"Truth That Takes Us In"
#92-38Presented on The Lutheran Hour on May 18, 2025
By Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Lutheran Hour Speaker
Copyright 2025 Lutheran Hour Ministries
No bonus material MP3
Text: John 15:9
Silas was at home now, sitting in the chair, sleeping soundly, as if he'd always been there. Now Silas was the type that a family could not abide. All the family he had once, he had so irritated, so tested, mistreated, and squandered—they were done with him. Now Silas was dying. And he had nobody. Nobody except Warren and Mary. In truth, Mary and Warren would always take him in.
Silas, Warren and Mary are characters in a hundred-year-old poem by Robert Frost. The poem starts like this:
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down to the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. "Silas is back."
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
"When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I'll not have the fellow back," he said.
"I told him so last haying, didn't I?
If he left then, I said, that ended it.
What good is he? Who else will harbor him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there is no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won't have to beg and be beholden to."
"Shhh! Not so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said.
"I want him to! He'll have to, soon or late."
"He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.
When I came up ... I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too-
You needn't smile—I didn't recognize him—
I wasn't looking for him—and he's changed.
Wait till you see."
"Where did you say he'd been?"
"He didn't say. I dragged him to the house,
Gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
Tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do; he just kept nodding off."
"What did he say? Did he say anything?"
"But little."
"Anything? Mary, confess. He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me."
"Warren!"
"But did he? I just want to know."
"Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect."
Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light [the moonlight] poured softly in [Mary's] lap. She saw it
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with dew from the garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard some tenderness
That [worked] on him beside her in the night.
"Warren," she said, "he has come home to die;
You needn't be afraid that he'll leave you this time."
"Home," he mocked gently.
"Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
[Mary said] "I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."i
The Robert Frost poem that conversation comes from is titled "The Death of the Hired Man." The poem sounds out the words exchanged by a husband and a wife, Warren and Mary, as they are transformed by that light, represented by the moon, the light of unheard tenderness that speaks the truth. Truth that'll still take us in, even when we don't deserve it.
You and I need this sort of truth in our lives, don't we? We're all a bit like Silas, the hired man. We don't want to be tied down any more than Warren wants to take Silas back. And yet, like Mary, we're afraid—afraid of having nowhere to go, no one to take us in. Silas could stand for us all. He just wants to be free, to be a free spirit, to keep something he could say he earned, to keep his self-respect. He wants to believe that he's enough on his own, that he's an island, that he's all he needs. He doesn't need anybody, and he doesn't need a handout.
But now the truth's come home to roost. He's dying, and before the end of the poem, he's dead, with nothing in himself "to look backward to with pride," and nothing in himself "to look forward to with hope," as Mr. Frost says so well.
The truth is that Silas was contingent all along. He's always been at the mercy of others. He's always been dependent on others' good graces, just like the rest of us—tempted, like Warren, to believe that we've earned it, or, tempted, like Mary, to fear that no one will take us in. They are all of us. And we are them. That's what makes it poetic.
Robert Frost thought poetry offered us a "momentary stay against confusion,"ii a momentary place to stay, a momentary place to lay claim to, somewhere secure on this mud ball absurdly spinning through ever-expanding space. But the moment passes, and we're all like Silas. We've got no more claims, but only emptiness that needs grace, undeserved truth who will take us in.
Would you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is that Truth for us, for me, for you? If you've never read the story of Jesus, if you've never heard it, the poetry and prose of the Gospels, recorded in the Bible's New Testament, you really ought to. Jesus is unlike anybody you've ever met. Nobody would have invented this story. Nobody would have imagined these words. Jesus is too real, too substantial to be a fictional character some poet created. If there were someone else behind Jesus—Jesus, whose character and actions and insights into the human condition are so revealing, so illuminating and accurate—if there's someone behind Jesus, then we'd be compelled to worship that poet as God. Either way, the Gospels lead you to the conclusion that this Man Jesus is either of God, or God Himself. And Jesus, for His part, says it's both. Yes, there is Another that He has come from, God, the Father. And He has come to us, not only as God's Son, but as God's Word. God's Word of Truth who will still take us in.
