Pastors. I don’t know why you put up with us! Someone gave me an article from the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back that highlighted websites with names like these: creativepastors.com, sermoncentral.com, sermonspice.com and my favorite, desperatepreacher.com.

These are websites that lots of preachers in the U.S. are now using to find or sometimes buy their sermons off of! No need to spend hours and hours every week studying, praying, thinking, listening when for $10 you can buy one off the web and deliver it on Sunday morning! One website gave this advice: “Don’t be original, be effective!” This morning I can’t promise you a scintillating sermon. But I’d like you at least to know it didn’t come off of desperatepreacher.com!

We went to the airport yesterday (and yes, the ever-controversial Christmas trees are back up), to pick up our son Jesse coming home for Christmas break from school. It was kind of a treat to be out there. Busy, lots of hubbub, lots of families doing the same thing.

We’ve been anticipating Jess’ homecoming since well before Thanksgiving. Last week Anne cleared all of her art supplies and projects out of Jesse’s room to get ready for his arrival! Very exciting. But it struck me that yesterday’s arrival, even just for our family…had a lot more attention given to it than the one that happened 2000 years ago at Jesus’ birth. The gospel writer Luke intentionally, I think, paints a very sparse picture with precious few details for us to stumble over. Perhaps because he doesn’t want us to miss the point.

Reading: Luke 2:1-7.

A decree went out from Emperor Augustus. Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus.

Grand nephew and handpicked heir of Julius Caesar.

The man who defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra to become the supreme ruler, the Emperor of the entire Roman Empire, stretching across the whole Mediterranean region.

Caesar Augustus, credited with building the empire. Commander in Chief of huge and mighty armies. Builder of roads.

Caesar Augustus, the head of an empire with a political burocracy stretching into every nook and cranny of the world.

Caesar Augustus, with a throne and palaces and the mighty capital city, Rome.

Caesar Augustus, the one responsible, they say, for negotiating an uneasy peace for some 20 years with all of the factions of the empire.

Caesar Augustus, the one people hailed as “savior,” as “savior of the whole world,” and even as a…god.

On Caesar’s birthday, one inscription we still have said, “the birthday of the god has marked the beginning of the good news through him for the world.” Caesar Augustus. Power. Politics. Wealth. Influence. “A decree went out from Emperor Augustus.”

The gospel writer Luke would be disappointed if we missed the amazing irony of his putting Caesar Augustus and Jesus Christ in the same paragraph of scripture. Stacked next to the amazing power and might and wealth and humanly declared divinity of Rome and Caesar Augustus, what was a poor family traveling 85 miles by foot, and one small child born, wrapped in a cloth and laid in the eating trough of animals because there was no place ready for them to stay?

No airport greeting. No luxurious birthing suite at Bethlehem General Hospital. Even by the rough standards of the day, there were no frills for this child. In fact, there was no home, at least in the beginning. Interesting, isn’t it? That the one whom Luke so obviously contrasts with Caesar Augustus as the real bringer of peace, the real savior, the real one the whole world needs and waits for, the real embodiement of the good news…is born with no home to sleep in.

Now, all sorts of fascinating stories have arisen over why the first nights of Jesus’ life were as a homeless child. Some say that Bethlehem was so overflowing with people there for the census that Joseph and Mary were unable to procure a reservation. Some portray the innkeeper as a villain, greedy for money and cold-hearted, giving away their room for more cash. Other stories say the innkeeper was a good man, perhaps just too busy to pay attention.

Nice stories. But they sure have a lot more detail than Luke’s gospel, don’t they?

Luke doesn’t give us much. Bare, simple, plain. The Savior of the World, God Incarnate comes as one of the lowly, the poor, the home-less. Even in adulthood, once he was called to ministry, it seemed to be more of the same. When potential recruits wanted to follow him, he made sure they knew “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He was, in a number of ways, a person without a home.

