I'll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents by the tree
Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
There’s no place like HOME. Especially on Christmas Eve, and especially Christmas Eve 2020, where so many folks are unable to reunite with loved ones because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ll be HOME for Christmas, if only in my dreams. Perhaps these words ring truer than ever this year. For the truth is, we all yearn for the dream of coming HOME.
Where is HOME for you? Where does the love light gleam? When I was a little boy, my HOME for Christmas was with my father, mother, and sister in our cozy little house in Stone Mountain, Georgia. We may not have had snow, but we definitely had mistletoe and presents by the tree, and you could always count on dad to play all the Bing Crosby Christmas classics on his 1970s turntable.
Today I am a grown man with a family of my own, and the HOME of my childhood is all but a distant dream, a memory where joy and love abide in my heart. Yet over the past few years, I’ve been given a new dream of HOME. One where my house today is filled with the laughter of my children, the warmth of my wife’s embrace, and the chaos of all our fury babies, including a brand new kitten skilled at climbing Christmas trees!
As the years roll on and our lives transition, so does our dream of HOME. Yet the longing in our hearts for a real place to rest never ceases. This was especially true for the Israelites, whom for so many decades spent their lives as sojourners, wandering around the wilderness, waiting on God to deliver them HOME. Our Old Testament passage this morning from the Second Book of Samuel is a perfect example. This particular piece of scripture is known as the Dravidic covenant, God’s promise to David to make for him a HOME:
"The Lord declares to you (David) that he will make you a house. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever."
(2 Samuel 7:16)
This prophecy was partly fulfilled by David’s son, Solomon, who built for his people a great kingdom and a holy temple where the ark of the covenant could safely rest. But the transitions and changes of life eventually came, and as Israel’s devotion to God waned, so did their dream of HOME. Upon the arrival of the New Testament era, David’s kingdom is destroyed, God’s temple reduced to rubble, the ark stolen, and the people Israel scattered into slavery and exile, like lost sheep without a shepherd.
Yet there stood tall and true, the Dravidic Covenant and the promise God made to his people:
"And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, I will give them rest." 2 Samuel 7:10).
Now God’s WORD transcends space and time, and prophecy has a funny way of expressing itself. For here in the Dravidic Covenant we find God’s promise of building a HOME for Israel, planting them in safety, partially fulfilled through the reign of David’s son Solomon. But then God’s WORD does something unexpected. The WORD lingers for almost a thousand years before it explodes back onto the scene in today’s Gospel lesson.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:26-33).
Can you see what God is doing? His promise to David and his descendants explodes back onto the scene, this time in the context of a new kind of covenant. Gabriel’s herald announces the news of Immanuel, the God who is with us, JESUS, the God who saves. The dream of HOME delayed for so many ages is about to manifest. Can you hear it?
This is the incarnation, the WORD made flesh, JESUS, the God who saves his people from
vanishing into the dark emptiness of death. In Jesus, God has tabernacled, or quite literally as that word suggests, built his HOME among us. The very WORD that promised safety and security for God’s people so long ago has come down to us. HOME has manifested in the miracle of the Christ Child.
Let’s listen again to the words of the angel Gabriel when announcing the arrival of Jesus:
"He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give to him the throne of his ancestor David, and his kingdom shall have no end” (vs. 32).
On that first Christmas morning, away in a manger, on the fringes of society, we begin to
understand our dream of HOME in Jesus. In this tiny infant, the WORD that created and sustains the cosmos has come down to explain to us the love of his Father: that we are included in his life and drawn up into eternity, safe and secured in his arms of everlasting love.
Yet let us remember that the word advent means coming both in a past and future tense. The dream of HOME has already manifest in the miracle of the incarnation of Jesus, but the full expression of this HOME will be made known to us all in his second coming, the return of the King. This is the now but the not yet of scripture. Therefore we declare in the Great Thanksgiving, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. For it was Christ himself who said to his disciples as written in John’s Gospel:
"In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also"
(John 14:2-3).
And again Christ says,
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." (John 14:7-9)
Resurrection in Jesus is the ultimate dream of HOME fulfilled. Therefore, we wait patiently and with eager hearts filled with the hope of the Holy Spirit for Christ to come again and to bring us HOME forever.
As I’m writing this sermon, I hear outside the noise of the busy construction of fifteen new homes on my street. Although these houses seem to go up quickly, I wonder how many different families will call them HOME in the years and decades to come. I wonder how much love and loss and laughter will be shared within their walls before they vanish from the earth.
I’ll be HOME for Christmas, if only in my dreams. Perhaps these words ring truer than ever this year. For the truth is, we all yearn for the dream of coming HOME.
I spend a lot of time in the car riding line at my children’s school. This past week while waiting patiently in line for the coming of my kids, I sat in my Jeep wondering about the Dravidic Covenant expressed in the herald of the Christ Child. As I sat there deep in contemplation, I began to see all of the children running out to greet their parents. It seemed to me that with each tender embrace, these children were lit from within by a light and a joy that I could not fully comprehend.
As I stepped out of my Jeep, I saw my own masked children running towards me with their eyes fully locked upon my presence. My son came running first, full speed as he does everyday, me anticipating the full impact of his weight upon our embrace. On this day he hit me so hard that my back pushed up against the Jeep door and we ended up face to face in the biggest hug ever made. My daughter arrived shortly upon his heels and my heart was filled with such joy as I heard the beautiful sound of her little voice exclaiming, "Daddy, Daddy, let me share with you the news of my day!"
I believe that something like this reunion is taking place for us all between the miracle of the incarnation and the glory of the second coming of Christ. Moments in time where the veil of unknowing is briefly lifted and the dream of HOME is made alive in our hearts. For we to have been lifted up in our Father’s embrace by the hands of Jesus our Savior, our Redeemer, our HOME. I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.
So dear beloved, as our Advent journey to the manger draws near to its completion, and the year 2020 folds away forever into the books of history, may our hearts be set where the love light gleams, where we find ourselves truly home in Christmas, delivered into the glory of God’s perfect dream. AMEN.
References:
Bruggerman, Walter. Texts that Linger, Words that Explode, 1989.
Kruger, Baxter. The Secret, 1997.
I’ll Be Home for Christmas lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Gannon & Kent Music Co, 1934.