lives were made for something, or perhaps Someone, greater than ourselves.

As a celebrant, I've sat with hundreds of families after someone they loved has died. It's remarkable what they remember.

They don't tell stories about promotions or investment accounts. They remember kitchen tables. Fishing trips. The old recliner nobody else was allowed to sit in. Saturday mornings making pancakes. The sound of someone's laugh coming from another room.

In other words, they remember home. Not because of the house. Because of the belonging. Maybe that's the ache hiding underneath all our other aches.

We chase it in careers, hoping the next promotion will finally quiet the restlessness. We chase it in relationships, believing the right person can answer every question we carry. We chase it in bigger houses, as though more square footage could somehow create belonging.

And every once in a while, if we're honest, we chase it in stories. We sit in dark rooms and watch a man row across a sea for ten years, or a father claw his way through time toward a little girl's bedroom, or a fugitive stumble onto a bush that won't stop burning — and something in us leans forward, because some part of us recognizes the ache. We've felt it too.

I didn't go looking for any of this. I just wanted to see a movie by my favorite director. But that's usually how it goes, isn't it? The sacred rarely makes an appointment. It doesn't wait for a sanctuary with stained glass and a bulletin. Sometimes it just shows up in a mostly empty theater at 8:00 on a Sunday morning, hiding inside a three-thousand-year-old poem about a man rowing toward home.

An Unlikely Altar, if there ever was one.

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Who's Your Susan?

By Every Story Leaves Someone Behind • June 30, 2026

There's someone I think about almost every time I pick up the phone. I don't know her. I've never met her. But she's out there somewhere, waiting in a future neither of us can see. Let's call her Susan . Susan might be your spouse. Your son or daughter. Your sister, your nephew, your best friend, or the neighbor who's always been more like family than family. She might not even be the person you'd name today. Life has a way of deciding those things for us. Whoever she is, she'll be standing in the room when the worst day comes. And it will come. Not because I'm trying to be grim about it, just because that's the deal every one of us signed up for the day we were born. None of us get out of here without leaving someone behind to clean up after we're gone. So pause for just a moment and picture her. It's the morning after you've died. The casseroles haven't arrived yet, and neither have the flowers. The phone won't stop ringing, and sleep, well, that's been impossible. Every conversation feels unreal. Then comes the call to the funeral home. Does she even know which funeral home to call? Does she know what you wanted? Burial or cremation? A church service? What music did you want played? Does she know where your important papers are? Then comes the question few people are truly ready for: "How will you be taking care of the funeral expenses?" Susan wasn't expecting that question quite so soon. And when someone asks that question, does she already have an answer? Or does she begin making phone calls she never wanted to make, hoping someone in the family can somehow pull everything together? I've seen that with more families than I can count, both as a pastor and as a celebrant. And it's not because families don't love each other. It's because nobody got around to it. After all, death always feels like a someday problem until it's a today problem, and by then it's Susan's problem, not yours. That's why I do what I do today. I still stand with families after a death as a celebrant. I also help them prepare before that day ever comes. Can I tell you something I don't say very often? Selling insurance was never part of my plan. For most of my life, I've met families after someone died. I've stood beside hospital beds, in funeral homes, and at gravesides. I've listened to stories, held hands, and tried to help people find solid ground when their world had just been turned upside down. This work came later, and if I'm honest, there are still days it feels like an odd fit. Not because I don't believe in what a policy can do, but because I'm afraid of becoming someone who sounds more interested in making a sale than helping a family. For a while, that fear got the better of me. I'd call people who had asked for information, and many never answered. Some insisted they hadn't filled out a form. A few cussed me out and hung up before I could even introduce myself. After enough of those conversations, I started wondering if anyone really wanted to hear from me. So I pretty much stopped calling. I told myself I'd get back to it eventually. Then I did a funeral. The family hadn't planned for any of it, and by the time I sat down with them, they were already scrambling to cover the cost. Thank God, the funeral home was willing to work with the family so they could move forward. As I listened to that family share their story, I realized something. When I pick up the phone, it isn't really about insurance. It never had been. It was about that family. It is about every daughter, every son, every husband, every wife, every friend who finds themselves sitting at a kitchen table trying to solve a financial problem while their heart is breaking. That's when I understood why I needed to pick up the phone again. The people who hang up on me aren't really the reason I call. The reason I call is the one person who answers. The one conversation that happens before a crisis rather than during one. The one family that gets to spend its energy remembering someone they love instead of wondering how they'll pay for saying goodbye. That's worth every unanswered call. So if your phone rings and you see my name, I hope you'll know something. I'm not calling because I see you as a policy. I'm calling because I've met your Susan. I may not know her name, but I know she'll be there. I'd rather have an awkward conversation today than watch someone you love carry a burden you could have lifted. Grief is heavy enough. Love can't stop death, but love can make sure the people left behind don't have to carry everything alone. So before we ever talk about insurance, here's the only question that really matters: Who's your Susan? Find that person. Picture their face. Then ask yourself, "If today were the day everything changed, would they be okay?" Not okay because they wouldn't miss you. They will. Not okay because they wouldn't grieve. They will. But okay because, in the middle of the hardest week of their life, they would know that one of your final acts of love was making sure they weren't left to figure it all out alone. That's what I believe this work is really about. Helping people love well, even after they're gone. After all, every story leaves someone behind.