Home. Just the word has a certain ring to it, we haven’t totally ruined it yet. “I’m going home.” “A homecoming.” “A place to call home.” If we were lucky, we had a home growing up. Not everyone does. Sometimes it’s just the dream of a home. Somewhere to go where we belong, that feels whole, where we are peaceful and comfortable.

I’m fortunate to be back in Seattle. My parents still live in the house I grew up in. I can drop by for a visit. I know where they keep the key to the basement. I know what the click of the light switches sound like. I know where the cookie jar is. I can plop down on the couch, put my feet up and be totally relaxed. Even though I don’t live there, it’s home.

As we grow older, we figure out how to make a home of one kind or another ourselves. It’s more than the brick or wood structure that has a door we open and walk into. Often it involves other people. But for it to be home, it has to be where we can really be ourselves. It’s a refuge, a place of peace that is familiar.

When Anne and I take our dog Lucy out for a run we can go for miles and she absolutely loves it. But she knows exactly when we get back close to home. Everything is familiar, parking strips, trees, smells, the cat next door. She gets eager to go back up the 7 cement steps to the front sidewalk, and then the four wooden ones to the front door and in through the house to the back porch where her water bowl is. Life is good. She’s home. It’s familiar.

I’m incredibly blessed. I’ve experienced a great deal of “home” in my life. Many of you have as well. And yet…despite the great blessing that home is, we still get restless. My experience is that means one of two things.

1. Before we meet Christ, I think we are restless and go looking for home in lots of wrong places. We think that careers or savings accounts or status or whatever it is will provide a home, but they turn out to be deadends. They don’t satisfy, or they only satisfy momentarily.

What we really want, what we really need is only satisfied by finding, or being found by the God in whose image we are made. St. Augustine’s famous prayer “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” is right on track. Restlessness can come because Christ has not been born in us. And so we, in a sense, wander homeless until we find ourselves with the One born in Bethlehem.

2. But there’s another restlessness that strikes us too, it’s a kind of Advent restlessness and it’s tied up with the longing for Christ to come again, the second coming.

Last Sunday Anne and I went up to Whidbey Island after the morning services for an overnight. We sat in a little bistro having a leisurely dinner and talking. And we asked each other one of the Advent questions: “If Advent is a season of waiting…what are you waiting for?” And when Anne asked me that question, I thought for a moment, and I opened my mouth to answer…and I started to cry. I just sat and cried and cried.

It seemed at that moment like there were just too many friends I’d talked to who were in pain, who were sick, who had crummy things going on, who found themselves in places they never wanted to be.

Perhaps more than ever in my life what I longed for was for Christ to come and set things straight. I could taste my desire for the day Revelation talks about when “God will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain.” I could understand why people could actually look not so much for the end of life, but for the day when Christ comes again. That’s part of Advent. The second coming. The time when restlessness is satisfied and home is found.

So homelessness can in one sense be internal. Frederick Buechner once wrote: “To be homeless the way people like you and me are apt to be homeless is to have homes all over the place but not to be really at home in any of them.”

Which is another way of saying that ultimately home is found in a Person. The person of Jesus Christ, born into the world and coming again from heaven. The one who started as a homeless baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in an animal trough. And whose life ended as a crucified Messiah, wrapped in burial linens and laid in a tomb not his own…which in the end could not hold Him. Home is being in Christ.

Now, we could stop right here and go home thinking about homelessness as metaphor for our spiritual lives and our need for Christ. That would be good, and probably more than enough. But Luke’s story is of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who was born into flesh, into a real world where beggars rattled cans for coins on the corner and people got sick and died and sometimes the dirt could overwhelm you and many times injustice kept good people from having opportunity and people struggled with mental illness and kids were born into scandal-filled families who had no place to stay. Real world.

On any given night, several thousand Seattlelites live on the street. Several thousand more are in shelters on any given night. And who knows how many others are just as homeless by having no community to be welcomed into? At every turn we must ask ourselves what Jesus might find if he were born in our city. Our neighborhood.

