On Homelessness

What causes a place not to feel like home anymore? Sometimes, the place changes in ways that means it alienates instead of embraces you. Other times, you change and the place that once was a safe and inviting space, a shelter, does not seem able to offer the same level of security it once did. Wounds can also break heart and soul ties between you and what was once home. Open wounds can foster a sense of bitterness and harden your heart toward the place you used to call home. Healing, forgiveness, even reconciliation can restore broken hearts and strained relationships but a “new’ condition is not the same as the “original” condition, which may mean wounds are healed but home is still lost. 

Homelessness is an experience of suffering, but it is not fruitless. Suffering, framed Biblically, bears fruit in our lives. It refines us and pulls us closer to the heart of the Father.

Jesus suffered homelessness. He tells an overeager potential follower, “Foxes have holes, and birds of air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). Up until the past few years, I understood this description of Jesus in a literal sense – as in, Jesus was a traveling rabbi and he literally did not have a home. While that is true, it overlooks the deeper, less physical experience of homelessness that Jesus suffered during His time on earth. Jesus was homeless because He was an outsider – a persecuted outsider – in all of the places He might have called home. He left his family business and the community He grew up in to pursue a life in ministry. He was at odds with other Jewish religious leaders who rejected His message and His person. He taught in synagogues but they were also the sites where His enemies plotted His death. He chose 12 followers and established a small, close knit community that probably buffered some of the rejection from other places. But it was one of those 12 who ultimately betrayed Him and opened the door for His death. The garden must have felt like a last safe place in the midst of everything crumbling – the place He withdrew with friends to pray. It was there that His friends fell asleep while He labored through His grief alone, and it was that place whose serenity was violated when soldiers arrived to arrest Him. In a last, ironic twist, His once-friend kissed and embraced Him, using a sign of love to turn Him over to His enemies.

I am sure the heart and soul suffering of this layered homelessness and rejection magnified the pain of the cross, which by itself would have been physically unbearable. As He was dying, He cried out to God in heaven, “Why have you forsaken me?” 

Throughout His life, Jesus was acutely aware that His true home was not on earth. He gave up His first home, next to His Father, to come here, and there would be no true replacement home for Him here (Philippians 2). All of the possible homes were temporary shelters at best. And that is the most piercing homelessness He suffered. He was God-man, divine in human skin. The Bible describes becoming a Christian in ways that connect to the journey of Jesus, who is the First in all things (Colossians 1:15-18) and who is the One we follow. 

Paul explains the mantle of homelessness Christians bear when they choose to follow Christ: “For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened – not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life […] If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:4, 17, ESV). 

Peter understood well what it was to give up earthly homes to pursue Christ. He sees the exchange – what we gain through this loss – as well as the witness of this sacrifice, its potential to draw others to Christ. This is part of the fruit of homelessness. He writes, “As you come to Him, the living Stone – rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to Him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ […] But you are a chosen people. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles…to live such good lives among the pagans [that] they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us […] for it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God…when [Jesus] suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly…For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9-12, 19, 23, 25, ESV).

The people of God are a new home on earth for Christians who give up their homes here to follow the way of Jesus. Are the people of God - aka the church - a perfect home? No, the house is still tainted by sin. And even the strongest church community will be unable to shield us entirely from the effects of our choice to follow a Savior who told His people they should expect to suffer the hatred of the world just as He did (John 15:18). Homelessness is painful. It is the sharp and knee-bending pain of loss, rejection, and betrayal; it leaves wounds that can still ache years later, tender and vulnerable places.

But we can suffer with the joy of knowing we are following in the footsteps of Jesus (Acts 5:41) and that each step on earth is a step toward our true Home with the Shepherd who is the Overseer of our souls, where we will be fully clothed in the eternal life that is our inheritance in Christ – when what is mortal is swallowed up by LIFE.