When I listen to Jesus, when I let His words work on me, they do take me in, not just like a kind couple takes in an undeserving stray, but takes me in like poetry. When I abide in the words of Jesus, when I dwell on them, and return to them, and lodge in them, and let them lodge themselves in me, they take me in. They are more than poetry. They are the truth that poets aim for and long for, the source, the vine.
Listen to these words from the Gospel of John, [chapter] 15. Jesus spoke them to His disciples, to His followers, just a few hours before He would be crucified, crucified for claiming to be that Vine, that Source of all that makes everyone from poets to peasants come to life. Listen to the Word and let Him take you in.
He says to you, "I am the true Vine and My Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in Me that bears no fruit He removes. And every branch in Me that does bear fruit, He cleans, He prunes so that it would bear more fruit. Already you all are clean, because of the Word I've spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit on its own, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, and you are the branches. Everyone who abides in Me and I in them, will bear much fruit, because apart from Me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not abide in Me is thrown out like a [dead] branch and dries up. And such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you all bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commands, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commands and abide in His love. These things I have told you so that My joy would be in you and that your joy would be full. This is My command: love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this—that he lay down his life, [that he set down his life] for his friends. You are My friends when you do as I command you [when you love each other as I have loved you]. No longer do I call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. But I've called you friends because all that I've heard from My Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you would go and bear fruit, that your fruit would abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My Name, He would give to you. These things I command you so that you would love one another."
Jesus is the Truth who will still take you in. Can you say "Amen" to that? Some people only want truth. Other people just want to be taken in, without the truth. People who just want the truth, they want to know why. Why doesn't someone like Silas have a family? Why doesn't he have other people who will take him in? Why? Because he cares only about himself. Because you can't count on him. Because he's made his bed and now he's got to sleep in it. That's the truth. Actions have consequences. You reap what you sow. You cut yourself off from the vine, and you die. You might last a little while on your own. You might carry on with some of the power of the Source that gave you life, but it's a momentary stay. It might linger for 70 or 80 years, but eventually the truth will catch up to you, because you're a branch, not the vine. And you are created, not the Creator, that's why. That's the truth. And some people just want the truth, and they'll tell you why. Other people just want to be taken in without the truth. And they ask, why not? Why not take him in? He's dying anyway. And in the end, we're all like him. We've got no right to laugh. We all need a home. We need something we somehow haven't to deserve.
Some people just want to be taken in; others just want the truth. Jesus says you can't have one without the other. We need both. We need Him. Jesus is the Truth who will still take you in, not just to die like a hired man, but to live, like He lives, planted in God, in His Father's love. Some people wonder why, if God is love, why He doesn't just take everybody in? Why does there have to be hell at all? Why does anyone have to be cut off and thrown into the fire? It's because, abiding in Him is the condition for life. His love isn't conditional, His grace isn't conditional, but our life is, because the life that He gives isn't a transaction. It's organic. It's like a conversation; it's like a vine with many branches. It's like how Jesus lives, in His Father and with His Father. And His Father sent His Son to confront us with the Truth, the Truth who will take us in.
Jesus says to you, right now He says to you, "In My Father's house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would not have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also." That's why He came. And that's why He went. And that's why one day He will return, to take you in. Even if you're dead. Even if you're cut off. He will still take you back. He was lifted up on the cross to bring you back. He rose from the dead to bring you home. Jesus came to give you life, like a vine gives life to the branches. His life flows, not by the business rules of a transaction, but by the dynamics of a conversation.
Life comes from words exchanged, words from God, words from and for the people of God. Life comes through love—love spoken and shared, love preached and prayed, love imbibed and practiced. Love comes from God's Son setting down His life for us. Love abides when we set down our lives for others on the front porch, exchanging words in the moonlight, working on welcoming someone else who doesn't deserve it.
In the poem, Warren says with a tinge of bitterness, that "Home is a place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." But Mary gets the last word. She says home is "something you somehow haven't to deserve." In Jesus, that's the truth. That's the truest thing there is; that's the truth that will set you free, the Truth who loves to take you in.
