Message for the Second Week of Advent

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Our theme this Advent season is "Come Home" - We hope you will accept the invitation: Come home to the God who has made a home among us! (John 1:14) As we began our Advent journey last week we looked at the longing for home that lies deep within us and the joy that comes at being at home with God.  

This past Sunday we looked at Isaiah 35 as we continued our Advent journey. Rwth reminds us that the words of the prophet came to those who were in exile. To be an exile means you’re displaced.  And displacement literally means not-placed. To be an exile is to experience a radical loss of belonging.  When you’re displaced, you lose your roots, your ground of identity and meaning.  You lose the familiar landmarks that exist not only in geography, but in seasons, culture, and daily life rhythms.  You feel fragmented, as if some invisible yet indispensable glue that held you together has evaporated and left you in pieces, without wholeness, without coherence. 

Exile comes in many forms.  Most obvious is when you’re a refugee, fleeing your home because of war, natural disaster, or other such catastrophe.  You’re an exile, at least for a time, when you move or when you are away for long periods for work.  You experience displacement, even when you physically stay in place, when life changes unimaginably due to severe illness or trauma.  You’re suddenly in exile when the one with whom you find home dies.  And, for any number of reasons, we can be displaced from our own hearts, from our true selves—when, as Dante wrote so long ago: In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost. 

Our biblical witness points to exile as an avoidable part of the human condition, beyond and behind any circumstance of actual exile.  In the Genesis origin story, the first human beings are exiled from Eden, that is, from their familiar, intimate home with God, with each other, and with Creation. The loss of Eden echoes through all our experiences of exile.  

After the loss of the promised land, Isaiah speaks into the exile of God’s people. Isaiah speaks a word of hope, a word of encouragement, a word of healing—a longed for word of invitation!  God says, “Come home!  Come home to me and come home to the land of peace and plenty! There is now a way where there was no way.  A new way home.  A new way to God.  A new way to place.  A new way to roots.  A new way to identity.  A new way to purpose.  While what they go home to may not be the exactly the same as what they lost, they hear the good news that homecoming is possible.  Homecoming is promised.  They can return to a deep belonging with God, each other, and to Creation.  




 Scroll down to earlier blog posts to read important news and notes for this week, including information about the Charge Conference this coming Sunday morning and the Christmas Concert this coming Sunday night!

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