Sarah’s Journey
Welcome Home.
Two words. Three syllables. And more meaning than one could ever imagine.
Take Sarah, for example. She traveled to China to adopt her daughter—multiple flights, time zones blurring together. Sarah and her mother, two generations flying halfway around the world, already weary yet wired with anticipation.
And then the moment arrived.
In that room at the orphanage, a woman placed the little girl in Sarah’s arms. She was maybe two years old. Small, uncertain.
But then something happened that Sarah will never forget: The little girl let out this big sigh—like she’d been holding her breath for months—and nuzzled into Sarah’s neck. Just settled there.
The journey home was exhausting. Multiple stops, long delays. By the time they were on the final leg—Atlanta to Richmond—everyone was running on fumes.
When the plane rolled to the gate, the pilot came on the intercom:
“Welcome to Richmond.”
Then he paused.
“It’s been my privilege to bring a special little lady to her new home. Welcome home.”
When they disembarked, about forty friends were waiting—they’d waited through all the flight delays to welcome them. The little girl, so greatly anticipated, tolerated being passed around for a bit, but when she’d had enough, she let out a holler and reached for Sarah.
Sarah’s insides smiled.
Because in that moment, she knew: her daughter knew who she was.
But coming home wasn’t just that one beautiful moment. The little girl screamed—car seats, diaper changes, injections. Everything in those early weeks was about navigation—figuring out together what worked, what this new family would look like.
And Sarah’s mother? A widow, she never slept at her own house again. She wanted to be with her daughter and granddaughter every minute. And Sarah’s home became her home. When Sarah went to work, her mother watched over every breath that little girl took. The second she would stir from a nap, Sarah’s mother would pick her up and hold her for the rest of the afternoon.
Three generations, learning to be family. Not perfectly. Not always smoothly. But with practice.
Home wasn’t just a place they returned to. It was being created—in the orphanage when that little girl sighed into Sarah’s neck, at the Richmond airport when she reached for Sarah through the crowd, in those exhausting early weeks of navigation, in Sarah’s mother’s decision to move into the spare room.
Home was being created through practice.
That’s the kind of homecoming I want to talk about today.
Homecoming Is Complicated
But here’s what I’ve been thinking about—homecoming is more complicated than we sometimes imagine. It’s not always about returning to what was. Sometimes it’s about discovering what’s becoming.
Think about homecomings in your own life. The soldier returning from deployment—not just to the place they left, but to relationships that have changed, to a person they’ve become through experiences their loved ones didn’t share. There’s joy, yes, but also the complex work of re-entry, of learning to belong again.
The truth is—it’s really not that easy to come home.
The questions I want to ponder with you this morning are these:
Who are we now?
Who are we becoming?
And what is the opportunity in that?
The Prodigal Son: A Transformation Story
Jesus told a story about homecoming that everyone thinks they know. A young man demands his inheritance, leaves home, squanders everything, and comes crawling back. His father welcomes him with open arms. The older brother gets angry. We’ve heard it so many times.
But what if this isn’t just a story about forgiveness? What if it’s about transformation—about who we all become through the long journey of living?
The son who returns isn’t the same person who left. He’s been changed by distance, by failure, by hunger, by the long walk home rehearsing his speech. He thinks he knows what he’s asking for—just to be a servant, just to survive. But the father doesn’t even let him finish his carefully prepared words.
Instead, there’s the robe, the ring, the sandals, the feast. The son returns expecting crumbs—just let me be a servant, just let me survive. But the father’s response is “exceedingly abundantly above” anything the son dared imagine.
Paul captures this same divine mathematics in Ephesians: God “is able to accomplish exceedingly abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
Both passages—Ephesians and Luke’s gospel—reveal the same truth: God’s vision for our lives, our relationships, our community is always bigger than our own small dreams of what’s possible.
And here’s what we often miss—the father has been transformed, too. This isn’t the same man who watched his son disappear over the horizon. He’s been changed by loss, by waiting, by the daily choice to keep watching the road. When he runs toward his returning son, he’s not just offering forgiveness—he’s revealing who he has become through this journey.
Even the older brother is being invited into transformation. The story doesn’t end with his anger; it ends with his father’s invitation to discover what it might mean to be part of a family that celebrates grace.
None of them are who they were when the story began.