There's another 100-year-old poem by Robert Frost. It's titled, "In the Home Stretch." And we could use it right about now to round out this picture of God's life and truth and love for us. We need something more to end on because Jesus takes us in, not just because we need a place to die in Him, but because He aims for us and longs for us to abide in Him, to make a home in Him, to give us joy that'll make us dance in Him.
This poem also is mostly a conversation, a conversation between a husband and a wife, set somewhere in New England. They're older now. They've been together a long time, Joe and his wife. They've set out to make a new home together. It was Joe's dream to move out into the country, to have his own vine, sit under his own fig tree, to be a farmer. And his wife, well, she's still got mixed feelings about it.
They found an old orchard, bought it, sold their house in the city, packed everything up. Some friends helped them move. It's evening now, at the end of their first day in the new house. Joe sees his wife staring out the kitchen window, asks her what she thinks of her new view. He's worried she's got regrets about the move. She tells him what she sees: rank weeds, a little stretch of field, and then woods that end it all. The view from the city may have changed, but it isn't new: years passing, seasons changing, dishes that pile up, and a dark wood that ends it all. It's all the same. Then again, maybe newness isn't in the circumstance, but in setting down your life to make a home for another.
It's late, and Joe's wife can tell he's getting loopy. She says, "Joe, you're tired."
Joe says, "I'm drunk-nonsensical tired out. It's a day's work to empty one house of all household goods and fill another with 'em 15 miles away; although you do no more than dump them down."
"Dumped down in paradise we are and happy," she says.
"It's all so much what I've always wanted, I can't believe it's what you wanted, too."
"Shouldn't you like to know?"
"I'd like to know if it is what you wanted, and then how much you wanted it for me."
"A troubled conscience! You don't want me to tell if I don't know."
"I don't want to find out what can't be known but who first said the word to come?"
"My dear, it's who first thought the thought. You're searching Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles."
"What is this?"
"This life? Our sitting here by lantern-light together amid the wreckage of a former home? No, this is no beginning."
"Then an end?"
"End is such a gloomy word."
"Is it too late to drag you out for just a good-night call on the old peach trees on the knoll to grope by starlight in the grass for a last peach the neighbors may not have taken as their right when the house wasn't lived in?"
"I've been looking. I doubt if they have left us many grapes."
"Before we set ourselves to right the house, the first thing in the morning, out we go, to go the round of apple, cherry, peach, pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook. All of a farm it is. I know this much [Joe]. I'm going to put you in your bed. But first I have to make you build it. Come, the light."
When there was no more lantern in the kitchen, the fire got out through crannies in the stove
and danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling, as much at home as if they'd always danced there.iii
Would you pray with me? Dear Father, Your Son told us that when we abide in Him and His words abide in us, we could ask You anything in His Name, and You would grant it. What should we ask for? We know that circumstances change. And even if they didn't, they'd never satisfy us on their own. So we ask for His joy. We ask for the will to do what He commands. We ask for a home that is always safe and ever new. We ask for love that stays fresh and fruit that abides, and joy—joy that'll make us dance. In Jesus' Name. Amen.
i Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man," in Complete Poems of Robert Frost, New York: Holt (1964), 49-55. Accessed on March 28, 2025 at https://ia802901.us.archive.org/18/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.199555/2015.199555.Complete-Poems-Of-Robert-Frost.pdf
ii Robert Frost, "The Figure a Poem Makes" in ibid., vi.
iii Robert Frost, "In the Home Stretch," in Mountain Interval, New York: Henry Holt (1916), 16-23.
Reflections for May 18, 2025
Title: Truth That Takes Us In
No reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
"A Mighty Fortress" arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"At the Lamb's High Feast" From O Lord, Open My Lips by the Children's Choirs of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Ft. Wayne, Indiana (© 1995 St. Paul's Lutheran Church)
"Crucifer" by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"At the Lamb's High Feast" From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
