December 23, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The question that we often ask these days is: “Are you going home for Christmas?” When I say the word, “home,” what comes to mind? What is that place that means “home” to you? Is it where you currently live? Is home the place you grew up as a child? Or is home some place else entirely, perhaps even a place you have only dreamed about?
What then is home? Home is where we know where everything is and how we fit in with it all. Home is a place where the old sofa somehow knows just how to conform to our quirky bottoms. It’s a place where we can seek refuge from the world and be refreshed to face the world again. It is where those we love, gather and where they gather us in their love. It’s a place where you don’t have to explain everything. It is a place where you can be yourself, for better or for worse, and be sure it is both. It is where, in the words of Robert Frost, “Home is where you go to and they have to take you in.” Not all of the places we call home look very much like that, but I think we all have a home like that in our dreams.
Many of us have been blessed by attending the Gospel Choir’s Christmas concerts. Last Sunday night at Piedmont Gardens, a retirement community in Oakland where the choir gave their first concert, the concertgoers really understood the song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” We may know that this song was written during World War II when many would not be home for Christmas, but the people at Piedmont Gardens last Sunday knew it for real in real time. Some of them longed to be home for Christmas and perhaps not at Piedmont Gardens, if only in their dreams.
From this same era, we have the song, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.” I’m still amazed how popular this secular holiday song is in San Francisco when most of you have never experienced a white Christmas before. But these popular songs express the kind of longing that pulses at the heart of the season, a longing for a place and time that is now gone, but that is still home for us, at least in our dreams.
There’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in the songs and sentiments of this season. These songs bring a tear to the eye when we remember a tender moment in the past that is long gone.
But these songs also bring a tear to the eye to those who have never known a happy home. For them, home has never been something to sing about, except as an expression of longing. Sometimes when we long for the past, we yearn for what we have yet to experience. We long for things that have never happened—“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I long to know.”
Incomplete Christmas
Perhaps that is why, often at Christmas our celebrations seem incomplete. Someone is always missing. Our children have grown up, moved away and want to begin their own Christmas traditions. Or perhaps there are pieces of our lives that are missing. We won’t be having Grandma’s figgy pudding this year. So we dream of home and long to return to a place and time when no one is missing. But if we were able to return to such a place and time, I think we would find that someone is always missing. There never was a time when our celebrations were complete, when the longing was not there.
You see. What we long for is not merely a Christmas from the past. Rather, we long to have our past, present and future gathered up into a harmony that is not achieved in the days of our lives. What we desire is not merely to be with our families, but to be united with them in a way that is not possible even when they are present. We are homesick, not for some home of our past, but for the home we have never seen and cannot readily imagine, a home that even our dreams cannot fully realize.
Joseph’s Home
From Joseph’s point of view, his once happy home was falling apart. After discovering that the woman whom he was engaged to marry was pregnant, he probably didn’t have any desire to go home for Christmas! If he was going to be an observant man of faith, he really had no choice but to end the engagement. To be sure that Mary was not condemned to public punishment, he sought to end the relationship privately. One can only imagine Joseph’s sense of betrayal, of loss, when presented with the fact of Mary’s pregnancy. All that he had imagined for his own future, and their future together, vanished as he heard the news. There were no more dreams of a home together.
But then God came in a dream to Joseph. God’s dream told him to not be afraid to go against tradition. God told Joseph not only continue the engagement and complete it in marriage, but to claim the child as his own by giving him his name. By Joseph’s obedience, he stood by Mary and stood by God’s plan for him and ultimately became a part of God’s plan in Jesus Christ to save the world.
There was a local church that had their annual Christmas pageant. On the night of the big event, the director came running down the hall of the church, breathless from the fellowship hall where all of the young actors were gathering to put on their costumes, calling, “We have no Joseph! We have no Joseph!
She breathlessly explained to the pastor that the kid who was to play Joseph was taken by a terrible bout of nausea (stage fright?) just before he was to leave home and come to church. His mother had called to say that he wouldn’t be in the pageant. They had no Joseph.
And the pastor said, “Well, let some shepherd stand sort of near the manger with Mary. Nobody will notice the absence of Joseph. He doesn’t even have a speaking part in the story.”
And this church did just that and it worked out fine.
But after reading today’s Gospel again, I realize that it was wrong to leave out Joseph. We really need a Joseph. It’s easy to overlook Joseph. If it wasn’t for the fact that Joseph was willing to follow God’s plan for him and even though all of his dreams and longing for his family of his dreams had been dashed, we would not be here today.
Joseph is very much like us or perhaps we are very much like Joseph. Just like Joseph, we long to have a happy home that we want to go home to. Today we celebrate the fact that Joseph follow God’s command and completed the holy family so that we have Christmas.
Christmas in My Dreams
Let me speak personally. As much as I enjoy this season and want you to become excited about it, there is still an unquenchable longing that I have near the center of this season. Sometimes it takes the shape of longing for the Christmases that I remembered as a child in Boston, but it is more than mere nostalgia for some perfect Christmas of my past, because I cannot remember a Christmas that seemed complete. There was never a Christmas in my memory that did not bring with it a measure of this longing. Even when the members of my family were all alive and all together, even when our home was filled with holiday food for both body and the soul, Christmas treats and the laughter of family—so filled with blessings that our house seemed like one big, overstuffed Christmas gift—even then this longing was there. I wonder if you too have experienced it.