As a church community, a couple years ago we had to reevaluate the Foodbank ministry we had shared in for 20 years. To the surprise of many, we learned that the crying need in Seattle was not so much for food…that was at least somewhat accessible by a number of means…but for housing. We’re slowly trying to shift some of our resources that direction.

In the last few years we’ve been able to help 7-8 people living on the street get into housing through a very lengthy and very labor-intense process. And our Session voted last week on the final distribution of a housing fund, nearly $80,000, to go towards partnering with our Wednesday Night Dinner and three other Seattle ministry partners that provide different types of housing opportunities for people.

But frankly, though writing the checks is critical…it is also the easy part. What is much harder is to let it become personal. To give time. To get involved with people who are homeless is much harder.

Twenty some years ago now, we invited a young woman who was living on the street to live with us for about six months. I think it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done. Being involved with people is messy. It’s totally inefficient. And…it is part of our calling to dive into the same real world Jesus entered and found no room in.

You know, I think, that reading and watching Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite things to do. Last night I was watching the George C. Scott movie where there is a great scene where Ebeneezer Scrooge, stingy, cold-hearted Ebeneezer is with the ghost of Christmas Present. The Spirit takes Scrooge to the outskirts of the city, where homeless families huddle under a bridge. Scrooge snarls:

“Why are these people out here? Men and women in rags, children eating scraps…there are institutions.”

The Spirit answers dryly,

“Have you visited any of them, these institutions you speak of?”

Scrooge replies

“No, but I’m taxed for them, isn’t that enough?”

And the Ghost of Christmas Present simply asks

“Is it?” Is it?

Efrem Smith pastors a Baptist church back in Minneapolis. The church found out that 40 kids were bused from a homeless shelter to an elementary school in their neighborhood. They said “we’re going to make sure that these 40 kids, even though they’re coming from a homeless shelter, don’t need to look like they’re worse off than everybody else.” They bought them new school supplies, coats and mittens.

Then, Smith says, “I asked the uncomfortable question.” Which I’ll ask us this morning. “Why are these 40 elementary kids homeless? Why have our homes become so closed, so like country clubs that homeless kids can’t find residence in our houses?” It’s a messy question that moves beyond writing a check or creating a program. It means being in people’s lives.

There are millions of homeless people in the world. Every night in the world, in this country, in this city, people die of exposure. People search for doorways to lie down in. And then there are many millions more who do not live on the street, but who have no community, no person who would stick with them in friendship, no door that would open to welcome them, no place where they might relax and be loved for who they are.

Now, if I was sitting where you are I’d probably be saying,

“Dan, you are just stacking things to do on. I’m tired. I need to just sit and “be.” I’m worn out from what I’m already doing. Isn’t enough, enough?”

And yet the words of Dickens’ ghost ring in my ears: “Is it?” And the words of Luke ring in my ears: “There was no place for them.” No home. And I’m struck more than ever that if we are following hard after Jesus that our lives will always have this uneasy tension to them. It’s a good tension. We will always have to hold together our own need to find rest in our Savior, and the call to engage in the nitty gritty, needs of people in our real world. Until Jesus comes again.

Buechner again: “To be really at home is to be really at peace… our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no real peace for any of us until there is real peace for all of us.”

This morning I hold up for you this first part of the Christmas story, this picture of Jesus born without a place to stay not so that you will fill sorry for Jesus, not be falsely moved by pity for poor Jesus, “away in a manger no crib for a bed.” But simply to marvel with you that this is the way God chose to be God:

-To come among us as one poor, not with the wealth of emperors.

-To come among us in weakness and not in the power of a commander-in-chief.

-To come among us in such a way that we can never say to God: you don’t know what it’s like. Because He does know: birth. homelessness. persecution. hatred. death.

-To come among us with humility, sacrifice, costly giving…words that we usually manage to push to the very edges of our lives.

This is the way that God chose to be God. And as our restless hearts find our rest in Him, may we have hearts (and doors) open to others. Amen.