Home ???

 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:26-38

Building God a house, it seems reasonable, right? The prophet Nathan gets caught up in the idea. Yes, good, great! Imagine the images of building a new house to God. Yet, this is not God's vision. God has been in the tent, why? Because it represents the journey, it represents how God was with them in the wilderness, it represents God shows up whether its a tent, the desert, or everyday life and this is where our focus should be.

Just look at the gospel lesson today. We are not told what time the messenger shows up to Mary, we are not told where, but it isn't like Zachariah's encounter where it is in the temple. Artists have imagined far and wide on this visitation, everything from gaudy and rich, to simple of a light in the room with her. Then  there is the work of John Swanson, his rendering of the visitation is when Mary is feeding the chickens. Such an ordinary, everyday, chore and God shows up with the announcement. 

So God doesn't really need a home to come to, I think we are learning this more and more as we worship at home and online, God still shows up. God does not leave us because we are not in the building, instead God follows us on the journey we are living in. How do we learn this hard lesson. We so get caught up in its trappings. God needs a home, yes, but maybe the home he is looking for is within us.

Like Mary today we are being invited to ask God in. To be the home for God in our very lives and souls. This is something we shouldn't take lightly because we never know where this invitation will lead us on the journey. Again take Mary, a teenage pregnant girl who has no father and in that day and age it was so scandalous it was dangerous. She could have been killed, stoned for not following with tradition. It is a miracle she was not. Maybe part of it is right after this she goes to Elizabeth and stays with her for the next three months. Sent away in shame for giving a home to new life within her. This is what giving God a home within us does.

Giving God a home within us means we don't need the church building, just like we have been shown now. We mourn the loss, yet we are not alone in this time. We have a people who centuries ago mourned this loss as well. The people of Israel, captive in Babylon. They wept, they dealt with the loss so far removed, and they came back to a temple destroyed, yet they still felt they had to rebuild even though they lived a whole generation without it and somehow God showed up to them. God kept planting hope.

Our hope is there, the hope which God can only give. As reports of delays in the vaccine come out, we may wonder again, is there hope we can cling to? The only hope we have is in God. I am reminded of Paul singing in prison, of the Hebrew people finding ways to connect to home when they were removed from it, in Peter staying the course even when in chains and people were calling for his life. This is the very thing about asking God in. It asks for our very lives. 

Someone reflected this week on a statement from prison by Bonhoeffer, I can't imagine what it was to be in prison, but I do know this theologian, pastor had a choice. He had escaped to America, but found he could not stay, he had to go back to his land, his people and suffer with them. God was within him, and he is one of the most quoted theologians today. Because he learned what it was to sacrifice it all in order to have God come and lead him through a wilderness on his journey.

The times are hard right now, they may even seem bleak, but we have a powerful resource. God is asking us today to receive him. This is a new thing, God has shown up to Mary and in her wonderful words the world is turned upside down because she accepts, "Let it be with me". Let it be with me this wonderful gift of a faith born out of hard tragedy. Let it be with me the times to rejoice when the whole world is turned on its head. Let it be with me to plant hope to those who have lost sight of it. Let it be with me, to accept Christ and nurture this growth within me to see it through the journey ahead.