An Open Table where Love knows no borders

The Baby Who Brings Us Home

A sermon on Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14 & John 1: 1-18 by Nathan Nettleton, 4 January 2009 

I was talking a few days ago with some friends who were about to meet their nephew for the first time. The nephew was no longer a baby, but a child of two or three years old. There was a lot of grief about not having met him before. You see, it wasn’t because the family had been living overseas or something, but because an unresolved conflict had kept them apart. Two sides of the family had refused to see each other, and even now it wasn’t really resolved; it had just settled enough that the were taking the risk. The child was the point of hope. He had been born since the conflict and was in no way implicated in any of it, and focussing on the joy of this child was the best chance that the family were going to get through the first meeting without some kind of eruption. It’s not an altogether uncommon story. Lots of family schisms only begin to be healed when a baby comes along and everybody finds some sort of new unity in their common attachment to the new baby. The exiles and prodigals are drawn home by the birth of a new child who, despite the feuds, is united to them by blood.

There is something of that story in the nativity stories and the readings that are chosen to reflect on them, and it comes through in tonight’s readings. I mentioned last Sunday that getting a feel for the ancient Israelite hopes and expectations for a messiah sheds a lot of light on who Jesus is and why he came among us. Tonight’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah is a good example, and one of the images it uses is that of the Messiah bringing the exiles home. “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,” says the Lord. And particular attention is paid to those who are doubly exiled by physical or social disability. “Among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, for I have become a father to them, and they are my firstborn.”

So we have this image of the exiles and prodigals being brought home, and joyous celebrations accompanying their return. It is described as a redemption: the Lord “has redeemed them from hands too strong for them”. This same idea appears in the reading we heard from the letter to the Ephesians: “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.” And as we are learning to read these images in the New Testament conscious of the echoes that are being sounded from the older Hebrew scriptures, we can recognise the link. When the apostle speaks of redemption, we are prompted to bring to mind that whole history of the hopes and expectations of the messiah who will redeem the people, bringing back the exiles and prodigals to a joyous homecoming on Mount Zion. As the apostle puts it, God has revealed “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” This is the redemption of all, the joyous homecoming of all, the gathering up of all things in the lavish love and mercy of God.

It is not only the image of redemption that ties these two passages together. Through Jeremiah we hear the Lord say, “I will lead them back, for I have become a father to them, and they are my firstborn.” And in Ephesians we hear that God “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.” This is a theme that runs all the way through the Hebrew scriptures. God calls Adam and Eve his children, and then adopts the nation of Israel as his child, but over and over the story is one of a family divided by schism. Again and again the child rebels and runs away, or is carted off to exile in strange and hostile lands. And again and again God expresses the desire to set out and bring home the exiles and the prodigals. And among the hurting and estranged exiles themselves, the hope grows of the messiah who will redeem them, bring them home, and gather everyone and everything together in the joyous celebration of God’s love and desire. But what will it take to set the wheels in motion? Will it be the birth of a baby?

It is against this backdrop of exile and estrangement and hope for redemption that the Apostle John speaks of the messiah as the one who “was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” “Did not accept him.” Can you feel the pain of that? The estrangement? The need for reconciliation? This is the family feud of the whole humanity. Cut off from God who is our father and mother and who longs to bring us home, but who we no longer recognise or accept. And yet deep in the guts of every one of us is the gnawing hunger for home, for reconciliation, for acceptance back into the family of God.

In these family feuds, what often stymies any hope of reconciliation is that both sides harden their position and point the finger at the other and say it is up to them to make the first conciliatory move since they are more in the wrong. And with both sides equally thus convinced, the feud simply perpetuates itself and the estrangement grows deeper. You can see this writ large in Gaza in the present escalation of hostilities. You can see it in various conflicts in Africa, in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the world. You may have seen it among your friends or in your own family. You may even be, or have been, party to such a stand-off yourself. In humanity’s feud with God, it has clearly happened on our side. We might not always have been game to say it out loud, but we have mostly seen God as being at fault. We have seen God as being too unreasonable, too perfectionist, too harsh and judgemental in his condemnation of our behaviours, and so we have given up hope of mending the feud. It’s impossible. We can never even get to first base with such a demanding God.

But perhaps as we’ve stood with our arms tightly folded and our backs turned, we’ve failed to notice something. Perhaps we’ve failed to notice that God is not pointing the finger back, but has come among us holding out the olive branch. Or holding out a baby. Or as a baby.

And strangely, this baby comes both fulfilling and subverting our expectations of a messiah. Subverting them because we expected a powerful warrior king who would crush the forces of evil and triumphantly establish a new throne around which we could unite; but fulfilling them because as we unite around this new baby, we find ourselves drawn home and accepted back. And we find this baby revealing to us that God is not the harsh judgemental God we imagined, for if he had been he would indeed have come as the warrior king and the crushing of evil would have crushed us too for the stain of evil has left none of us uncontaminated. But instead we see in this baby the revelation of a God full of generous grace and truth and light, as John puts it, and destining us for adoption as his children according to the good pleasure of his will, and freely bestowing glorious grace on us in the Beloved, as Paul puts it. And we see a God who puts no preconditions on the offer but makes all the first moves to gather us from exile and draw us home to bathe in that glorious grace. We see a God whose greatest longing is to welcome us home as beloved children and shower us with light and love that we might live freely and joyously, full of grace and truth.

That’s the meaning of Christmas, the message of the nativity stories. This baby has been born that our longings to be welcomed home and God’s longings to gather his children together might mutually fulfil each other as we gather around the baby God has given and called us to. And in gathering around this baby, and in discovering the love made known in him, lie the hopes of a broken feuding world for peace and forgiveness and reconciliation.

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