Advent 2020:Love

Home For the Holidays

I am hopeful that today as you are all gathered at home, that this message will find some purchase in your hearts. That said, I want to start it by acknowleging that life sometimes makes preaching difficult. And more important, it can make listening and absorbing sermons or expositions on God’s word difficult as well.

I acknowledge that today simply because holidays can be, for some, a difficult time. And opening wounds is not something I am fond of doing. So to all those for whom this time is more trying than joyful, please know our love and prayers are with you.

As we encounter this last theme for Advent, though, we are reminded of just how comforting and welcoming this season can be, even when it is surrounded by difficulties. This last aspect - this final compass point for our faith - points us to true north. This is the one that guides all the others! This is the one that ties together our lives with God and with all those who matter most to us.

Today is all about love.

And, as you have noticed already, today’s worship is different. Today, we are home for the holidays. And like the song suggests, there is no place like it. No matter how far away you roam, if you want to be happy for a million years, for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.

But lest you think I am being overly nostalgic, I don’t mean where you are right now - though surely you can’t be that home either! I think Billy Joel - not exactly a wise sage of Biblical truth I will grant you, but still I think he says it best.

“Home can be the Pennsylvania turnpike, or Indiana’s early morning dew. High up in the hills of California, Home is just another word for you.”

“I’ll never be a stranger, and I’ll never be alone, Wherever we’re together that’s my home.”

And today, whether we worship in the sanctuary, in my den, or on the mountain or in the temple - Wherever we’re together, that’s our home. And that is the same for church, and friends, and for family - though we might be apart from them this Christmas - and it is especially true with our true home, our God.

And that God that home abounds in love for us. And it is that love that draws us together to Him, to our family, and to each other. So we celebrate that today as we look at scripture to help remind us of what God’s love is all about.

We will start in the Psalms. Psalm 89, verses 1-4, and look at several pieces of scripture as we set them against the backdrop of the Christmas story.

Psalm 89:1–4 ESV

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah

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pray

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This story we know so well started just a couple weeks ago with a young woman proclaiming herself to be the Lord’s servant is soon going to come to a close. It doesn’t end - at least at the time - with a modern happy ending. Mary and Joseph don’t get to bring home this baby to a home with a Christmas tree, or a new crib. There are no friends waiting with meals. No family surrounding them and pouring love and light into their lives.

Every sign of comfort, and family, and love - things we would call home - they are nowhere to be found at the end of this story.

There is a long, and no doubt taxing journey to an ancestral home, to be sure, but this isn’t home for the holidays. This is a couple living in fear travelling at the request of a government to go to their ancestral home to pay taxes.

So like I have asked us before, what do you think they felt? What were those conversations alone on the road like?

Surely you know the answer here. When you take your family on a trip, what is one of the first things you do? Well it is pretty likely you turn on the radio! You sing songs and think thoughts that bring you to a comfortable and hopeful place! These things that are familiar to us bring us from the pain we are in or the difficulties we face back to a place where we feel completely at peace.

These songs bring us home.

Carols. Bing Crosby. Burl Ives. Rudolph, Frosty, Jingle Bells. All things that we bring back to life this time of year. Songs that tie us back to an idea. And that idea is simply home.

Psalm 89:1 ESV

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.

I think that as they travelled they sang songs. We call them psalms now, but I bet they were singing those songs that made them forget the troubles that they might be facing in that moment.

“I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever!” “With my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations!”

I can almost see them in silence travelling along the road when one of them - probably Mary, at least in my mind - they start humming the tune maybe that goes with this song. And then the other joins in the humming, and then they sing! And just like us, when we let go of our troubles so that we can grab hold of something familiar, we find something magical that we all long for.

We find home.

But we don’t find home because of some distant land, or a house, or a table filled with people we don’t know. When we find home, what we are really finding is love.

Ephesians 3:17–19 ESV

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The same love that held those two together when the world was against them. The same love that gave hope to a girl that had every reason to have none. The same love that filled the hearts of a mother who looks into the eyes of a Son that would die for her as for you!

They travelled a road with nothing. Just each other and God. But as they travelled, singing and praising the love of God, they were home.

Their lives were rooted, in that moment, in a promise. Rooted in a message from God. Rooted in trust of a higher calling and purpose! Not rooted in what they had, or what they though, but rooted in the hope of God’s faithfulness and provision.

But that is just what is needed. They - being rooted and grounded in love, were given strength when they found home with God! And in that home, they better understand the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God - and in so doing they are filled with the overwhelming love of God!

Or as Billy Joel says, “Wherever we’re together, that's my home.”

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That is the power of the idea of home. And whatever we place in those walls of our minds, church, will grant us that feeling and peace. And that is the importance of this reminder today. When we fill our lives with the reminders of God’s faithfulness - those moments that might now be gone or might still be there - but all those moments when God’s presence was so real to us! Those songs, those memories, those places for sure - but more importantly - that love that we felt when God first took hold of our lives!

That is home! And church, no matter where you are in life God is always calling you home! And that home, church, is found wherever you might be, if only for one simple reason!

God is love.

1 John 4:7–9 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

If there is home for the Christian it is simply this. It isn’t in the things we want. It isn’t really our houses. It isn’t our jobs. It isn’t our flawed idea of what the world should look like or what this or that person should do.

Love is our only home.

And being our home, it is the only place we should feel fully comfortable! John says in his first epistle - “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love...” and by the way, hate is the absence of love. “anyone who does not love does not know God, BECAUSE GOD IS LOVE!”

The love that was made manifest, to use John’s language among us. In Mary! God sent His Son to this world “so that we might live through Him!”

So that we might find our home in Him! So that no matter what we might be going through He is always there and is always the same! So that we would never be lost or lonely, but that we might find our ultimate comfort and peace in the God who holds us in His hands!

So, church, no matter where you are, God is calling you home - to Him. To love. To the only place that you will ever be fully comfortable. To the resting place of God’s faithfulness and hope. To His very presence. So wherever you are, come to Him. Come to Him with your concerns, your praises, your hopes, your dreams, your expectations - your life.

As long as your together with Him, you will be home.

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