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September 4, 2025

From Pastor Joseph Wamack

My parents and us 3 kids moved into the house I call home in 1963, right after JFK was assassinated. We moved in early December 1963. They paid $14,500 for the 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 phone, no AC, and 1 car detached garage home. The house payment was $75! Can you believe it? But it was home-Columbus, Ohio (Go Bucks!).

It was in this home that I first saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. It was in this home that I experienced sports, my excellent schools, made good friends and enjoyed constant biking through the neighborhood. It was in this home that I made my two best friends, Joh and Korby, who are both still my oldest friends for over 60 years.

It was in this home that my parents divorced. It was in this home I graduated from high school and then at the age of 18 decided I needed to get out, see the world and establish my own home.

It was in this home that my mom remarried, and my stepdad Harold moved in with his two daughters. When Vonnie and I married, this was the home that we always had a place to visit. My boy slept in the same room I slept in as a boy.

When my mom was sick and dying, she slept in a hospital bed on the first floor of this home because she couldn’t climb the stairs to the bedrooms. When she died in the hospital in 2003, when we took Harold home that night, the first thing he wanted to do was to take apart my mom’s hospital bed and put her oxygen tanks over near the front door for pickup. He wanted it to be a home again and I understood. Now it became Harold’s home, (but still mine in my heart). When he sold it in 2006 and moved closer to his daughters, I felt like I was a man without a home-for real. It had been 43 years.

Even though I have been married for over 42 years and have had many different homes with Vonnie and our two sons, that house in Columbus, Ohio, will always hold a place in my heart called HOME.

It wasn’t just the three bedrooms, or the one-car garage. It wasn’t even my room, which I had painted yellow and black with burlap curtains. It wasn’t the 4 walls and the paint. It was the feelings, the experiences, the security of having a HOME, of being a part of something-family. The security of saying “this is where I am from and is part of who I am.”

Tomorrow, we begin our Pentecost 2025 series, which we are calling HOME. Home is a place to be from and a place to which you hopefully can return. Home is a place where you are welcome and loved. Home is a place where identity is formed, and progress and growth is encouraged and applauded.

I want MAC to be a home for you. In my elevated, idealistic, happy mind, MAC is a home where all are welcomed and can gather. Where Jesus is King, where sinners are called and feel safe to gather, where the Bible is opened, where the Spirit is called upon and where the future is looked upon with hope and promise. We have this hope!

No wonder Jesus said, “In my father’s HOUSE are many mansions (dwelling places, rooms). I'm going to prepare a place for you.” Jesus is preparing a final, never-ending HOME for us! That is the best news of all. Please join us and journey with us as we look at what it means to have a HOME.