God Isn’t Done With Any of Us
This is the hope-filled truth that changes everything: God isn’t done with any of us.
The middle schooler struggling to fit in, wondering if they’ll ever find their place—God’s power is at work in them, preparing something “exceeding abundantly above” what they can imagine about their own worth and belonging.
The new parents, exhausted and uncertain, discovering depths of love and fear they never knew existed—they’re not failing when they don’t have all the answers; they’re becoming.
The 89-year-old widower, after 70 years of marriage, figuring out things for the first time—grocery shopping, cooking for one, navigating loneliness. At 89! Still becoming someone new, still discovering capacities he didn’t know he had.
God’s mathematics don’t follow our timelines. There is always more.
Twenty years ago, I was convinced God must be done with me, that I had become all that God had planned. But what I discovered over time is that there is so much more to each of us than we could ever imagine. New ideas, fresh understandings, different perspectives—life keeps revealing more of who God dreams us to be.
Why This Matters
But why does this matter? Why does it make a difference to believe that transformation never stops?
Because when we’re committed to the idea that people are fixed—that “this is just how they are”—we have only two choices: accept what we don’t like or walk away. But when we understand that becoming never stops—suddenly there’s a third option: staying open.
I think about a colleague who left her job—a job she loved—because she couldn’t relate to a new boss. And I wonder—what if she had trusted that God does things with time? That people change, that we change, that new perspectives can emerge from difficult transitions?
Our first read on people and situations isn’t always our final read. Sometimes what looks like an ending is actually a beginning. Sometimes what feels like loss is making space for something we couldn’t have imagined.
The 93-Year-Old Photographer
A few weeks ago a woman stopped by my office. 93 years old—sharp, energetic, eyes bright with excitement. She wanted to show me her latest photography project.
She didn’t pick up a camera until she was in her eighties. Her eighties. And now, in her nineties, she’s creating work that brings her profound joy. She’s contributing in meaningful ways, seeing the world through new eyes, discovering things about herself she didn’t even know until now.
Before leaving, she said, “Doing this makes me so happy. I don’t want to simply exist. I want to live.”
Ninety-three years old, and still becoming. Still discovering. Still choosing life over existence.
That’s what transformation looks like. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just a woman in her nineties with a camera, choosing to live.
Lynda Van Devanter
But becoming isn’t always that joyful. Sometimes it’s harder—for the person becoming and for those who love them.
Consider Lynda Van Devanter. She was twenty-one years old when she arrived in Vietnam as a nurse. Twenty-one. Fresh out of nursing school, idealistic, believing she was prepared for what she’d face. She wasn’t.
She spent a year in places with names like Pleiku and Qui Nhon. She held nineteen-year-olds as they died. She made impossible decisions about who got treatment first when there weren’t enough doctors, enough supplies, enough time. She saw things no one should see.
When she came home, her family threw her a welcome-home party. They wanted to hear about her “adventure.” They kept saying, “You must be so glad to be home, to get back to normal.”
But there was no normal to get back to.
At night, she had nightmares—the kind where you wake up not sure where you are, your heart pounding. During the day, sudden noises made her jump. She couldn’t explain what she’d witnessed, couldn’t find words for it. And her family—they wanted their daughter back. The girl who’d left. The one with plans to work at the local hospital, maybe get married, and settle down.
For years, there was this gap between them. Van Devanter felt unseen. Her family felt like they’d lost their daughter to something they couldn’t reach.
It took decades. Decades. For both sides to discover something beautiful.
They didn’t need to recover who she used to be. They needed to learn to love who she was becoming.
Van Devanter eventually found her voice as an advocate for veterans. She wrote a book—Home Before Morning—that told the truth about what nurses experienced in Vietnam. She testified before Congress. She helped create the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. She became someone who could bear witness not just to suffering, but to the strength it takes to survive and speak truth.
And her family? They learned to see her not as someone broken by war, but as someone transformed by it. Someone whose compassion had been deepened, whose courage had been tested and proven, whose life had meaning precisely because of what she’d endured and how she’d chosen to respond.
The transformation happened on both sides. And it took time—years and years of time.
The kind of time that teaches us that homecoming isn’t always immediate. Sometimes it’s a long, patient practice of learning to see each other freshly. This is how transformation theology plays out in real life—not in moments, but over the long arc of years, through the patient work of learning to see each other freshly, again and again.
