Coming home for Christmas is a big deal.
Back when I was in college, without a car, I would share a ride with anyone who was going to my home New Jersey from my school in Valparaiso Indiana and often would drive through the night for 13 hours straight. The terrain would change from flat corn fields to little hills, from straight roads to curvy ones. My mom and dad would give me such a tight hug when I arrived at the door. And compared to my little dorm room, their modest house looked huge. My favorite places to return to were the kitchen pantry stuffed with food, and the bathroom, gleaming clean, cleaner than any bathroom I had inhabited while at school. What I would find myself doing most of all is staring at my parents’ faces, knowing that my life was linked to theirs and how grateful I was to have loving parents, a home to return to, and that Christ in us would be given honor at Christmas.
Christmas can be described as a homecoming.
The story goes, while Mary and Joseph struggle to get a roof over their heads as Mary’s contractions are increasing in intensity, they take what they can get. Sharing space with cows and donkeys, in the teeming city of Bethlehem where everyone had to return home, in a very anxious time, the baby Jesus was born.
And about this birth, angels sing. Shepherds dance. Mary wonders.
Because in this unlikely birth in this unlikely stable in this unlikely town in this unlikely world, God made a home.
We sing and we dance. And we wonder about God, that God would care for us, for the unlikeliest of us, enough to become known in being born, growing up, knowing the ways of the world, anxiety, intensity, family, and home.
Prophets spoke of homecoming, bringing something new from the old and burdensome. Bring streams to the desert. Bringing sight to the blind. Bringing speech from those who cannot talk. It was the prayer of all, it is the prayer for everyone that God would stir up his power, and come to us, to save us, to claim us.
Jesus born as child fills the earth with hope and glory. Jesus born as a child makes the promises shimmer. Dorothy Bass says that fulfillment arrives in the form of a little baby. I love little babies at Christmas not only because they are so little, like the baby Jesus, but also because they are so physical; they are all mouth and eyes and thumbs and poop, and loving them includes being close to their sweet flesh. This is what God became at Christmas: human flesh, beloved and radiating love. (Receiving the Day pp 92-93)
This is the audacious claim of those who follow Christ from birth to death, from death to new life: that love is the ultimate power. God, who could seemingly summon fire and fanfare to get our attention, works at connecting with a very distractible and destructive world in this way: God offers love. God says “here I am,” in flesh and blood, close to single mothers and forgetful grandfathers, to lonely hearts and beloved children, to the famous and infamous. I am not far away, uninterested, or damning. I am here to invite you to the way of life and peace in Jesus Christ, who on my behalf seeks to offer forgiveness for wrongs, reconciliation for estrangement, and welcome for the outcast.
If you could touch a baby, if you could take in a parents’ welcome home, if you could imagine God close as the person sitting next to you right now, would you share love? Would you dare to hope? Would you in filling up on love in bread and wine, do the same for someone who is not here? That someone who is not here is also able to contain Christ, who was born, who lived on earth and died on a cross, who rose at Easter and who lives in those who tell the story and live the story.
In our caroling and caring, we dance, sing, wonder, and welcome God, home.
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
| CtK Home
| Back to Pastor's Page
|