Blue Christmas Sermon on Isaiah 40 and John 1. Proclaimed at Zion Spies Lutheran Church in Oley, PA.
From one perspective, the Bible is all about losing your home. It’s at the center of all its stories. A new home is built for all of God’s creation, but Adam and Eve get themselves kicked out. Abraham and Sarah place their trust in God and leave their home for a new land. The people beg to be rescued from slavery in Egypt, and when God rescues them, they spend the next forty years complaining that God made them leave their old home. And generations later, when they’re finally feeling settled, a foreign army shows up and carts the people away, forcing them to live as slaves in the land of Babylon.
The Bible records their reaction: Their weeping, their poems of lament, of despair. Countless writers go searching for answers–why did this happen to us? Lots of people offer explanations, but none of them is quite satisfying. Bad things happen—terrible, traumatic things— and there is nothing anyone can do. Our home is lost forever.
But someone stands up to speak, with a different message. A visionary, like the prophet Isaiah was long ago. He says there is a way home. A way straight through the desert. No having to go around the long way. No mountains will have to be climbed. No rough, rocky terrain to deal with. Just one smooth, easy path, with a guide at the front to show them the way, to keep them safe. And that guide is God himself.
This new Isaiah isn’t unrealistic. He knows about death, and loss, and pain. The grass withers. The flower fades. And like them, people die. But death has no power over God. You can rely on God, because his Word stands forever. And he will bring us home.
Christmas is all about losing your home. It’s a message hidden underneath the joy and celebration, but it is there nonetheless. As the story opens, Mary and Joseph are leaving their home, and not by choice. The government wants to know how many people there are—probably so it can figure out how much tax money it can get, how many soldiers it needs to keep the people oppressed, how everyone else can lose so that Rome can keep winning. So this woman, barely an adult and late in her third trimester of pregnancy, and her new, frightened husband who never asked for this baby, start the long journey to Bethlehem. Maybe her doctor said “Bed rest.” But her emperor said, “Get walking,” and we know whose instructions win out. So much for their home back in Nazareth.
So they arrive in Bethlehem, and there isn’t even a place to stay, to serve as a substitute home. She has to give birth in a stable, in a cave, and wrap her baby in whatever strips of dirty cloth she can find, and lay him in a cow’s food trough to sleep. It doesn’t sound like there was a lot of Christmas joy for the Holy Family, either.
But God bless this Holy Family! A man with the courage to defy the law and pretend an illegitimate child was his own. A woman who heard God’s crazy plan and said, “Here I am, God’s servant. My soul rejoices in him and makes him great.” A new family who chose to love despite the world’s pressures to choose fear instead. Soon they will lose their home again, running from the danger of King Herod’s jealousy. But they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. They will continue to rely on God, because his Word stands forever. And he will bring us home.
The story of our lives is often about losing our home. If it’s not the place, it’s the people, or the meaning, or the security. A spouse or a child dies, and everything at home reminds you that they are gone. That chair is empty now. That side of the bed. That piece of junk mail that arrives with their name on it. And not to make a comparison, but the same is true for pets, who our brain says should be less important than people, but our heart knows the love and the loss is real.
If a long illness has taken your loved one, you may suddenly find yourself with free time on your hands, time that used to be devoted to being a caregiver, and nothing to fill it with. The same is true for the loss of a job, or a move to a new community, or even retirement. What do I do with myself now? What purpose do I even have anymore?
There are even losses and grief that we experience for joyful reasons. After seven years of parish ministry, I left for graduate school, something I deeply desired. But leaving the 200 members of my congregations behind was deeply painful, for me and for them. The grief is good, maybe, but the grief is real. Something I know that Zion Spies understands well this year.
I am not going to offer you platitudes tonight, things like “Time heals all wounds” or “Faith in God will keep you safe” or even “Everything will be okay.” Because it won’t. When we lose our sense of home, our groundedness, it really is gone, and the pain can be severe. The grass really does wither. The flowers really do fade. The darkness really does surround us, and it is cold, and bitter, and impossible to see what is ahead.
The darkness is real, but a light does shine in the darkness. And although it keeps trying, the darkness cannot put out the light. The light is full of power, and grace, and truth. It is a light that is honest about all this loss, from a God who left his home in heaven to be homeless alongside the one he loves most, becoming flesh to share your loss so you don’t need to bear it alone. From a God who wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and whose disciples all abandoned him at the end. From a God who experienced death first-hand, and then rose again to prove for us that darkness cannot win. It can never win. Oh yes, the darkness is real, and we may dwell in the darkness, but we belong to the light.
Your grief is real this season. But you aren’t suffering it alone. God in Jesus Christ, the Immanuel, is beside you, weeping with you, drawing a community of love around you, and in him is strength. And you can rely on this strength. You can rely on God, because his Light and his Word stand forever. And he will bring you home. Amen.