Peace UMC Worship Blog 
Blogging Toward Sunday, December 4th, 2016
Second Sunday in Advent
Sermon: Rev. LeeAnn Inman
Come Home for Christmas: "Come Home to Love"
Scripture: Jeremiah 33:1-16
While he was still confined to the prison quarters, the Lord's word came to Jeremiah a second time: 2 The Lord proclaims, the Lord who made the earth, who formed and established it, whose name is the Lord: 3 Call to me and I will answer and reveal to you wondrous secrets that you haven't known.
4 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, proclaims about the houses of this city and the palaces of the kings of Judah that were torn down to defend against the siege ramps and weapons 5 of the invading Babylonians. They will be filled with the corpses of those slain in my fierce anger. I hid my face from the people of this city because of all their evil deeds, 6 but now I will heal and mend them. I will make them whole and bless them with an abundance of peace and security. 7 I will bring back the captives of Judah and Israel, and I will rebuild them as they were at first. 8 I will cleanse them of all the wrongdoing they committed against me, and I will forgive them for all of their guilt and rebellion. 9 Then this city will bring me great joy, praise, and renown before all nations on earth, when they hear of all the good I provide for them. They will be in total awe at all the good and prosperity I provide for them.
10 The Lord proclaims: You have said about this place, "It is a wasteland, without humans or animals." Yet in the ravaged and uninhabited towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, 11 the sounds of joy and laughter and the voices of the bride and the bridegroom will again be heard. So will the voices of those who say, as thank offerings are brought to the Lord's temple, "Give thanks to the Lord of heavenly forces, for the Lord is good and his kindness lasts forever." I will bring back the captives of this land as they were before, says the Lord.
12 The Lord of heavenly forces proclaims: This wasteland, without humans or animals-and all its towns-will again become pastures for shepherds to care for their flocks. 13 Shepherds will again count their flocks in the towns of the highlands, the western foothills and the arid southern plain, in the land of Benjamin, as well as in the outlying areas of Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, says the Lord.
14 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill my gracious promise with the people of Israel and Judah. 15 In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David's line, who will do what is just and right in the land. 16 In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety
British Poet G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem called "The House of Christmas" that captures the underlying feelings and mixed emotions that so often accompany the season before Christmas.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise;
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the Yule tale was begun.
(from Modern British Poetry)

Feeling "out of place" or homesick is a genuine human emotion that emerges with a vengeance during the holiday season. These feelings show up in scriptures from both the Old and New Testaments read during Advent. We encounter it in the words of a homesick prophet named Jeremiah, writing from prison. He could see the upcoming destruction: the temple ransacked, the smoldering city, homes destroyed, families disrupted, and the people carried off into exile. But that was not all Jeremiah could see. He saw beyond the obvious destruction and oppression something even more real. God's spirit gave Jeremiah the vision of what the poet Chesterton referred to in the last verse of his "House of Christmas" as "the things that cannot be (but) are." Jeremiah helped the people see the hopeful vision that he saw: that one day God would bring them home. "With prophetic vision, he could see God's promise of healing, restoration, return and renewal (James Harnish in An Advent Study for Adults)."

The whole of chapter 33 in Jeremiah's prophecy is about promise: God's promises to his fickle, homesick, unfaithful, love-starved people to find the hope, love, joy and peace that only being at home with God can bring. Jeremiah not only saw the vision; he heard the laughter of homesick exiles skipping along on the road that would bring them home.

We are among God's fickle, homesick, love-starved people who need the message of Advent, the holy invitation to come home for Christmas. The journey begins as we learn to pray, in the words of the Christmas carol:

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!"
 
Come home to love!
LeeAnn