A homily for Christmas 2018.
Hi, honey, I’m home!
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Every day, in every nation, in every language, people announce “I’m home, dear,” and the activity starts. Hugs, hoorays, dogs jumping and barking, maybe a meal. If the person who’s arriving has been away for a while, there are shouts of “What did you bring me?”, followed by a few gifts and more hoorays.
This time of year, of course, we pepper our hellos with Merry Christmases and Happy New Years, but there’s an implied I’m home.
We even have a song that promises I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.
Christmas is a time for going home to family. To friends, old and new. To places filled with memories.
We come home from school. Come home from military deployments, thank God. Come home from business trips. Come home with the grandkids to spend time with extended families.
And, at Christmas, people come home to church.
When they do, what should they expect to find?
Family, filled with love.
Friends in a community of faith and service.
The banquet set by Jesus at his Last Supper.
What else can we find this Christmas morning?
Well, there’s a Middle Eastern refugee couple in trouble. You see, they were ordered to leave their home and travel to their “official” hometown, where they found that the town had no home for them. They barely survived on the kindness of strangers, stayed in subhuman conditions while their baby was born, and became refugees again when the king decided their baby wasn’t fit to live.
Scripture tells us a lot about the Nativity itself, how the lowliest shepherds were the first to learn of the miraculous arrival of Jesus, the redeemer of the world, setting the tone for Christ’s embrace of the poor and marginalized.
We learn from the Gospels that, even as an infant who could not talk, who as a fully human child undoubtedly cried and drooled and needed 2 a.m. feedings, Jesus showed his divine nature to religious sages such as Simeon. With this birth, the world was changing for the better.
We fast-forward to Jesus at 12, staying behind in the temple as the caravan trudged on, teaching and preaching with wisdom beyond his years. He comes home, finally, and grows in wisdom and grace and age.
The Gospels leave Joseph behind at this point, other than to call Jesus “that carpenter’s son” as Christ carried out his ministries.
But during the Christmas season, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, JMJ, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the home base from which the Word Made Flesh ventured out.
In our baptismal rite, we parents vow that we will be our children’s first and best teachers. Two millennia ago, it was the same. Home was where Jesus learned about God, whom he called Abba, Father.
Who, because of Jesus, we get to call Father, too.
Joseph, as a good Jew and descendant of King David, would have prayed, would have known the law of Moses, would have known psalms and Isaiah and Jeremiah. Probably not as well as the religious leaders at the temple, but well enough for them to steer his life. And well enough that he and Mary could teach their child, Jesus.
Joseph, as provider for his family, would have worked hard, would have worked honorably, would have worked profitably enough to keep a roof over their heads. He would have served his duty as a husband and father. And, as a master, he would have taught all these skills and ethics to his apprentice, Jesus.
Mary, as a dutiful Jewish wife and mother and keeper of the home, would have reinforced everything Joseph was doing. Love makes a house a home, and Mary’s heart linked – still links – directly to the love of God.
Love makes a house a home, and the Jewish custom of hospitality centers on the home, where, of course, Jesus learned it.
It’s a shame nobody in Bethlehem remembered it that first Christmas night. Mary and Joseph would have remembered how they were treated, and, considering how Jesus turned out, it’s safe to guess that his parents opted to make sure nobody who needed hospitality from them was ever ignored.
Hospitality – kindness – is a key theme of Christ’s mission, his mission then and his continuing mission, the mission that we, as his hands and hearts today, are called to do. Jesus sought hospitality when he needed it – remember, he once grumbled that he had no place to lay his head, meaning literally that he had no home to go to, and metaphorically that some people were not embracing his Way.
Mostly, though, Jesus offered hospitality. He offered the precious gift of time; he gave the present of presence, healing people sick in their bodies and sick in their souls. He lifted up the lowly; the rich, he sent away empty. Not out of spite, but out of a sense of justice. The justice that calls us to share our time and treasure with all of our fellow humans, tall, short, red, green, rainbow. To make a home for them in our lives.
Because when we do, as St. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us, when we feed or shelter or clothe or visit the least among us, we’re being hospitable to Christ.
We’re making a home for the newborn king in our hearts, today at Christmas and every day.
Listen again, please.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
I’m home, dear.
That’s Jesus speaking to us.
