“Jesus Goes Home”
John 1:10-18 – January 5, 2014
INTRO: Welcome to our world. That’s what we’ve just heard Amy Grant sing. In the whole event of
Christ’s birth, we are once again welcoming him to our world and our lives. What a wonderful
thought, and one to be held in tension as we hear these words from the first chapter of the Gospel
of John, which also includes some wonderful lofty ideas, but some challenging ones about the kind
of welcome the world gave him.
Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, very much wants to return home when she clicks her heels
together and repeats that phrase over and over again, “there’s no place like home.” Robert Frost in
his poem “The Death of the Hired Man” said: “Home is the place where when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.” Then there’s the title of Thomas Wolfe’s book, You Can’t Go Home Again
which implies that you can’t go back to a previous way of life, your dreams of what your life will
become, back to your childhood, once you’ve aged and grown and changed.
The idea of home itself can be a mixed bag. Some people have good memories of their childhood
homes and can talk at length about those memories. Others didn’t have that kind of experience.
Some may feel comfortable where they currently live, others might wish for a different home. And
as much as we could wish for a home that’s “a safe haven, a port in the storm, a place where the
door is always open and you can count on being welcomed—where you’ll always be accepted,” that’s
not always our lived reality. (Homiletics, 1/14)
That being said, I think our own personal experiences of home, can help us understand
something of what John’s Gospel was saying. In the event of Christmas, Jesus goes home—he
comes to the earth to share human life with us. “The Word became flesh and made his home
among us.” (vs. 14) He dwells in our midst. In Greek, the verb “to dwell” is derived from the noun for
“tent.” Jesus “pitched a tent in our midst.” He came, not to live in some fancy dwelling off by
himself, but he came to walk the roads, share meals, stand by the beds of sick people, go fishing, go
to parties—to share life with people. I have always been drawn to the idea that God pitched a tent
among us, and I don’t think that’s only because I love camping. For me, it presents a real life flesh
and blood person, who came right into the midst of our lives. And because he shared those lives,
he walked and walks right beside those who choose to be his followers. “There are two of us—our
own frail, foolish, frightened heart, and the all-sufficient God, upon whom it can lean, and from
whom it can draw from God’s resources.” (Arthur Gossip)
God moved into the neighborhood with all the people to be found there on our street—people like
you and me. “God is embedded with us in the human predicament.” (Stephen Bauman)
Paul Harvey the radio broadcaster, had a unique way of wrapping his mind around the idea of God
becoming one of us. He told of a farmer who heard an irregular thumping sound against his kitchen
window during a storm. Sparrows kept hitting against the pane evidently attracted to the warmth inside.
Harvey stated that the farmer was touched by the birds struggle. He trudged to the barn in the
snow and opened the doors and did what he could to help the birds come in from the cold. Every
tactic he tried failed. He withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows continue to
struggle and freeze. It dawned on him if he could become a bird...one of them... just for a moment
he wouldn't frighten them as he had done by going outside. Harvey wrote, "He had grasped the
whole principle of the incarnation. A man's becoming a bird is nothing compared to God's
becoming a man." (Charles Swindoll)
“A seminary professor, Emilie Townes, taught her seminary students that being in ministry
means being more than just a tourist. Tourists come to a place and visit, while maintaining their
own unique traditions and customs. They buy trinkets and take snapshots. She taught that
pastors and preachers need to be pilgrims and ‘pitch tents’ with the people. Pilgrim pastors learn
the ‘language’ of the people they are sent to pastor. Pilgrims pitching tents take up their people’s
traditions and customs, but they can also, like Jesus, transform the world in which they live
through their ministry to and with the people. Pitching a tent means coming to be fully part of the
world in which you live and minister.” (Karyn Wiseman)
I would contend that to really live out our calling as Christ’s followers, it’s not just pastors that
need to think about pitching tents. I believe that mandate applies to all of us.
The uncomfortable part of this reading today, may be the reminder that no matter how much
God wanted to be with humanity, God’s people didn’t always offer a welcome—didn’t always
recognize Christ’s presence. People’s hearts were closed and “for whatever reason they did not
recognize the transforming power and renewing love that Jesus brought with him.” (Homiletics, 1/14)
Then as now, we may still not offer Christ a welcome. We fail to welcome him when we doubt what
difference his love could make in our lives. We don’t welcome him when we narrow our perspective of
who we consider to be our neighbor. We fail to welcome him when we can’t see evidence of his face in
the world around us. We fail to welcome him when we abdicate our responsibility and say somebody
else will do the caring deed.
We DO offer him a welcome, when as Barbara Brown Taylor says, “we use our gifts to bring a
word to life, to embody a word, whether that word is compassion, justice, generosity, patience, or
love, so that it's no longer an ‘abstract concept’ but truly a word made flesh, brought to reality and
breathed with life.” (Feasting on the Word Year C, Vol. 1).
An outdoor billboard, near a busy interstate highway, carried the message, "Jesus is Real" in
large letters. On the bottom of the sign was the name of the sponsoring church as well as an
invitation to attend one of their services. With thousands of people passing that sign daily the
church was hoping to catch people's attention with the message that Jesus is real. Another church
in that community explored the possibility of advertising their church on the billboard. After
gathering the necessary information it was decided that it cost too much. The money could be used
for mission work. The church sent work teams to continue relief work in the Gulf states after
devastating hurricanes. Their Christmas offering went for a water purification system for a remote
village in Africa. (Emphasis)
While both of those churches made important decisions about their ministries and how to use
their monetary resources, I don’t think most of the time it’s an either/or kind of thing. We need to
let people know we are here and our ministry needs to be alive. But I do wonder which one of those
churches would have been more convincing with their message of Jesus being real.
In this season we celebrate God coming home in our lives. To honor that birth, we need to do
whatever we can to share life with one another, the joy, love, pain, suffering, and loss. “To share
the everydayness of the human experience,” (Gail O’Day) by living out his way of life in a variety of
ways in our own neighborhoods.
--Sue Burwell