Homecoming Time
words and music by John McCutcheon
My Mother, she raised me gentle
And my Father, he raised me right
He said, "Listen to me, ain't nothing comes free
"For everything you want you'll have to fight"
I watched them break his body down
And I watched him slip away
No gallant last stand, just a good working hand
Dying slow, day by day
Out of high school and into a uniform
Just a kid in a rich man's war
But the jungle and the dope and the end of the rope
Till it didn't matter much anymore
And when I came home in '69
I was a million miles away
No high school bands, no welcoming hands
Everybody turned the other way
It was homecoming time in America
I knew how it was s'posed to be
For I'd sung that song my whole life long
'Bout the home of the brave and free
Won't it be right in America
When we find what we've always known
Won't it be right in America
Won't it be a sight in America
When we welcome the wanderer home
So I took me a job in the packing house
Like my Daddy did in his day
The cold and the knife and the quiet life
Helped to keep all my memories at bay
But then we struck in '85
And I felt that old wound bleed
The anger, the lies, and the turned away eyes
In the hour of our greatest need
It was homecoming time in America
I knew how it was s'posed to be
'Cause I'd sung that song my whole life long
About solidarity
Won't it be right in America
When we find what we've always known
Won't it be right in America
Won't it be a sight in America
When we welcome the wanderer home
Now some are born to an easy life
And others have to slave and fight
But when the sun goes down I guess both sides of town
Dream the same dream every night
That dream made me pick up a gun in the jungle
And that dream made me put it back down
It still keeps me sane when I'm bleeding again
Till that sweet day come around
When its homecoming time in America
And I know just how it’s gonna be
'Cause I've sung that song my whole life long
"This land’s made for you and for me"
And won't it be right in America
When we find what we've always known
Won't be right in America
When we all see the light in America
Just like day outta night in America
Oh, won't that be a sight in America
When we welcome the wanderer home
Austin MN, January 1987
©1999 by John McCutcheon. Published by Appalsongs (ASCAP).
On Friday we celebrated another anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We remind ourselves and the world that this is the land that we love. We will fight to defend it,
but as the song says, we still have a ways to go before everything is right in America. The candidates for president are campaigning about how they propose to fix what is wrong. There will be a lot of finger pointing and promising and eventually we will vote for or against one of them.
I hope we are capable of voting for values, rather than labels. I vote my faith.
But that doesn't mean that I am perfect either, or that someone else is the
sole problem. To some extent we are all part of the problem and all part
of the solution. We are part of the problem because even when we know what
is right, we seem powerless to do it; to change our lifestyle for instance,
which is incredibly destructive to the planet as well as our relationships
with the rest of the world. As the apostle Paul said, "I do not do what
I want, but I do the very thing I hate." He is making a confession on behalf
of all humankind, which he believes is so dominated by sin, (we could say
self interest) that left to our own efforts, there is no hope. But there
is hope.
It began long ago with the ancient story of the finding of a proper wife for
Isaac, which, though it grates against our modern sensibilities, is a story
of hope and of God's love and faithfulness. It is an ancient story from
when people believed that ethnic purity was essential to receiving God’s
promises, a bit like believing God will only bless Americans, but the story
of the patriarchs is only the beginning chapter of a long story of God trying
to raise us to be the people we were created to be. God took the initiative
to bless us, but people misunderstood God’s intentions time and again, and
just as often refused to do what they did understand, because they didn't’t
trust God's methods for bringing about the desired kingdom.
One reason we are so reluctant to trust in God is that God never uses power as
we do or would. We understand force and control and want to leave nothing
to chance or someone else’s choice. All you really have to do to understand
why that will never work is picture yourself being the recipient of the
force or being under the control or domination of another. Didn't we just
celebrate our Declaration of Independence? Do unto others…? We have a long
way to go to learn respect and cooperation.
