Advent is a homecoming

Imagine loving us so much that you couldn’t stand to be apart

Once in a flash, one sign is all it takes to see. And here it is, by baggage claim nine. 

A handmade sign—WELCOME HOME!!!—is rolled under a father’s arm, his mile-wide smile beaming at his boy-now-man who has come back. Right here by the spinning carousel of suitcases, he has clasped his son’s neck like a million-dollar prize, grinning like a fool, bright eyes beholding the only thing that matters: his child, right here, close enough to embrace again. 

The son holds his backpack straps on strong shoulders, half-embarrassed, half-thrilled, old enough not to duck his head away in adolescent annoyance, but young enough to enjoy a fuss made in his honor. The baggage claim bustles around the pair, hundreds of weary passengers pushing and shoving, trying to get home.

But there stands the parable of the prodigal, fresh as ever and clear as day. 

The elder, unafraid to love in bold colors and bright letters. 
The younger, bashful and blushing to be welcomed with open arms. 

It does not matter if the son was only off at school, or serving overseas, or moved across the country for work and came home for feasting. It does not matter if there was no deep animosity between them, no hard hurts to forgive. Because love glimpsed anywhere is love the same. 

What shines between them echoes of the moment they met, the day that one cannot remember and one will never forget, or every evening he carried the sleeping boy inside from the car, or every afternoon the yellow school bus slowed by the corner, returning the precious cargo, or every late night curfewed arrival in high school, home safe and sound. Years of long love spark between them in an instant like an electric current, the tried and tested affection of two who are bound together for life. 

Surely they have had to forgive each other a hundred—no, a thousand—times along the way, but all that past is forgotten in this present. Soon the future will sweep them up, but the truth of this moment will linger. Good stories are good like that.

What’s more, the father’s sign and the son’s embrace, the smallest encounter glimpsed by a stranger, suddenly throws the whole baggage claim into new light. There are a hundred—no, a thousand—jostling stories and circumstances and races and faces and ages and relationships packed into this crowded corridor, but we are all the same: drawn together by love, pulled apart by hurt, stitched back together by forgiveness, drawn together by love again. And aren’t we all lugging more than a little luggage with us?

Look around—the airport, the grocery store, the highway, the schoolyard. The lost son is all of us, wayfaring, struggling, acting a fool and wasting the goodness we’ve been given. You, me, everyone we know: we’ve all done it, many of us wandering still, worrying ourselves too lost to turn back.

But the glorious, gleaming, pressed-to-the-limits-of-love truth of the tale is the homemade sign. Every letter markered with joy, every word written for us. The robe on the shoulders, the ring on the finger, the finest food on the table, the dancing and laughter and song after song.

You walk through the crowds transfigured once you start to see every face beheld, every chin cupped by a loving hand. If we knew this story was handwritten for each of us, could it change the way we clamored through the world? Of course it would. We wouldn’t need to rush, or worry, or fear, or hate. We could extend the extravagant love to another, even a stranger. Like the child’s toy of Jacob’s Ladder flipping over and over, we could turn and return to each other, giving the love we’ve been given, again and again without end, believing it would never run dry, knowing that more for another need does not mean less for us.

We need Advent to remind us. You cannot buy this love, cannot grab forgiveness on sale in stores, cannot ship wisdom by Saturday. You have to put down the screens, the striving, the scorn, the selfish envy, and the scrappy fear. You have to figure out how to rebelong. Even to the ones who have hurt you. Even to the ones once-closest to you.

The prodigal son forgot. 

Forgot that he belonged. Forgot that he was loved. Forgot that he could be forgiven.

He tried to belong to everything else—independence, self-determination, power, money, booze, sex, rock-n-roll—and found himself exactly where you’d expect (exactly where none of us ever expect to end up): in a steaming pile of manure of his own making.

So he trudged home. But plot twist of all plot twists, his old man didn’t just let him sneak in the back door with a glare and a grudge. No, his longing heart was already hoping and watching for the long-lost child at the window. When he caught sight of the familiar figure while he was still a long way off, the faithful father went flying down the road like a fool, robe flapping, arms flung wide open.

Why do we forget this, time and time again? Forget how we belong to each other?

Because we are prickly pears and stubborn sinners, every human who’s walked the stony ground. Because we barely believe ourselves good enough to be loved, let alone forgiven. Because we have wounded each other with words and weapons, stabbed friends in the back or slapped family in the face, scorned strangers as scum of the earth.

Imagine seeing us, all of us, even the worst of us. And loving us so much that you couldn’t stand to be apart any longer. 

Imagine being God, and then becoming human. Imagine changing everything about existence because Love cannot stay far.

Incarnation is an Advent story, but it cannot stay contained to a season or a calendar or even church walls. Love made flesh bleeds into every ordinary day, flinging wide the windows and catching sight of us again, while we are still a long way off. Again and again and again we are embraced, we are forgiven, we are celebrated with a feast the neighbors will never forget.

Advent is a homecoming. A holy embrace of humanity, a rush down the road when we think we’re beyond saving, a door swung open and a crowd of love pulling us inside. If God can find a home here among us, determined to save us from ourselves, then can we not make a home for each other, to join in the good work begun by the babe in the manger?

Right now our salvation is still gestating. Yes it’s begun, and the victory is won, and every good truth the carols sing loud. But we know we are still in process, aren’t we? The womb of God’s mercy is strong, thank heavens, and we can trust we are growing every day in ways beyond our grasp or control. But when that final moment comes, the great glorious burst of birth, our chance—like Christ, who made all ways before us, for us—to enter into a whole new existence, the joy of that day will spill over greater than any love we know here-below, even the few bright and perfect moments, foretastes of forever that let us know what comes next will be grace beyond all telling.

You could preach it like that. Or you could simply scrawl in big block letters on a posterboard you bought at Walgreens the night before your kid came back—WELCOME HOME!!!

Every good and true homecoming hints at what awaits. What is always shining bright before our eyes.

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Scripture worth savoring: The parable of the prodigal son. Which is also the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. Read them all together for a beautiful pairing of opposites.

Theological fun fact worth pondering: “Hebrew has two main words that are translated into “mercy” or its synonyms in English.  The first is rachamim or racham (related from the root word rechem meaning womb), translated as “merciful” in Ps 103:8. Racham conveys the sense of mercy as the tender, compassionate love that springs from the deep connection rooted in a natural bond like pregnancy or childbirth. This intimate maternal image suggests that mercy is a place—indeed, that we exist within the nurturing, protective womb of God’s mercy.” (From Mercy: God’s Nature, Our Challenge)

And a poem you simply must read: ”Shoulders “by Naomi Shihab Nye.