There's no place like home

Mark 3:7-19

          I have said several times to people that I am a boring gay. I don't do drugs, pot or otherwise, I don't drink to any significant degree, I don't sleep around and I would much rather be home with my man and our cat. I can hardly wait to get home after work. How could it get better than this? We love each others' company, we are relaxed and we are deliriously happy. Today we sat in front of a fire and hung out after a really good workout this morning. When Dorothy proclaimed "there's no place like home", we feel it is absolutely true.

          It is with interest then that I read today's passage and after it is all said and done, what does Jesus do?  He went home. Sit down, kick off the sandals, let Mom prepare a nice meal, home. Ah, there's no place like home.

          No matter what "lifestyle" a gay person may embrace ( or anyone else, gay or straight), we all come from a family that gives us the notion or holds high the image of a home and a family life. To the gay community that was always denied, dismissed or downright prohibited. Such a life some people would say, is not for us. But just like Jesus and everyone else, we long for a place to call home, hang our hat, feel comfortable and in most cases share the joys of a relationship. Just like Jesus did. What his home life later on amounted to, well that's a question for another reflection. At the time, it's home to Mom because as we know, there's no place like home.

Jesus departed with his disciples to the lake, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.

He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Then he went home;