Jesus said that his generation was like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' They didn’t want to follow John the Baptist, because his way was too demanding and he didn’t dance. He lived an ascetic lifestyle and his preaching was all doom and gloom, fire and brimstone. They didn’t want to follow Jesus because he would eat and drink with anyone. His religion, like a wedding banquet, was way too happy and far too undiscriminating, while we still want to be a chosen few.
How many times have your kids come to you and said, “I’m bored?” And no matter how many suggestions you may give, none of them are acceptable. Eventually we learn that they want to be bored and nothing will change that, because it is a hook that gets them attention and makes you responsible for their boredom. Yet rejecting your suggestions proclaims their independence.
Jesus promises that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. But we are too smart for him. We know an oxymoron when we hear it; an "easy yoke," a "light burden"? A yoke is what links the oxen to something that has to be pulled. A burden is a burden is a burden. We know that following Jesus will require something of us. But not so much, he seems to say. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest.” It may be better than you think.
Some of us have been ingrained with the notion of a harsh God, so ingrained that we have a hard time with the notion that God might be easy on us. God’s mercy is prevalent throughout the scriptures, but if God is going to be easy on us, God is going to be easy on others; but only if we are. Gentleness and forgiveness is not the way we expect things work in the world, unless we and other Christians practice this gentleness as a way of life. It is the way of Jesus.
There is an old Judaic folk tale from Eastern Europe, at the end of the 18th century. The village of Bobov was a small community of poor, Hasidic Jews. One day a couple came to the rabbi to ask him to pray for them. They had waited for years to have a child, but they believed the rabbi’s prayers were able to shake the very gates of heaven, so they were jubilant when he said that not only would he pray for them but also he would tell them a story.
He told them the story of three Hasidic Jews who had longed to spend the High Holy Days with a great rabbi in the city of Lublin. They had set out early one morning, without food and without money, determined to walk all the way to the Polish border. But after several days without eating, they grew weak with hunger.
"Listen," one of them said, "it's no great mitzvah that we should die of starvation on our way to see the rabbi of Lublin. We've got to do something!” Another suggested that one of them disguise himself as a rabbi. Then when they came to a village, people would welcome them and at least they'd be fed. None of them wanted to be the deceitful one, so reluctantly they drew straws and one became the pretend rabbi.
When they came to the next village, they went to the inn. The innkeeper, after seeing to their needs, said with great anguish, "Rabbi, you must pray for my son. He lies dying on his bed. The doctors say there is no hope. But the Holy One, blessed be His name, may at last respond to your prayers, now that you've come." The pretend "rabbi" looked at his companions who motioned him to go with the father. "Don't talk," they said, "Just go with him." Well, having begun pretending, he had to finish.
The next morning, hoping the rabbi’s prayer might yet be heard, the grateful father sent them away with the loan of a carriage and a matched pair of horses for the remainder of their trip. On they went to Lublin, where they spent the days in glorious study and prayer, under the spell of the rabbi of Lublin.
When they came back through the village, to return the carriage and horses, they saw the innkeeper running toward them, furiously waving his arms in the air. He ran to the pretend rabbi and embraced him, "Rabbi, thank you for your prayers! One hour after you left, my son got out of bed and has been perfectly well ever since! The doctors say it is impossible, but he lives!"
The other two Jews looked strangely at the pretend rabbi. “What happened,” they wanted to know. He told them he had gone to the bedside of the child and stood there in silence and then he started to think, "Master of the Universe, this man and his child ought not to be punished because they think I'm a rabbi. Just because I am nothing but a wretched pretender, O Master of the Universe, not because of me, but because of the man and his faith, can it hurt that the child be healed?" Apparently his prayer had been heard and answered.
Having finished telling his story to the couple, the rabbi said he would now pray for them as he had promised. He looked to heaven and prayed, "Master of the Universe, this man and his wife ought not to be punished because they think I'm a rabbi.”
The people of the village of Bobov swear that a year later the man and his wife brought their eight-day-old son to the rabbi for circumcision. 1
1. Legends of the Hasidim, by Jerome Mintz, University of Chicago Press, 1968