My offering from last year was helped through this wonderful list - and it
will be again this year. Thanks to all listers.
Grace & peace,

Mark.

Home for Christmas
25th December 1999 - Christmas Day - 9am
Scripture: Luke 2:1-20


Theme
Christmas is homecoming, the end of our exile, that time when the babe at
Bethlehem is sign that the dwelling place of God is with his people and we
are brought, by the grace of God, back to our true home, with God.
Therefore, this day is a day of good news. In the babe at Bethlehem, we
are home.

Prayer
Lord Jesus, because we could not come to you, you came to us. Because we
could not find our way home, you made your home with us. This day our joy
is full, our hope us fulfilled, our yearning is met in your great grace for
the word has become flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. Amen.

The children's Christmas pageant went well. Mary and Joseph came into
Bethlehem, on cue. There they were met by the nine-year-old innkeeper who
dutifully informed them that, though he would love to help them out if he
could, there was, again this year, "no room in the inn." Sorry. No
vacancy, like the sign says. But then he looked again at Mary and Joseph,
who really did look tired from their journey, and he blurted out, "But
there's a drive-in-motel with Foxtel just around the corner from the church!"

And the pageant was a shambles. That's not the way the story of Mary,
Joseph, and the innkeeper is supposed to go. Or is it? You know off by
heart how the story goes. Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem for the
government's census and there, because with everyone from out-of-town, Mary
is forced to give birth to Jesus in a cow stall because "there was no place
for them in the inn."

But some scholars point out that the original wording does not really say
"there was no room in the inn" but rather "there was no appropriate place
in the guest room." In the typical Middle-Eastern home there is a
designated room for overnight visitors. It would be unthinkable, for
out-of-town relatives to be sent off to an inn by their own family. Mary
and Joseph were among relatives. They were back in Bethlehem because
Joseph was "of the house and lineage of David." The problem was, there
were lots of relatives back for the census.

By the time Mary and Joseph arrived, the guest room was filled and so they
had to be placed in the next best place in the family home, which some say
would have been the outer room where the family's animals were brought in
for safe keeping during the night. Especially in cold weather, the family
livestock was brought in to this outer room where they stayed the night,
then they were led out at morning, the room was swept, and used for other
family activity. That's where the manger was, the feed trough for the
animals, in this outer room.

Some of you who are home for Christmas will sleep tonight on the sofa in
the living room, or curled in a sleeping bag elsewhere, because there is no
"appropriate place" for you in the guest room. Uncle Jack from up on the
Murray commandeered that room before you got here. Well, that's probably
the case for Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Rather than send you to the Doncaster
Hotel, because the family loves you so much and is so delighted to have
everyone home for Christmas, they are giving you the honour of sleeping on
the floor in the lounge room.

All of this puts a different slant on the story of that first Christmas.
Jesus was not born in the stable of some cold, impersonal one star hotel,
but rather born in the back room of a home where aging aunts, uncles, and
other random relatives may have doted on the new baby.

For Mary and Joseph, these days among family must have been a peculiar
treasure. Soon enough they would be forced to flee for their lives as
refugees from the wrath of King Herod.

There would be dark, difficult days ahead. But for now, they were home,
among family. When God Incarnate, Jesus, was most frail and vulnerable, a
baby, he was cared for in the context of a home, safe amid the mundane
blessings of family.

Some of you have made incredible effort to be home for Christmas. You may
have flown long distances. Traversed continents and oceans. Tonight, even
that fold-out sofa bed, the one with the bar running right through the
middle of the two-inch bit of foam called a "mattress", will feel good
because you are home. Home for Christmas.

Homelessness is on our mind as we respond with generosity through the
Christmas Bowl. The people who will spend this Christmas in the homeless
shelters of our city could tell us a thing or two about home. Our men and
women in East Timor will treasure next Christmas all the more when they are
home. Homelessness is not only a national disgrace but also a metaphor for
how lots of people feel.

"There's no place like home at Christmas time," not just trite words, but
also true - very, very true. We long to belong. One author puts it, "Home
is not where you live but were they understand you." Or, "Home is the
place where, when you go there, they have to take you in."

But more than all that, Christmas, as Luke tells it, is not just about Mary
and Joseph coming home, safe in the context of the family, it's not even
about your homecoming for Christmas.

It's about God, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Prince of Peace, Saviour,
coming home. We couldn't get to God, so God got to us, coming among us in
this mundane, ordinary family story we cherish as the nativity.

What we call "incarnation" is somebody sleeping on the foldout sofa in the
playroom. That somebody is "God with us." Our God came to earth to dwell
among us. That's the joy of it.

There are no religions I know which could tolerate this much domesticating
of the divine. Most faiths are scandalised by our faith in a God who takes
on our flesh and is born among us, one of us, in a manger of the family's
home, as a baby, no less. When we say, "I'll be home for Christmas," we
mean us. When Luke hears those words, he hears Messiah, Emmanuel, God with
us proclaim, "I'll be at your home for Christmas."

Why are so many of you here today? I'll tell you. Moving right into the
middle of your family with its problems, secrets, sin, and silliness; the
love, and laughter, and the little joys of your home, there comes this God.
And I think that's why you're here and that's why there's joy.

The last, almost the last chapter, of the last book of the Bible, ends in a
great gush of joy: "See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God
himself will be with them." (Rev 21:3)

God has chosen to be with us, wherever we are, whatever we have done; and
in God's good time we will be fully restored to our lost home. We will
climb back into the lap of the One who loves us, and be held, embraced and
fed.

Christmas is about much more than a baby in a stable. It is about being
found in a stable. It is about being found by God.


Amen!! Thanks be to God!!

_______________________________________________________________
The Dunn Family, Rev Mark, Mrs Jan, Elissa, Wendy & Megan
Pilgrim Uniting Church Parish <"}}}}><
Snailmail: 26 Westfield Drive DONCASTER Victoria Australia 3108
Phone/Fax 03 9848 3599 Mobile 0409 009 443
Email markdunn@melbpc.org.au Web Site: www.pilgrimuca.org.au
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