The Revolution

By On Two Worlds, a Revolution, and the Cost of Joining It • June 10, 2026

Throughout the pages of Scripture, two worlds run alongside each other like parallel tracks that never quite meet. There is the world that exists. The one we wake up in every morning. The one where the poor in spirit are overlooked, where those who mourn are told to move on, where the meek get pushed aside and the hungry stay hungry and mercy is rationed out to the people who deserve it. This is the world most of us have learned to navigate, the one we have made our peace with, the one we have quietly decided is simply the way things are. And then there is the world God desires. The world that was always meant to be. The one where the last are first and the broken are held and the overlooked are seen and the hungry are filled and mercy flows without a ledger. The world where shalom — that untranslatable Hebrew wholeness — is not a distant hope but the actual texture of daily life. Jesus sat down on a hillside and spent eight statements describing that second world. And then He preached a sermon that turned the first one upside down and inside out. We have been sitting on that hillside together for a while now. Seven posts and seven altars along with seven announcements of a world that God desires. And now Jesus says — it will cost you . Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the last beatitude. And it is the only one that comes with a warning. Everything before this has been an announcement and an invitation. Come as you are. Drop the mask. Show mercy. Make peace. Be a thermostat. The kingdom of God is breaking into the world, and you are invited to be part of it. But now Jesus looks at that crowd — that tired, hoping, half-believing crowd — and tells them the truth about what joining this revolution actually costs. Because it is a revolution. You don't begin a revolution with warm and fuzzy words. The writers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Jesus is asking for something in the same territory. Now for most of us the cost will not be physical. We are not the countless men and women around the world who are beaten, imprisoned or killed for the name they carry. Their courage is in a category that humbles everything else. But Jesus is also talking to ordinary people living ordinary lives in ordinary places. And He is telling us that when we start living the beatitudes — when we show favor to the overlooked, when we invite the marginalized in, when we practice mercy and purity and peace — we will pay a price. Maybe not with our bodies. But with our comfort. or our status or our carefully managed reputations. We might get pushed to the margins ourselves. We might get passed over and excluded. And Jesus says — "Blessed! I am still on your side. I will meet you there." Last June I posted blogs about Pride Month. I did so because I believed they needed to be posted. I believe in the dignity of my friends in the LGBTQ community. I believe they have a place at the table. I believe that when Jesus looked at that hillside full of people the religious system had pushed to the margins, He was looking at them too. I posted. And then the negative hateful comments came. And I went quiet. I convinced myself I was avoiding conflict. I told myself it wasn't the right moment. I told myself a lot of things that sounded reasonable in the moment and hollow in the days that followed. The truth is simpler and less flattering than any of that. I calculated the cost. And I decided it was too high. I was a thermometer. I adjusted to the temperature of the room instead of setting it. And the people I care about — the ones who had every reason to expect me to stay loud — watched me go silent. To my friends in the LGBTQ community — I am sorry. You deserved better from me. You deserved someone who meant it all the way through, not just when it was easy. The silence was a failure and I own it. I don't say that to make this post about me. I say it because this beatitude will not let me off the hook. And here is what Jesus says to do when the cost arrives, which is the part that has stayed with me longer than anything else in this entire series of beatitudes. He says rejoice and be glad. And here is the Unlikely Altar for this last one, and it is different from every altar we have visited in this series, because it is not a place you can photograph or a moment that happens to you while you are standing at a gas station or sitting at a graveside or watching a baseball game. It is something you do. It is the comment you type and actually post when the easier thing would be to scroll past. It is the moment in a meeting when something wrong is happening and you are the one who says so, knowing full well what it will cost you before the words are even out of your mouth. It is the June when you stay loud after the pushback comes instead of going quiet and telling yourself reasonable-sounding things that feel hollow three days later. That moment, ordinary and unremarkable, probably witnessed by nobody who would think to circle it on a calendar and call it holy, is exactly where the world God desires breaks into the world that exists. That is the revolution Jesus started on a hillside when He began calling the wrong people blessed. And He is still looking for ordinary people who want to join it, not the brave ones and the heroic ones and the ones who have already figured out how to make it look easy, but the ordinary ones who calculate the cost and decide to pay it anyway, even when they have failed to pay it before, even when the silence is still fresh enough to sting. The kingdom is closer than you think. Sometimes it looks like a bench. Sometimes a grave. Sometimes a bunt in the ninth inning, a bag of cold fries, a cheering section full of strangers, a mask finally laid down, or a box of ashes sitting quietly in a closet. And sometimes it looks like an ordinary person deciding that grace is worth the cost. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — the God who announced grace to the overlooked, who stood at the grave and said I am with you, who cheered the names of the forgotten, who loved the face beneath the mask, who kept moving toward the ones who kept saying no — that God is on your side when the room goes cold and the cost turns out to be real and the leap feels more like a stumble than anything graceful.