So when someone asks, “Will you be home for Christmas?” here is the Christmas I picture in my dream: My father and mother are there. As a World War II veteran, my father most likely heard, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” when he was in Germany. My brother, Richard, a number of years older than me, is there as a young man unsure whether he really belonged in China or in America. My other two brothers, Philip and Steven are there—one a politician and the other an attorney.
In addition to these five, who have all died now, Joy and I along with our children, Greg and Lauren and their respective spouses and children are all somehow there in this Christmas of my dream. My parents are really into Christmas and know all about the traditions and activities even though we didn’t start having a Christmas tree until we as children learned about it in school. My father takes my daughter Lauren in his lap to tell her a story, even though he died before Lauren was born and Lauren is too old to crawl onto anyone’s lap for a story anymore. My brother Steven shares a joke with his nephew Greg whose middle name is named after, as surely as he would have if he had ever lived to see him. My mother’s memory, which escaped her during her last years, is restored at this Christmas, and she is once again able to name her four great grandchildren—Evi, Gavin, Sage, and Sebastian even though she died before our children were married. And somehow, my grandfather himself is there as well like I remembered him in a picture that hung in our living room, although he died some years in China before I was born in Boston.
In this Christmas of my memory, in this Christmas of my dreams, in this Christmas of my longing, all the broken and scattered pieces of life are gathered up and put together in ways that were never possible in any “real” Christmas.
Being home for Christmas is something more than mere nostalgia, and more profound as well, because what we long for is not merely a Christmas from our past, but a gathering up of our past, present and future into a harmony that is not achieved in the days of our lives. What we desire is not merely to be with those we love, but to be united with them in a way that is not possible even when they are present. It is to be together in ways that are impossible in this life but possible in our hopes and dreams. What we long for is to have the broken and scattered pieces brought together in ways that we are unable to do. When we long to be home for Christmas is in some way, a yearning for God.
Home with God
We yearn for a special kind of homecoming, not just to be home with family, but rather to find home with God. The Psalmist calls this, “our dwelling place in all generations.”
Our longing is the same one that the Prophet Isaiah said, “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God with us.” It is a yearning for a God who will dwell with us and be our dwelling place.
“Home is where the heart is,” or so the expression goes. For the Christian, home is where Christ is, and what we take to be homesickness is, in part at least, a yearning to be with the one who is called Emmanuel, that is, “God with us.”
As the song sings, “I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me. Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree. Christmas Eve will find me where the love lights gleams, I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams,” we are actually yearning to be at home with God.
It was that longing that brought the shepherds from the dark countryside to seek the Christ Child. It was that longing that caught the sight of the wise men as they followed the star. It was that longing and yearning that led the seven sisters and brothers to be baptized last Sunday because they have found Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And in some way or another, it is that longing and yearning that brings us here today.
There’s another story about a Christmas pageant in a small mid-western town. Wally was a child who was a bit “behind” everyone else. Although he was liked, he was often shut out of any games where winning is involved. He wanted very much this year to play the part of a shepherd, but the teacher feared that Wally could not handle such a big role. She gave him the part of the innkeeper, because he would only have to say something like, “There’s no room.”
Rehearsals went fine. Wally said his lines at just the right time. On the big night, as parents and congregational members enjoyed the children’s performance, there was a surprise. When Joseph and Mary approached Wally, Wally said his lines perfectly. Three times Joseph asked, three times Wally said, “No room.”
Finally, as Mary and Joseph walked away, Wally didn’t shut the door of the inn as he was supposed to. Instead, watching, overcome with emotion, Wally shouted, “You can have my room.”
Do you have room in your heart, a yearning, a longing to invite Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us” to come into your home and dwell with you? So, let me ask you that question of the season, “Are you going home for Christmas?” In Christmas, God has gathered all the broken and scattered pieces of our lives together that were never possible in any “real” Christmas of our past or in the present day and most likely in the years to come.
In Christmas, we have the hope and joy to know that what seems to be incomplete today will be complete and fulfilled in heaven.
In Christmas, we have the peace and love that someday, songs like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” will not be sung because men and women are away at war.
In Christmas, our longings and yearnings are satisfied because we are home with God.
Let us pray.
Thank you, O God for welcoming us home today. Thank you for gathering all of the scattered and separate pieces of our lives and making them complete in your name and to grant us the promise that according to your glorious plan that we are home with you yesterday, today, and in the years to come. Thank you, dear Lord for sending your Son, Jesus Christ as a child into the world so that we may know you and receive salvation. Amen.
Jigsaw Pieces
No other present day artist that tries to capture scenes of our lives that we can only dream about then Thomas Kincaide. The images are always near perfect and complete that some of us long to experience. On your way out, you will receive a jigsaw puzzle of one of Kincaide’s pictures. It represents the broken and scattered pieces of our lives that can never be complete in any “real” Christmas of our past or in the present or in the future except when we are home with God.