I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow
And mistletoe
And presents on the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams
Ill be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.[i]
Context is everything. For years I knew that song as an oldie, a Christmas standard, particularly beloved by my parents’ generation. I only learned very late in the game that the song was written in the midst of World War II, from the point of view of the soldier. Which, of course, drastically alters the way I now hear that last melancholy line: “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”
Is there any time of year that so powerfully evokes for most of us this notion of “home”? We all know what it’s supposed to look like, being home for Christmas: Snow, yes, and the large family house with the sounds of children and caroling, the fragrances of cookies baking, poultry roasting, and pine needles settling on the tree. Lights in the windows, perhaps festooned on the house itself. A fire in the fireplace. Laughter. Singing.
And the people: Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa, and children and grandchildren and friends and neighbors.
Home for Christmas. We all have a picture of what it’s supposed to look like, and it’s beautiful and evocative and perilous.
Perilous, because context is everything. Fewer than half of all American families look like that family we still idealize. We no longer grow up, most of us, next door to our grandparents. Families are far-flung, and if they gather for Christmas they do so from distances of hundreds or thousands of miles. Families are divorced, and living in new configurations. Maybe your household has dad and papa. Or mom. Or grandpa. Maybe you live alone and happily. Maybe your spouse travels for work much of the year. Being ‘home for Christmas’ may not be possible, and even if it is, it may not look anything like the image we still see in movies and on TV and on greeting cards.
Context is everything. In our reading from 2 Samuel, David has pretty much just stepped off the battlefield—just completed the hard and bloody work of consolidating his power and defeating the remnants of those who opposed his ascending the throne, God’s anointed or not. And David has some key things going for him: he’s a tactical and strategic genius, militarily speaking. He’s charismatic and attractive—the narrative mentions his ruddy beauty more than once. He’s a natural leader. He now has his palace—though a house of cedar conjures up a ski lodge for me, more than it does Camelot. David needs just one more thing. He needs to build a house, a home, for the God who has had his back—the God who helped the prophet Samuel to pick him out of a line-up of older and stronger and more accomplished brothers. The God who urged Samuel to anoint David, and transferred the divine allegiance to him, and gave him victory in battle after battle. The God who, throughout the reign of David, was more present, more apparent to the people, than at almost any time during Israel’s history.
Building a home for the local god was a kingly thing to do. Make no mistake: David’s conscience may well have pricked him, that here he was in his cozy cedar lodge and God was camping out. But to have built God a house, to have been able to say, “I have given the God of Israel a home,” was yet another strategic move to consolidate David’s kingly power. Context is everything.
So, David makes the following announcement to the current prophet-in-residence, Nathan. David doesn’t dare to speak to God directly here. Perhaps he is looking to Nathan for guidance, for blessing, which Nathan gives. But then God speaks to Nathan, too, the royal go-between, God responds, and I love God’s response. “I’m not too good to camp out,” God says. “I’ve been camping out for a good long time, going back to the days when I was leading my people out of slavery in Egypt and they were wandering around in the desert for forty years. I like this mobile lifestyle. You think you’re going to do me a big favor by building me a temple, a house, a home. Well, I have other notions of what a house or home might mean.
“Remember,” God reminds David, “when you were literally running around after sheep a pasture, a dirty nobody of a kid? Remember how I was with you there, and I took you from that pasture to give you another job? Remember,” God says, “this battle and that battle, when I was your front line for offense and your rear guard for defense? Have you notice that, wherever you go, I shall go?
“I’m not saying a temple wouldn’t be nice at some point,” says God, “maybe built for me by some other king. But for you, David, I am going to show you a new understanding of ‘house’ and ‘home.’” And by this God means, David’s imprint upon God’s people is here to stay. The lineage of David, its impact on God’s people, will never diminish. In fact, it will grow even stronger, in new and startling ways
Fast-forward roughly one thousand years. Another nobody, this time a young girl in a Palestinian backwater called Nazareth, has something happen to her in the sixth month of somebody else’s story (those somebodies would be Elizabeth and Zechariah). Mary has a brush with God’s intentions for her, in the form of an announcement by a frightening angel (they’re all frightening, evidently). “Don’t be afraid,” says the angel (because they all have to say that). “God thinks you are pretty wonderful,” the angel continues. “God would like to… move in with you. Set up housekeeping, so to speak.” And this is where God’s promise to David takes a most unexpected turn.
The astonishing, the unbelievable, the world-overturning announcement the angel makes to Mary is this: The God who has been content to live in a tent has now decided that Mary will be that tent. The God who refused to let the beloved King David build the divine dwelling will now make Mary the divine dwelling. God has finally decided—or, more likely, God has known all along—exactly what “home” God wants to dwell in. That home is us. See, the home of God is among mortals [Rev. 21:3]. People. Humanity.
This is it, right here. The reason for the season, as the saying goes. A lot of ink is spilled (or, perhaps, a lot of pixels are rendered) over this question, “What does Christmas mean?” and people’s answer to that depends on where they are coming from. Context is everything. For those who have been looking for work for 18 months Christmas might mean some temporary seasonal employment, to keep foreclosure at bay a little longer. Or this year Christmas might mean a family’s first time in a shelter. In the lexicon of the Christmas carol, Christmas might mean the season to tell your loved ones how you feel about them. According to the commercials, Christmas means having just the right gift, right food, right clothes, right decorations so that we can celebrate in style. But I am going to tell you, right now, once and for all, this is what Christmas means: the home of God is with us. Immanuel. God-with-us.
Callow young shepherd boys and girls from nowheresville. Investment bankers and hog farmers and shoe repair men. Nursing home aides and McDonald’s employees and neurologists. Frame shop owners and college students and little boys who have just celebrated their sixth birthday. Elderly women and men in wheelchairs, with and without dementia. People standing in the unemployment line and the line in from of the Salvation Army. People living in mansions and people living in FEMA trailers. People with twenty children and people with one or none. Altos and cellists and accordion players. Cooks and cookie bakers and bartenders.
See, God’s home is among us. I’ll be home for Christmas, God sings to us, in that melancholy basso profundo of his. Only, this is no dream. God will be home for Christmas, whatever your home and mine look like, whether we have carols playing or hip hop, whether we are watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” or anime. God will be home for Christmas, because God’s home is with us, and in us. I’ll be home for Christmas, sings God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Copyright 1943, Kim Gannon and Walter Kent.
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