This is my sermon from Sat night Dec 11, 2009 at 61st Avenue UMC, Nashville:
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
We all know the Christmas song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It paints such a beautiful picture, doesn’t it?! People there we love getting things ready for us…snow, mistletoe, presents under the tree. Everything we would want! You can just imagine it…surrounded by those you love. Bellies full, toes warmed by the fire. Satisfaction.
These feelings don’t come from just being in a house – they come from that feeling of home and that can come to us at different places. Maybe some of us feel home when we are with family. Maybe it’s with friends. Maybe it’s here at 61st Avenue. Home is satisfaction in the heart – being “right” with the ones we love.
That’s not always an easy thing to have though is it? The Whitney Houston version “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” begins with these words:
“I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do. And although I know it’s a long road back, I promise you…I’ll be home for Christmas.”
How do we get to that place that feels like home? How do we get our relationships in order so we get that feeling? Tonight’s scripture is about repenting…that word might cause a feeling of dread in our hearts…maybe it conjures up old feelings of someone trying to beat you over the head with religion. But repentance is God’s way of making a home…sweeping out the trash to make way for the good stuff.
It may feel like a long road back to home, but God is near, and will always make a way – even when we think there is none.
Today’s scripture begins with John the Baptist getting angry at people assuming they are entitled to a place in God’s home:
Luke 3:7-18 (The Message)
7-9When crowds of people came out for baptism because it was the popular thing to do, John exploded: “Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to deflect God’s judgment? It’s your life that must change, not your skin. And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as ‘father.’ Being a child of Abraham is neither here nor there—children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. God can make children from stones if he wants. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”
To make God’s household right, John is saying that we need to turn our hearts around and that it needs to show! That people around us should see us blossoming! And that this happens from the inside out – not just by washing our skin with waters of baptism but by changing our lives.
Have you ever had people say words that ring hollow? Maybe someone who says they’re sorry but they go right back to what they’ve been doing all along? That hurts doesn’t it?! That’s what John is saying here – that God expects us to turn our lives around – to express repentance with our ways, not just our words.
All of us have gotten this wrong – and sometimes we mean well, we just don’t follow through. When we do that with relationships in our lives, we feel it even more strongly because it breaks up relationships. When we do wrong to someone, we need to show that we are sorry by our new ways, not just continuing old ways with new words!
When my sister was raising her daughter Amy, Amy would sometimes say she was sorry about doing something wrong. And Susan would say, “Don’t be sorry. Be better.” That’s kind of what this scripture is saying. Don’t speak words that have no meaning to you and expect things to be better. You’ve got to participate in being the meaning of the word! You’ve got to be the dictionary that explains repentance to others!
Sometimes home feels far away because of something beyond our own doing – something that has happened to us like divorce or death, prison, maybe mental illness, addiction, the list goes on. When a situation is in our hands, we have control over what we can do, right? When the other person in the relationship is not honoring the relationship, sometimes we do what we can and we move on. This can be really painful, but even then, having a good relationship with God – the head of our heart’s household, can provide us with what we need to find that contentment even in the face of sorrow.
I have seen this illustrated in many places, where people who are hurt by others move into Christian community and find a true home among others who know what it’s like to be hurt and excluded. Sometimes the home we find in Christian community may feel more like home than any place we grew up in. I see this lived out in many places, but one place especially touched my heart this October when I traveled to Zimbabwe. It’s Project Tariro – Tariro means hope in the local language – and Tariro provides a community of love especially to those whose blood relatives have turned their backs.
Play Video: http://umtv.org/archives/adult_aids_health_care.htm
While I was there, I met a young girl named Thandi – a twelve year old girl. Her mother, Nora, had been diagnosed with AIDS and her family threw her out. Nora was faced then with raising her daughter amidst unbelievable poverty – the kind of poverty where most people around you have nothing and there’s nobody even to beg from. But Thandi and her mom came to Project Tariro and found that there were others like them who had also been turned out by their families who were finding a way by having a nutritional garden, counselors, health support and more . In March of this year, Thandi’s mother died when the medicines she needed were not available. Once again, her own family would not or could not help. But the Christian community that surrounded them did not let them down. Thandi is living with the pastor there and is able to continue schooling and is getting what she needs to survive. She is not alone.
When we realize what it means to be “home for Christmas” we are able to help others who are without. The scriptures that I read before continue with the crowd’s continued interaction with John the Baptist:
10The crowd asked him, “Then what are we supposed to do?”
11″If you have two coats, give one away,” he said. “Do the same with your food.”
12Tax men also came to be baptized and said, “Teacher, what should we do?”
13He told them, “No more extortion—collect only what is required by law.”
14Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He told them, “No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations.”
When we really repent, we see an outward change that helps those around us.
I’ve seen this at 61st Avenue, in other places in Nashville and again in Africa. I feel uncomfortable when people look at me like I’m good for going there to Africa to help others. I’m no better than anyone. And really, when I go there, I am the one who comes back full. I am the one who has been home for Christmas. Because when I’m there, I see glimpses of heaven in the way that people love one another and love God. The first time I went to Zimbabwe, a child who had an old pair of shoes received a new pair, only to run and happily give the other pair to a child without shoes. I have met elderly people who barely have what it takes them to survive for a day stand and sing with joy that God has shown favor upon them. I have listened as a woman who lost three siblings last year to political violence sing to me her profession of faith – Because He Lives. Because He Lives – I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know who holds the future, life is worth the living just because he lives.
I’m always amazed at how people whose faith is strong can get through tough times. But it’s because I have witnessed this that I can share with you that it is possible! Even when times are unimagineably tough, people who have a strong faith in God persevere and overcome in time. Things are different. Home can be found in the midst of a desert where others find only desolation. This is what happens when we are changed from the inside out.
The final portion of this scripture shows people questioning John who has been saying these things.
15The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”
16-17But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Are we ready for Christ? December 24 is just around the corner…the time that we recognize Jesus’ birth and spiritually prepare for receiving him in our hearts. What trash do we have to be swept out?
Another song sung this time of year is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” The difference between Santa and the messiah – Jesus Christ – is that Santa comes to those who are nice, not naughty. God sent Jesus especially to the “naughty” as the gift to end all gifts! All God asks us to do is to prepare him room. May we prepare for His coming – making space knowing that maybe this year, we will find the true meaning of being home for Christmas. Amen.
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