If you go into a busy, crowded place
this time of the year, you are likely to hear one word buzzing through the air:
home. People asking each other, “Are you going home for Christmas?” “Will you
be home for the holidays?” “Are your kids all coming home?”
Home. Home. Home. The word seems to be
everywhere. Everyone talking about home.
Every year at this time, we think
about home, we want to be home. We associate home with Christmas.
Yet, in a time when our ability to
travel anywhere is severely hindered by a pandemic, going home is hard. In a
time when gathering with others is subject, always, to our best understanding
of a changing situation, changing rules, tests and vaccinations; when our
efforts to gather together and be home are fraught with anxiety on top of all
the usual emotions; we ask ourselves what does it mean to be at home?
We have learned to think of home,
being with our family, in different ways. We do facetime and skype calls so we
can see one another, we hold zoom meetings with our kids so we can, in some
manner, be all together.
We have stood outside windows, looking
at our loved ones through the glass. Or drive-by gatherings, waving and blowing
kisses through the car window.
Still, we long for home, whatever and
whoever that means for us. We long for the places where we know everybody and
are known by everybody. We long for the familiarity and comfort, the shared
history. As Dorothy said, there is no place like home. This has always been
true.
I am sure Mary thought so, as she
struggled to get her body into a comfortable position on the floor of a stable.
I know she would have preferred to be at home to deliver her firstborn child – surrounded
by the women who knew and loved her and could midwife her and her child to
safety. Maybe Mary looked at Joseph with tears filling her eyes and said, “I
just want to go home.”
Home for Christmas.
Everyone longs for home, especially at
Christmas. And when we think of home, we may be thinking of a time and place
that was golden in our lives, with the people who have been dear to us, at a
time that was happy for us. In some sense, home is not someplace we can return
to, because it is a memory.
Still, we long for home. Home may be
something your heart yearns for your whole life long.
And as I was writing these thoughts
down, the song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” began playing on the radio.
But tonight we hear these words: “In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God – and the Word was God.” Christ, the Word; his true
home was with God, for, as the gospel says, he was God.
He came down to earth, took on bone
and flesh and blood and became truly human. He gave up all the comfort and
security of home to be with us, to become one of us. God let him go – God’s
beloved Son – and gave him to us. They were separated one from another, severed
from each other, all for the sake of the world God loves. Father and Son, both
gave up the joy, the delight, of being together, so that the world might know
him.
The Word became flesh and lived among
us, so that he might become light for all of us. He gave up his home, became
homeless in the world for the sake of the world. He came to a place that was
not his home, a place where he was unknown; he came to us that we might know
him, full of grace and truth. And, perhaps, in a way, to become our home.
Sometimes we have to rethink the
notion of home. Sometimes a pandemic comes along and forces us to make
adjustments for the sake of love and life. Sometimes it becomes necessary to
sacrifice something for the sake of something truly good.
Our Lord Jesus was not home for
Christmas. But in another sense, he carried pieces of home with him here – the
knowing, the caring, the loving. He carried “home” in his body, to bring a
little bit of that home to us.
To use a phrase that has becoming
familiar to us this Advent season, he became a house for the holy here on earth. Inviting each one of us to
abide with him.
May you have the blessings of home
this season, wherever you are.
May you enter into the presence of the
Christ child, God with us, knowing him in his grace and truth.
May you abide in a house for the holy,
and become, in yourself, a house for the holy, making room for hope, peace, joy
and love.
Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash
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