The Thermostat

By On Thermostats, Broken Things, and the Family Business of God • May 29, 2026

There is a difference between a thermometer and a thermostat that most of us never give a second thought. A thermometer tells you the temperature of the room. It reads what is already there, adjusts to whatever surrounds it, and reports back faithfully. It is reactive by design; in other words, it waits to be acted upon. The room decides what the thermometer says. A thermostat does something different entirely. It doesn't adjust to the room; rather, it sets the temperature. It decides what the room will become and then works quietly, persistently, without fanfare, until the room catches up. It doesn't wait for conditions to improve before it does its job. A thermostat makes the first move. Jesus had a word for the thermostat kind of person. He called them peacemakers . And He said they would be called children of God . Now here is something worth pausing on, because the promise attached to this beatitude is unlike any of the others. The other beatitudes talk about the kingdom of heaven, seeing God, or receiving mercy. But this one claims they will be called children of God. And that was not some throwaway compliment. It meant something in the first century, and it means something today. I was watching one of my boys play baseball one evening, standing along the third base line with a buddy of mine. Out of nowhere, he looked over at me and grinned. "You can't deny those kids", he said. "Every time I see them I see you." That is what Jesus is describing. A family resemblance so clear that nobody has to be told. Which means that if peacemakers are the ones who look like their Father — then the central characteristic of God must be peacemaking itself. The whole sweep of Scripture points exactly there. A God who keeps moving toward people who keep turning away. A God who initiates, absorbs, returns, and offers again. A God who, even when the door keeps closing, finds another way to knock. That is the family business. And Jesus is inviting us into it. But we need to be careful about what we think peace means. When most of us hear peace, we think about what is absent. The absence of conflict or the absence of noise. The quiet that settles in when everyone has finally stopped fighting. But that is not what Jesus meant. The word He used for peacemaker doesn't appear anywhere else in all of Scripture — it is unique to this one beatitude — and at its root is the Hebrew understanding of shalom . And shalom is not about absence. Shalom is about presence. Shalom is the presence of wholeness and the presence of grace . It is about a restoration to the way it should always meant to be. Shalom is taking what was broken and making it whole. We could translate this beatitude, “ Blessed are the whole-makers" - the one who moves toward broken things and offers restoration. Now those who are “ whole-makers ” or “ peacemakers ” are not naive about how broken things are. They have simply decided that the broken thing is worth moving towards. They are not passive; they are like a thermostat, setting the temperature. Peacemakers make the first move. I know something about what that costs. My father left when I was young. He left without a goodbye, a note, or a warning. He was just gone, the way a foul ball disappears into the stands and doesn't come back. For a long time I didn't think much about it. You can't grieve what you don't yet understand. But years later things changed for me as I was leading a group through Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace? One of the chapters was titled "Breaking the Chain of Ungrace, " in which Yancey discusses what it takes to break the cycles of resentment, blame, and pain. Something in it reached into my chest and wouldn't let go, so I made a decision. I was going to be a thermostat and move toward the broken thing. I found him on the internet along with his office number. His secretary answered and told me I must have the wrong number — Mr. Vershel didn't have any children. But I didn’t quit. I sent an email carefully written, making sure that there was no blame or judgment - - just a son wanting to know his dad. And I waited and waited and…then I sent it again. And again nothing. Years later I found him on Facebook. So of course I sent a message and a friend request. And again silence. Three attempts and three doors closed. Three times the same basic message: you do not exist. “ Blessed are the peacemakers ”, Jesus says. He does not say, "Blessed are the peacemakers whose peace is accepted." I don't know exactly how to say what happened next without it sounding like something it isn't. There was no reconciliation. No phone call where everything finally got said. No moment where the distance collapsed, and we found each other on the other side of it. He died. And somehow — I still don't fully understand the path it traveled — his ashes ended up with me. There is a box in my closet that holds what is left of him. Right next to the box with his old baseball glove — a left-handed glove I found years later, a glove that never fit me, from a game we never played together. One box for the man who left. One box for the life we never had. I did not plan to become his keeper. But here we are. And I have thought about this more than I can explain — the man who denied having children ended up in the closet of one of the children he had. The peacemaker became the keeper of the one who would not make peace. I don't think that is an accident. I think that is shalom working in ways I cannot fully trace. Because shalom doesn't always look like resolution. Sometimes it looks like faithfulness in the face of rejection. Sometimes it looks like a thermostat that keeps working even when the room never warms up. Sometimes it looks like a son who keeps his father's ashes because there was nobody else to keep them — and found, in that strange and quiet act, something that felt less like loss and more like grace. The Unlikely Altar for this beatitude is not the moment peace is finally achieved. It is the moment it is offered anyway. It is the phone call you make and the email you send into the silence. It is the move you make toward the broken thing — not because you are certain it will work, but because you are a chip off the old block of a God who never stopped moving toward you. Maybe that relationship in your life never gets resolved the way you hoped. Maybe the door stays closed. Blessed are the peacemakers still. Not because the peace was accepted. But because they looked like their Father when they offered it. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — we come from a God who is in the business of moving toward broken things. That is the family resemblance. That is what people are supposed to see when they look at us. Be the thermostat.

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