Christmas Eve 2021, Austwick
Chris Rea sings, “I’m driving home for Christmas; Oh, I can't wait to see those faces,” and crooners from Bing to Bublé sing “I'll be home for Christmas; You can plan on me. Please have snow and mistletoe And presents by the tree.” These may be sentimental songs, but they do give voice to something deeply engrained in us: about Christmas being a time for homecomings.
And when we hear Elvis singing “It’ll be a blue Christmas without you,” then that’s the same thing flipped over, about the profound sense of emptiness and loss felt by those for whom homecomings are not happening this year or may never be again. [1]
There’s always something special about coming home for those whose lives have led us away from that place which nurtured and formed us, where those people we’re closest to still live. A homecoming is a moment for renewing our deepest relationships, a time for resting within them and re-setting ourselves.
That’s one big reason why we value Christmas: as a fixed point in a turbulent year which offers us time for reviewing and renewing that which we most value in our lives. In this sense Christmas itself is a sort of homecoming.
Even those who spend it alone may feel this, as memories of Christmases past resurface to reinforce our sense of who we are and who we want to be. Those who always made us feel at home, though absent now in person, still exist in spirit, particularly at this special time of year. And whilst missing them deeply, we may sense their presence, something numinous and active in our very lives today.
You might consider Joseph and Mary’s trip to Bethlehem on that first Christmas as a homecoming, a family reunion. For whilst the couple lived 90 miles away in Nazareth, Joseph’s family came from Bethlehem. When the Roman governor called a census it was time to make plans to visit the folks back home. [2]
Our nativity plays tend to portray their trip as a last-minute event with the added trauma of Mary being just ‘about to pop’. But there’s nothing of that in the gospels; Luke’s account invites us to imagine that they went to Bethlehem well before her due date, and then, while they were there, Mary gave birth to her child. Plan ahead. That's what a sensible couple would do. Plan for a childbirth in the family home surrounded by supportive loved ones.
For, at the risk of ruining Christmas for those who like the pantomime part of the traditional story, with that series of innkeepers closing their doors on Joseph one by one, there probably wasn't an inn, not a Game Cock sort of inn, at all.
The word that Luke uses for 'inn' is the very same word he uses, at the end of Jesus' life, for the upper room, where they held the last supper. The upper room was the place where guests stayed in a family house. Joseph came from Bethlehem. He had lots of family there. So it's unlikely that he would have needed to stay in an inn or a hotel or a B&B. The couple probably stayed with some members of Joseph’s extended family.
It’s no big stretch to imagine that because the rest of the family were also returning to Bethlehem for the census, the regular guest quarters, in the upper room of the house, was full. So Joseph and Mary had to stay downstairs, in the family room, where they brought the animals in at night, to keep them warm and fed and protected. Which is why there was a manger. So that's where Mary gave birth. Not out back, in a shed, in the yard of a random pub, but in a family home, surrounded by her and Joseph's relatives.
So the first Christmas was a homecoming for Joseph and Mary. And contrary to so many other reports, Jesus was not born homeless, but in a warm and welcoming place, like where most babies are born.
Now, let’s do away with the idea that this family gathering would have been in any way perfect. No-one there wore a halo, just as none of our families do either. You can imagine in that rather crammed house all the usual Christmas tensions between siblings, in-laws, the attention-seeking loud ones and the quiet ones longing for a few minutes peace. Arguments over food. Kids running amok. The matriarchs competing over who would be Mary’s personal midwife when the moment came. But… nevertheless… they were family… Joseph’s family; probably just ordinary people, like you and me. Which is the point really, isn't it? God's son, born like any one of us. To a family, like any one of ours. In a house, which any of us might call our family home.
We all know that homecomings aren’t always easy. For some home is never an easy place, it may even be a dangerous place; for others it is where family demons must be faced over again. Our home lives also always play out before a larger backdrop. Matthew’s nativity story seems so contemporary, with its focus on Herod and the Magi inviting us to think of Mary and Joseph as political refugees fleeing from a ruler embarked on a genocidal mission. Jesus’ family struggled in just the same sorts of global upheavals as the storms which batter us in our day and time.
Similarly, Luke’s story has in its background the decision of the Roman ruler to call a census of all the people, causing a big upheaval in the land. The leader of the country ordering all the citizens to get home and stay there until he says they can go out again: does that sound in any way familiar? [3] But the positive energy in Luke’s story is in the domestic picture he paints, of the couple’s return to their home town, to a family gathering; of the holy birth assisted by everyone staying in that house and witnessed by the shepherds, those most deeply-rooted of local people, some of them likely to be Joseph’s cousins or school-friends.
Is it a comfort to think that Jesus empathises with us not only because he understands what it’s like to undergo upheavals and is well acquainted with the sorts of sufferings we know, but also because he appreciates from his own life, from his very birth, the deep and valued meanings of our homecomings? Do you struggle with your own experience of home whilst carrying the intuition that in Christ you can find your true home, wherever you’re placed, whatever your condition or circumstances? Though uprooted on this earth, do you find belonging in the dream landscape of your faith? [4]
Here, in this place of worship with its own resonances of home, at this fixed point in a turbulent year, may we each experience our own sort of homecoming; a time for reviewing and renewing that which we most value in our lives.
Note
[1] YouTube: Chris Rea, Driving Home For Christmas, Bing Crosby, I'll Be Home For Christmas, Michael Bublé, I'll Be Home For Christmas, Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas.
[2] The central (indented) section of this talk is a partial rewrite of Bob Hartman, Christmas - No donkey?! © Bob Hartman/engageworship.org.
[3] Topical lockdown reference…
[4] ‘And you hunger for the time / Time to heal, desire, time / And your earth moves beneath / Your own dream landscape’ U2, A Sort of Homecoming, from The Unforgettable Fire, 1984.
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