Oswald Chambers said it this way: “Beware of looking back at what you once were, when God wants you to become something you’ve never been.”
This is the profound hope of transformation—that who we’re becoming can be more powerful than the record of who we’ve been.
But it requires courage to become. Courage to become someone new, and courage to see others freshly when they’re trying to change.
Offering Each Other a Fresh Perspective
What if we could offer each other the gift of a fresh perspective?
In our families, what if we could resist the comfortable shorthand of “I know who you are” and instead stay open to surprise? What if we could let people grow beyond the boxes we’ve put them in?
And what if the church—this church—could become a place where people don’t have to stay frozen in old versions of themselves?
Practice: Henry’s Story
The great dancer Martha Graham understood something profound: “We learn by practice… Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.”
I’ve been watching Henry practice.
Henry has always been someone with answers. Good answers, usually. If you have a problem, Henry can tell you how to solve it. If you’re uncertain, Henry knows the way forward. It’s who he’s been for as long as I’ve known him.
But lately, I’ve noticed something different. Someone will bring up a struggle or a question, and Henry will pause. And instead of jumping in with the solution, he’ll ask: “What do you think?”
And then—this is the remarkable part—he listens.
It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Four words and some silence. But for Henry, it’s a completely different way of showing up. He’s practicing being the person who makes space instead of filling it. Practicing trust that others have wisdom worth hearing. Practicing a new way of connecting.
Some days you can see him holding back the answer he wants to give. But he’s practicing.
That’s what transformation looks like in real time.
What Are You Practicing?
What are you practicing? Many of us practice getting frustrated, practice noticing how we’ve been wronged. But what if we practiced differently? Practiced being the connector when others want connection, practiced offering trust when others long to be trusted?
I know this isn’t easy. When we begin to practice new behaviors like trust, respect, and connection, people are sometimes suspicious. “What’s going on? What are you up to?” It feels like they don’t believe us.
It takes time and practice. Time and practice. Becoming who God is calling us to be takes a lifetime.
That’s why we need to practice together. Sometimes when I’m talking with someone who wants to do things differently, I invite them to practice with me. Practice saying what they really want to say. Practice responding in a different manner. And to keep it simple.
What if the church became that kind of place—where we can practice transformation together? Where “let’s practice this” becomes as common as “let’s pray about this”?
This is how we learn the rhythm of community. Not through perfection, but through practice. The practice of welcome. The practice of seeing each other freshly. The practice of believing that transformation is still possible—in ourselves, in others, in our communities.
Some days we’ll get it right. Some days we’ll slip back into old patterns. But we keep practicing, keep choosing the vision of what’s possible, keep embodying the faith that God’s power working in us can accomplish “exceedingly abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
Sarah’s Daughter Now
Sarah’s daughter is twenty-seven now. She could carry on a conversation with you in Latin if you want to give it a whirl. She loves modern dance and going to the beach. She has a college degree and is now a doctor of physical therapy.
She freely says that home is here, that Sarah is mom. But she also occasionally ponders what she would have been doing if she hadn’t left China.
Sarah told me, “That part will always be evolving for both of us as long as we live.”
That’s it! Isn’t it? Always evolving. Always becoming. Even homecoming itself is not a fixed destination but an ongoing practice—learning to hold both the joy of belonging and the complexity of what might have been, the gratitude for what is and the wondering about what could have been different.
That’s the invitation of homecoming. Not just to return, but to participate in the ongoing creation of beloved community. To keep becoming, together. To let the questions remain questions while we practice love in the present tense.
Closing
Who are we now? Who are we becoming?
We are God’s children, still in the process of becoming all that God dreams for us. We are a community with the opportunity to practice seeing each other with fresh eyes, honoring who we’ve been while staying courageous about who we’re becoming. We are people practicing the art of love, forgiveness, and radical hospitality.
In this place, on this day, you are welcomed home—not because of what you’ve accomplished or how far you’ve traveled or how much you’ve figured out, but because you belong here.
And because God’s power working in you can accomplish exceedingly, abundantly far more than you can ask or imagine.
Welcome home. Your becoming is just beginning.
Preached at Bon Air United Methodist Church
October 12, 2025
Homecoming Sunday
Florence Brooks 