G.K. Chesterton wrote a wonderful Christmas poem titled The House of Christmas. We celebrate the second person of the Trinity did not consider His equality with God something to be grasped but came down from heaven to this broken world. He was not born in a palace befitting His human office of Messiah, not even in the humble comfort of an inn, but in a place where animals were kept and laid in a manger. You can feel the tension in the line from the hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.” Jesus came to a people in exile in their own land, to a people that bore the consequences of sin—estrangement from God and in conflict with others.
Adam and Eve were driven east out of the garden of Eden and way back was barred by deadly Cherubim lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever in an unredeemed state. They went into exile but it was an exile of hope, a temporary expulsion until the seed of the woman would come and crush the head of the serpent. As the new Adam who bore our curse and felt our human woe, Jesus met us in exile. He to where we are, where Mary and Joseph were displaced. But what happens to a place when the Son of God comes to it? The promise of God was always to come and be with us. At the building of the tabernacle in Exodus, He says, “I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God” (Ex. 29:45-46). Jesus is the true tabernacle, the dwelling of God among men. When He took on flesh and tabernacled among us the place of exile becomes home.
Joseph and Mary are poor and away from home. Soon they will flee to Egypt for their lives and the life of Jesus, but the Lord is with them—in the form of a baby! Jim Gaffigan joked that having a fourth kid was like drowning, and then someone hands you a baby. Mary is miraculously pregnant and no one believes her, not even Joseph at first. Then she has the baby away from home in Bethlehem. Then a bit later wise men from the east visit and they run for their lives. In all of this, God is with them. He literally dwells with them in the person that Mary gave birth to, who is the Word of God, the Word the Father spoke when He created all things. So now the stable is home. The humble digs they had in Nazareth is truly home. God’s kingdom came from heaven to earth make His blessings flow as far as the curse is found. Though Jesus accomplished His earthly mission and ascended into heaven, really because He did that, He now indwells us by the Holy Spirit who has been given without measure, so we sing: “Fix in us thy humble home. Rise the woman’s conquering seed. Bruise in us the serpent’s head.” When we feel out of place, alone, and separated from God, the incarnation of Christ comes: “To the place where God was homeless / And all men are at home.”
The House of Christmas
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.
This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.