Home for Christmas
Home for the Holidays or Home for Christmas are two of those phrases that you hear a lot during this time of year. It’s in the songs played on the radio and played in the stores while we shop. It’s talked about in commercials. Television shows and movies bombard us with images of everyone being gathered around a warm glowing fireplace, laughing and telling stories, maybe even singing the occasional Christmas carol.Holiday cards paint a warm colorful picture for us of that magical nativity scene. Curious shepherds and sheep are gathered around awestruck Mary and Joseph as everyone tries to catch a glimpse of where that warm radiant light is coming from, everyone is trying to catch a glimpse of baby Jesus lying peacefully in the manger. A stable has never looked so cozy or so much like home as it does on the front of a greeting card. Home for Christmas was even on the Christmas Eve invitations we sent out. It seems like everywhere we turn people are talking about being home for the holidays.
All this talk about being home for the Holidays raises the question, where exactly is home? Where is home? For some people the answer to that question is really simple. But I can tell you that as a child of two Army officers, that question was a difficult one for me to answer. Is that the place I currently live? Is the place where I was born? Is it where my family lives even if I’ve never lived there? For awhile I would list all the places we had lived … but then the list started to get too long. So instead, when I was asked where I was from, I took to saying, “I’m from the US Army.” We even had little plaques in our house that said, “Home is where the Army sends us.” Or “Home is where the heart is.”
This time of year there is so much talk about being home for Christmas, but where exactly is home? If home is simply where you live, or where you’re from, then none of the people in the original Christmas story were home on the first Christmas. All of the people we read about in Luke’s account of the Christmas story are away from home that night. While most of us this season travel towards the comfort and familiarity of home for the holidays, the people in the Christmas story were traveling away from the known towards the new and uncomfortable.
Mary and Joseph were literally half way across the country from their home. Luke tells us that Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken. That meant that everyone had to go to their ancestral town of origin to be counted. So even though Mary was very far along in her pregnancy, Mary and Joseph both had to leave their home to go to Bethlehem. Only God knows how difficult and tiring that journey must have been for her. It must have been difficult for Joseph too, worrying about how he would care for Mary on such a journey, or wondering where they would sleep with all the inns filled. That first Christmas, Mary and Joseph were far from the comforts of their own house.
The shepherds were in the fields, their familiar realm, tending their sheep like any other night. When an angel appears proclaiming the good news of the birth of a savior, the shepherds are propelled from their comfortable and familiar territory into the unknown as they search for the messiah. Luke tells us that the shepherds hurry off towards Bethlehem and they find Mary and Joseph and the baby just the way the angel had described. That night the news of the birth of Christ sent the shepherds on a journey away from the familiar realm of the field to seek out strangers they did not know.
Even, Jesus, the little child that all this fuss is about, even Jesus left his place with the father and has gone to the little town of Bethlehem to be with us. Jesus is Emmanuel, the name itself means God with us. What an incredible thing. The creator of heaven and earth, the one who formed each of us in the womb, is himself formed in the womb of Mary. The one who breathed life into each one of us, the one who is himself the breath of life now depends on normal human breaths for his own life. The one who formed the mountains and carved out the valleys, the one through whom all things were created humbles himself and takes on the form of his creation. What an incredible thing, that God would give up such power and prestige and would become one of us, to be God WITH US! Jesus leaves his home with God, to live with us in this world.
None of the people in the Christmas story were at home that night. Each of them in their own way were far from home, far from the places that were comfortable and familiar, far from the places where they belong. They’re not with the people they would have chosen to be with. Instead they’re with a group of strangers, people they don’t even know and that they have little in common with. Not exactly the picture portrayed on most greeting cards.
And yet maybe that greeting card picture of being home in a stable really isn’t that far off. All the people in the Christmas story end up gathered around the baby Jesus. The really ironic part of the story is that they have journey away from the known and the comfortable and ended up in the place where they belong. It doesn’t seem that unusual to us because it’s such a familiar image but the group gathered around the manager that night was a really eclectic group. Who would have thought this group of strangers, from such very different backgrounds would all find their belonging in the same place. And yet they do.
In this tiny stable, in a strange and far off land, is the child who is home to us all. It is in this child, in Jesus, that each of us finds our belonging. It is in relationship with God that we come to know who we are and whose we are. It is in relationship with Jesus that we come to understand what it means to be loved and accepted.
Whether we’re the rough and tumble, blue collar working shepherd who’s looked down upon by society or the proper and distinguished wise man who’s respected by kings and commoners alike, we belong with God. Whether we’re the young and pensive Mary, quick to agree with God’s plan or the righteous and reserved Joseph wondering what the right thing to do is, we are home when we’re with Jesus. Whether we’re awestruck Christians or curious people wondering what this good new the angels proclaim is all about, we all find our belonging in God.
That’s part of the miracle of the Christmas story. Jesus gives up everything to be human, to be God WITH US. It is in this small child, far from home, that we all find our true home. As we gather together around Jesus, with people from all different walks of life, we find that this rag-tag group of people has been transformed into a community, into the community with Christ at its center. That’s really what the church is intended to be, it’s intended to be the community that gathers around Jesus Christ, the community that realizes it’s left behind all that’s familiar and comfortable and yet has found its belonging in Jesus.
If you are wondering who you are or where you belong, come home for Christmas. If you’re far from where you grew up or far from family and loved ones, come home and be a part of this community, a community that gathers around Christ. God goes to incredible lengths, even becoming human, in order to invite us home tonight. Come home for Christmas. Come home.
Amen.
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