Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
December 24, 2003
Oh there’s no place like home for the holidays,
For no matter how far away you roam,
If you want to be happy in a million ways,
For the holidays, you can’t beat home sweet home.
I know it isn’t a carol. In fact, it’s not even religious. But it’s the seasonal refrain that has haunted my thinking for the past several days.
It could be a personal thing, given that Kris and I are in a new home this Christmas. Our own. Our first. Which, after 38 years in the parsonage system, feels….well, it feels right. Not that the other felt wrong. But this just feels “right.”
Or it could be a familial thing, given that our daughter Julie arrived “home for the holidays” about 2:00 this morning from San Francisco. And our son-in-law in waiting (Jared) will arrive on the red eye….also from California….at 6:00 a.m. on Friday. Just hearing the words roll off my tongue….“son-in-law”….feels right, feels good, feels homey.
But it could also be a neighborhood thing, given that the family down the street got evicted a few days ago. Didn’t know them. Never met them. But one morning we drove by and all their stuff (I mean all their stuff) was in the yard. Big stuff, like sofas. Garage stuff, like shovels. Personal stuff, like pictures. Recreational stuff, like bicycles. Nobody there. No signs of fire. Just stuff. Outside….on the lawn. Where it sat for three or four days. That is until they brought the dumpster and threw everything into it. I wasn’t sad about the sofas going into the dumpster. But the bicycles….kids would have died for those bicycles.
Now the pile is gone. The people are gone. Where? Darned if I know. I’m the new kid on the block. But none of the old kids on the block seem to know, either. Eviction is the only thing I can figure. But in Bloomfield Hills? Which explains my professional satisfaction in seeing to it that a couple of people’s house payments got paid….last week.…so that there won’t be a pile in somebody else’s yard next week.
Or it may be an international thing. Like you, I have been reading all those stories about our soldiers in Iraq. I wonder what it’s like for them, finding themselves in greater danger with the war over than they were when the war was on. And no Bob Hope to entertain them.
And speaking of homes, I couldn’t help taking a bemused interest in Saddam Hussein’s final domicile, even as I quietly applauded his arrest. The man once had 22 palaces. But when they found him, they hauled him out of a makeshift bunker, along with $750,000, a bottle of French cologne, and enough chemical spray to insure that no rats or mice nibbled on his toes (or the cheese sandwiches on which he subsisted).
* * * * *
Jesus, of course, was born in a shelter. Bethlehem being 70 miles from Nazareth….about the distance from here to Jackson (or Lansing, or Adrian). But 70 miles is further on foot than it is on the freeway. Had there been a freeway. Which there wasn’t. And shortly after his birth, the wrath of Herod required a family flight to Egypt. Meaning that for an appreciable chunk of his childhood, Jesus was a refugee. So when you consider how he started, it gives new meaning to the phrase: “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
But home is not simply a matter of where we hang our hat, so much as where we hang our heart. I mean, you can have a place to hang your hat….and you can have no small number of hats to hang (including top hats)….but home is a matter of who you hang them with.
And the beauty of the Christmas story is that God chose to hang his hat with us. Last Sunday, we talked about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Which sounds heady and academic. But the Greek is far warmer. Try this on for size. The Word pitched its tent among us. Or better yet: “God set up camp in the midst of us.”
There’s a billboard on I-94, halfway between here and Albion, which carries a one-line message: “Don’t make me come down there.” And it’s signed, “God.” Which sounds both ominous and threatening. As I am sure it was meant to. Sort of like my friend’s father screaming down the basement stairs at 1:00 in the morning, when us boys were making too much noise at a birthday party sleepover: “You’ll be sorry if I have to come down there.”
But the fact of the matter is, God did come down here. And while I don’t have the faintest idea how the second coming will occur….when the second coming will occur….or even if the second coming will occur….this one thing I know. That any second coming will be in the nature of the first coming. Not for purposes of destruction, but restoration. Not so that God can execute his fierce anger, but so that God can express his deep love.
In the child we call Jesus, God came home for the holidays. Not only taking up residence on our turf, but taking up residence on our terms. Becoming human, as it were. Even as we are human.
But let me pause here to tell you about Rachel. Although I do so hesitantly, out of fear that my story might embarrass her. Rachel recently entered a retirement home where others can be to her the family she never had. After graduation she took a teaching job in the grade school of a small town, where she remained for forty years. Before she retired, she had taught boys and girls….and their boys and girls….and even their boys and girls. Of course, she threatened to retire many springs, but threats by Rachel were very much like little boys’ threats to run away from home. Summers always recharged her batteries. Summers were also spent gathering objects to help her teaching. I wonder how many pumpkins, flags, witches, turkeys, Santa Clauses and valentines she had stuck on her classroom windows?
No one could have been more shocked than Rachel when the chairman of the school board told her she was being given early retirement. Her response was shock, because it vibrated against the fact that she had finally achieved the singular ambition of her life: to become a child. Notice I didn’t say “childish”…. that sad state of those who try to negotiate adult life with a child’s behaviors. No, I mean she became a child, moving totally into the world of children. Their laughter, fears, games, pains and friendship were hers. At Halloween….at Christmas….on Valentine’s Day….she was totally a child. Finally she had done it. No more generation gap. No more distance in vocabulary and comprehension. Just full rapport and perfect communication. “Poor Rachel,” said the adults who, even though they had once been her pupils, had now distanced themselves completely from a child’s world. They couldn’t see that after forty years, for the sake of the children, she had finally become one of them. The perfect teacher.
“For the sake of the children, we will have to let her go,” the school board said. No parents raised an outcry. They accepted the decision as being painfully right. Only a newcomer dared ask why. “Because she has become like the children,” he was told.
Is the story apocryphal? Of course the story is apocryphal. But wrap the gospel around it: “And he became, in every way, as we are.” Of course, we had to get rid of him.
But not for good. If it’s true that you can’t keep a good man down, then you can’t keep a good God out, either. God has this way of haunting history, offering himself time and again….maybe even on a night like this, in a place like this.
Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays,
For no matter how far away you roam,
If you long for the sunshine of a friendly face,
For the holidays, you can’t beat home sweet home.
Whose face? The face of Jesus.
* * * * *
Christmas Eve 2003….my eleventh in this wonderful sanctuary. In 1993, I sounded a hopeful note from a cellist in Sarajevo. Tonight, I look for similar signs from a bunker north of Baghdad. Collectively, we rejoice that our nation’s economy is in the recovery room, even as we lament that Michigan’s budget is still in the operating room.
Closer to home, we are a church with more members than last year….more challenges than last year….a whole lot more square footage than last year….and a reputation on the street corner that every other congregation in town would die for.
And still closer to home….for me, anyway….there is:
a house that fits,
a job that fits,
a life that fits,
and a faith that fits.
Along with a family that grew by a couple of new nieces this year and (God willing, October 9) will grow by a groom next year.
Before too very long, you’ll be home. And eventually, so will we….wife, daughter and me (quietly, comfortably and expectantly). There will be crab cakes from one of the best chefs in the church and bisque from one of the best chefs in the city. Just two great women chilling out with the preacher who doubles as husband and father.
Cherishing sweet memories of a beloved son who isn’t,
and sweet hopes for a perspective son-in-law who is.
I am home for the holidays, in more ways than you will ever know….praying that, if not now, it will someday be the same for you and yours. Merry Christmas.
Note: Rachel’s story springs from the creative mind of Fred Craddock.
