Expectant Home.
Our first home – everyone’s
first home- is snug and warm. It is neutral warmth, meaning the exact right
temperature. There is a soothing constant beat of momma’s heart, and white
noise of fluid and digestion.
There is a gentle buoyant
movement, a rocking, side to side. Best of all there is touch, a deep pressure massage;
one is wrapped in an all-day-never-ending hug.
Expectant Home.
Through Advent the
congregation explored the theme of shelter and continues the theme this evening
as we contemplate shelter and the expectant mother Mary, whose womb is home to
God. Mary, expectant mother, shelters the saviour of the world. A few months
ago Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, welcomed Mary into her home – she too expectant
with a baby – and she expresses being blessed by Mary’s and God’s presence in
her home. John the Baptist, Elizabeth’s baby, leaps in her womb, in his first
home, acknowledging Emmanuel, God-with-us, Jesus soon to be birthed to a new
home on earth.
Expectant Home.
Tonight, we shelter in our
thoughts and prayers expectant mothers – we hold expectant hopes and dreams.
We pray for mothers who are
housed this night in maternity wards, hospitals, birthing houses; for those sheltering
in precarious or emergency places. We give thanks for sheltering hands of doulas,
midwifes, nurses, doctors, EMTs, and the occasional taxi driver who assist
babies into their second homes. This home we call earth.
Expectant Home.
Our second home – where we
are met by brightness and expanse, noise and changing temperature; a place
where everything is new to us, chaotic, overwhelming. A place where our first
few weeks are spent sleeping and eating – growing and processing - to
acclimatize to this our second home.
A whole bunch of research
has been done on helping babies transition the move from their first home to
their second. The thought is that adults – moms, dads, and those who gather
around a little one- are the shelter for the baby by imitating a womb-like-home,
and this welcomes, settles, and calms babies in their worldly home. The three
practices for sheltering infants: swaddling, lullabying, and rocking.
There
comes with each baby welcomed into the world hope, hope wrapped in the miracle
of life, hope wrapping potential and possibility. There is hope that the baby will
be swaddled, lullabied, and rocked; made to feel at home, to grow into this
earthly home. Yet, there is no guarantee that this second home will be home at
all.
As
we contemplate the expectant birth of Jesus, we
consider children without permanent homes, who find shelter in orphanages,
foster care homes, or institutional settlings like group homes or treatment
facilities. According to the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada approximately
63,000 children across Canada live in government care. 30,000 of these children
are available for adoption. In a given year only 2000 are adopted into homes. In
addition, there are another 235,000 children/youth nationwide at risk of
entering care due to unstable family situations. On their website the
Children’s Aid Foundation boldly states, “We believe every child deserves to
live in a safe and loving home.”
Expectant Home.
A safe and loving home. For
centuries prophets were expectant, waiting for God’s vision of home to come. Home,
a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, where the Messiah would open a
door to a home of peace, mercy, and love.
Tonight, we gather to
celebrate home: the event where God came to dwell among us. In Bethlehem, which
translated is ‘House of Bread,’ embraced the expectant hopes of generations to heal
the fears of all the years that night when Jesus was born.
Bp. Azar of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, writes in his 2024 Christmas
Message, “We are approaching another Christmas without peace in our land. Like
God’s people in the time of Jesus, we are suffering under the weight of state
violence and control. With tens of thousands dead and millions displaced.
Christmas in Bethlehem will once again pass without the typical tree lightings,
scout marches, and other festivities. As the world prepares to celebrate, our
hearts are with our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. We feel the
darkness that surrounded the first Christmas. Not a night of parades or Santa Claus,
but of the holy family searching for refuge far from home.
Yet, even in these dark days
as we wait for the light to come, we find hope in the words of Paul in Hebrews,
Chapter 13 Verse 8: “Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday and today and forever.”
Expectant Home.
Until recently in North
America, there was a general expectation that one would leave their second home,
not earth, but the house they grew up in, to rent, then buy a starter home, to
later buy a bigger home. This is no longer true, everything is not the same
today as yesterday. Perhaps we have been deluding ourselves, chasing and
building shelter that is not expectant home.
At Christmas we want the
shelter of hope and peace. We want joy and love in our dwellings. We are
expectant. Jesus, the Word Incarnate, comes to this earthly home. Two thousand
years later we shelter in the words, the hope, the faith, that Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday and today and forever; especially amid bomb shelters,
building rubble, broken homes, no homes, and promises of housing and peace yet
to be.
Tonight, in community, in
singing, in hearing the Christmas story, in candlelight, in communion, we are
filled with expectant home: swaddled, lullabied, and rocked. We return to an atmosphere
like that of our first home, sheltered in a never-ending-hug. Coming home we
are embraced, settled, and calmed.
Expectant Home.
This is our first home,
transitioned to our second home. The event of Jesus’ birth, dwelling with us, warms
our hearts to be home, to be shelter, to imitate our first home where God
creates with expectant hopes filled with love and peace and joy.
We can be home – swaddling -
weighted blankets, lots of covers, hugs, holding hands;
We can be home - lullabying,
- humming, singing, quiet talking, whispered words of encouragement;
We can be home - rocking – cradling,
bouncing on our knee, dancing, walking;
We can be home. We can be
home for others.
Swaddling, lullabying, and
rocking takes us HOME – returns us to Creator- and a God who chose to become
incarnate for the love of all who share this earthly home.
Jesus
Christ is home, the same yesterday and today and forever.
Expectant Home.
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