December 24, 2010
Welcome Home - Luke 2:1-20
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI am from a small town in the upstate of South Carolina, close to Spartanburg, called Campobello. Most of you already know that about me. That is my home. I’m actually from Wall Street, the financial district of Campobello. There’s no such thing as a financial district in Campobello, but I am from Wall Street, 385 Wall Street to be exact. That is home. I was raised there, my parents still live there. In fact, I was there just last night, celebrating Christmas with my family. I consider my grandmother’s house on Main Street home, too. I spent much of my childhood there, including many Christmases, and it is home. All of Campobello is home. Wofford College is home for me, too. I talk about that place all the time, probably to your chagrin, but I spent four of the best years of my life there. I met my wife at Wofford. I grew up there. I blossomed there and learned how to think. I love Wofford. It’s home. Texas is home, too. When I first moved there right after college I thought I had died and gone to, well, not heaven, but Texas grew on me. Leah and I spent six wonderful years out there. Sometimes I dream that I have moved back out there, and it’s always a good dream. A fairly good-sized chunk of my heart is in Texas. I love Texas. Texas is home. And, of course, I love Charlotte and Charlotte is now home. I’ve lived here for five years. My first call was here, at Central Steele Creek, in Charlotte. All three of my children were born here. In fact, two of my children were baptized right here. I love this place. I love you. Charlotte is home.
But is it really home? Charlotte has changed in the five short years that I have been here. Central Steele Creek has changed in that time, too. And in five more years, Charlotte and I and Central will all be different than we are now, and you’ll be different. If home is the one constant in our lives, or even if it’s the place where our hearts are, then I can’t say that about Charlotte. My heart is here, but it’s in all those other places, too. And yet, those other places are different now and in some ways they’re not even there anymore. Campobello will never be the place that it was in my childhood, ever. That place is gone. Wofford now is not the place that I knew. That place is gone. The same is true for Texas. What I knew of it is gone. It’s not so much that they have changed, but I have changed. It is very true, isn’t it, that you can never go home.
All those places may mean a great deal to us, but we live in a fallen world. The Bible makes that very clear. We ourselves are fallen. We do more than grow up. We grow out. We are all both affected by and contribute to this broken and sinful world. The prophet Hosea says that whereas we once were a people, we are nobody now. In fact, Hosea goes so far as to essentially reverse the entire biblical narrative. “You are not my people and I am not your God,” Hosea says. That’s bad. And in that sense, in a very real sense, we’re all homeless, right? God is really our home, “our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home.” Yet we have wandered away from that home. We’re homeless. That’s what sin and depravity do to us. They take us away from our true home.
Mary and Joseph were a long way from home when Jesus was born. They were on a very treacherous and dark journey. There is nothing cozy at all about the first Christmas. The shepherds were always homeless. They simply wandered from field to field. “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be shepherds,” they probably sang back then, because shepherds spent their lives alone, wandering, and homeless. It is in that context that Christmas happened, and still happens. It was there that God reversed the curse. “No more,” says one of my favorite Christmas carols, “let sins and sorrows grow, or thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.”
That curse is still found everywhere. We have wandered. We are homeless. We’re not homeless, literally, but thousands in Charlotte are. Over 4000 of them are children. Santa’s sleigh will not be stopping by many children’s homes tonight. In this Christmas, like all Christmases, the world is not as it should be. Your home is not as it should be. Many of us are celebrating Christmas this year without somebody who should be there. Death has left a hole that nothing can fill and there’s no way to change that. Thousands of Americans are fighting a two front war for us tonight. They will not be coming home for Christmas. Unfortunately, 650 of them (from 2010 alone) will never be coming home. Imagine the Christmases their families are having. The world is broken and has left all us homeless in many profound ways.
But then there’s this story about a child being born in a barn in Bethlehem. In that little boy, whose birth we celebrate tonight, God has given all of us a home, and a hope, and a future in which we and this world will be made whole. Many of you have come home to Central tonight. You were born and raised here, and then you grew up and got married and had a family and now you’re back. I am happy that you’re back home. If you’ve never been here, this is a great place to be, especially tonight. I’m glad you’re here and I hope you come back and find a home here. If you’ve been here all your life and you’re here every time the doors open, it’s always good to see you. And if you’ve been wandering around in this fallen world, wondering how so many of the bad things that happen in it really happen, if you’re depressed, if you’re mourning, if you’re broke, or addicted, or abused, or homeless, if the darkness is all too real for you, then I’m here to tell you that there is some light out there shining very brightly, and it can never, ever go out. Welcome home! Merry Christmas!
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
