HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - PART 1
A LONG WAY FROM HOME
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Job 1:6-22, 2:11-13
The Lord said to the Adversary, “Have you thought about my servant Job; surely there is no one like him on earth, a man who is honest, who is of absolute integrity, who reveres God and avoids evil?”
The Adversary answered the Lord, “Does Job revere God for nothing? Haven’t you fenced him in—his house and all he has—and blessed the work of his hands so that his possessions extend throughout the earth? But stretch out your hand and strike all he has. He will certainly curse you to your face.”
Job 1:8-11
Home for Christmas.
In 1944, Bing Crosby recorded the classic tune, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” for the troops overseas. The soldier in the song faces another long and traumatic Christmas season at war. The chorus ends with the line, “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” For many, the feeling of truly being home is something only found in dreams.
As Christians, we understand that sin has wrecked the home God designed and built for us in Eden. Yet we see reflections of Eden everywhere we look. Eden’s light flickers in the quiet warmth of a crackling fire on a cool winter night and radiates from the face of a newborn baby. Somewhere in the depth of our souls, we remember what home is supposed to be, though we have never actually been there. Like the soldiers overseas, we have spent so long struggling to survive in this war-torn world that a perfect home with God might feel more like a dream than reality. Sometimes it may seem as if God has given up on this world altogether.
We begin this Advent season in the first chapter of Job. At first glance, Job seems like the last book any of us would want to hear or read so close to Christmas. How can we get into the “Christmas Spirit” in the face of such extreme suffering and so many unanswerable questions? And yet in Job, we find ourselves in the same place we left God’s people last week, utterly lost in exile. Very few of us can personally identify with the degree of Job’s loss. For him, going home was not an option, even in his dreams. Job is indeed a long way from Eden, and if we’re honest, so are we.
Advent is a season of waiting in agony and wondering if God will ever show up.
Will a son of David ever sit on the throne again?
What does it look like to be home for Christmas when we live our lives in exile?
Will we ever get home?
What does it mean to call ourselves children of a God who came to dwell among us and yet had no place to lay his head? (Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58).
Advent stirs within us a longing for home, but something in us knows we are still a long way off. Like Job, we often feel lost, abandoned and alone. The only image we have of the home God created for us comes in fractured and fragmented memories and dreams of Eden. As we wait, may we never stop dreaming. More than that, may we work to make this dream of home a reality for all people.
Let us lament the brokenness and pain of our world and may our lament move us to compassion, to love, and to justice for all who suffer. In the end, our explanations will do little to ease the pain but acts of mercy and justice will help to bind up the wounds. Our best answers about God or the Bible will not get us any closer to home, but unconditional love will bring home a lot closer to us. We may indeed be a long way from Eden, but God is re-creating Eden in our midst and Jesus said it was a lot closer than it seems
Jesus wasn't born in a bubble of tinsel and shining lights. He came as a light into darkness, hope into despair, peace into chaos, joy into suffering and love to overcome the hatred and violence of the world, but to truly know Christ, we must first learn to sit with the reality of violence and suffering in our world. Like Job, we can’t go home just yet.