The Manger as a cure for holiday homesickness...

"Pastor, when will you be going home for the holidays?" is a question I hear a lot between Thanksgiving and New Years. "I'm not" is the answer I have given the past three years...though a better answer is probably "I am home" because in reality, Lawrence is home and it has been for the last two and a half years. But for some reason, to not be near the rest of our family this year is harder than is has been the past two years.

Maybe it's because now that Chris and I are married, I want us to be able to share our joy with our families.
Maybe it's because our families are growing with our cousins getting married and having children.
Maybe it's because our grandparents are getting older and I want to get in every last holiday that I can with them.

It's probably a combination of the three with some other stuff thrown in. But my sister, who is a very wise young woman (most of the time, haha), reminded me of something that I mentioned in our text study group a couple weeks ago. We were talking about the traditions related to Christmas worship and why they are important.
Why do we read the same passages every year?
why do we sing the same songs every year?

I argued, and I will argue this until the day I die, that one of the reasons that it is good that we sing the same songs and read the same lessons is that for the people who wander into our doors on Christmas Eve, the manger becomes home.

We live in an ever changing, ever mobile world where people don't always get home for Christmas and so the church has an opportunity to open their doors and welcome people home by offering up readings and songs that people have heard since their childhood, whether it was in church, or at home, or on the radio, the TV or in the movies.

In the incarnation of Jesus as an infant in a manger, God opened his/her arms and created a home for all to come to and be welcomed, whether it is in your home or a home away from home. In hearing Luke 2, in singing Silent Night, you can feel the Holy Spirit at working making the place you are in a home. This is the power of God at work on Christmas. I experienced it 8 years ago in Rome, Italy, in the back of an English speaking Roman Catholic church. Luke 2 was read, Silent Night sung, and I was home for a little bit, because I knew my family was about to do the same thing. It has happened every year I have been away from my family since then. I'm at home in God's embrace in the comfort of the manger.