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From the Campus Pastor
Sunday dinner is kind of a big deal at my house when I'm at my parents' home with my brothers. Every Sunday after church, my family morphs into warp speed. My mom straps on an apron and mixes potatoes with a beater. I set the table with our rose-pink flowered china. My dad complains because my youngest brother isn't doing anything and is on the couch reading a magazine. The grandbaby cries because lunch is later than she's used to, and the older grandkids steal crescent-shaped yeast rolls from where they are cooling on the counter.
Hopefully we are making my favorite Sunday dinner, which is roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, my mom's best carrots (honey-glazed, butter, brown sugar), peas with those little pearl onions in them, a Jell-O salad with grated carrots that no one but my mother eats (but we all say we like), raspberry lemonade, and, for dessert, a spice cake and coffee - and guilty looks from my mother if you don't eat a big-enough slice.
At dinner we talk about how good or bad the preacher was, who liked the special music, and what we are reading or a film that we've seen. My brothers, husband, and father are very opinionated about everything, and my mother looks stressed. I try to make peace, and my father says everything's good except for the cauliflower casserole which was "recipe B," which means that it's not quite up to par. And my other brother says that everyone in the family is discriminating against him, and my sister-in-law says, "You all have to analyze everything!"
We all hope the conversation doesn't turn to politics, because then it's bound to get ugly because everyone has a different opinion, and my dad says can't we please not argue at the table and be Christian. Afterwards, we are all stuffed and leave the table saying we won't eat this much again and feel mildly irritated at one or another of the family members. I just love it. This is home to me.
Home is that place where you can walk in the door and say, "What's for dinner?" and "I'm hungry!" and expect to be fed. You don't have to ask permission to rumble through the pantry, and you can stand with the fridge door open and complain, "There's nothing to eat!" It might be your favorite place to go, or it may not be a perfect home. It might not be peaceful, and you may feel more frustrated when you leave than when you came. But my guess is, if you show up there hungry and looking for a meal, you either are home or you would say "I make myself at home there." There is something that we connect with our bellies and our souls as far as the place that we call home.
This semester in Campus Ministries, we are thinking about and living into the passage in John 15 that calls us to abide in Christ. Another way of saying "abide" is to say "to make your home in." Eugene Peterson uses this translation in The Message: "Make yourself at home in my love as I make myself at home in you." What does it mean to have this kind of intimate relationship with Jesus that we make ourselves at home in him? Jesus invites us into this incredible opportunity of deep and intimate relationship in a place that will both feed us with the comfort food of the soul, but will also make us more hungry for more of him at the same time.
It is in this place of home that we become fruit-bearers, people who give and share the food of Jesus with the world. Jesus tells us "I am the bread of life." And certainly, when we come home in him, there is always something to eat. The table is crowded with macaroni and cheese or roast or baked rosemary chicken and stacks of fresh-baked bread. The more we linger around the table, the more the scent of the Bread of Life lingers on us, and we carry it with us out into the world. The aroma of Jesus is upon us, drawing others to the Jesus that they see in us.
My prayer for our community is that we will be people who make our home in Jesus. I pray that we would linger so long at the table with Jesus - in the midst of a community that encourages us, loves us, and also makes us somewhat irritated at times - that the aroma of Jesus sticks to us. I believe that these college students are called to be world-changers wherever they make their physical home in the world, and they will do that inasmuch as they make their home in Jesus Christ.
Please pray for us in Campus Ministries as we encourage our students to lean into relationship with Jesus. We seek to do that through small-group ministries in which students are invited into covenant friendship groups and honesty groups that help students understand and walk in their places of brokenness with others. We also do that through giving opportunities for students to serve and encounter the poor and suffering of the world so that they may become more aware of their deep hunger for Jesus as they seek to give. In our spiritual formation calendar, we give students space to pray and listen to Jesus, but also space and conversation to grapple with what does it mean to be Jesus-people in a dying world.
Thank you for the ways that you partner with us in being in the work of helping our students listen to Jesus. I encourage you as well to make your home in the love of Jesus Christ, to linger around the table, that the aroma of Jesus might stir your student's hunger for our Creator God.
Sarah Baldwin
Campus Pastor
Director of Campus Ministries
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