Home is a complicated thing— or word, or concept, really. Not because I didn’t grow up in a wonderful home. But because, well, in our home, we answer questions like: who gets to call it their home? Who’s home is it? Is it once their home, always their home? Can someone have more than one home? Thoughts, names, feelings that come up for me with the concept of home can be kind of complex.
And yet, nothing makes the complexity of home clearer than when someone longs for a home they don’t have.
It was a long car ride from our house to the group home. She was in the front seat, facing the window, her back to me, except when quickly turning around to punch the button on the radio console to start the song over again. And again. Intermixed with the sound of crying in the song was this lyric, “there was a time when I was alone . . . No place to go, no place to call home.”
Over and over, the words hung in the air like a prayer she couldn’t say aloud.
That phrase—”no where to go, no place to call home”—wasn’t just a lyric. It was her truth. It carried the weight of her journey, her longing for belonging, for stability, for a home that felt safe.
This longing for home is not just her story. It’s in the families fleeing the destruction in Gaza, clutching their children and the few belongings they can carry, searching for safety amidst rubble, bombing, and devastation.
It’s in the tents set up by those whose homes washed away in Hurricane Helene. Or the approximately 4,900 families staying in area hotels while they search for long-term transitional housing, but who have yet to find anything. At first, FEMA allowed people to stay in hotels (that they paid for) until December 3, then they extended it to December 12, and now it has been extended until January 11 because there is no available rental housing. Several of the counties in the region devastated by the storm were already at 99% occupancy even before the hurricane hit. This longing for home is everywhere.
Mary and Joseph knew this longing, too. During Advent, we cover Mary’s 9-month pregnancy and the birth of Jesus in about 4 weeks. So, on this 3rd Sunday of Advent Mary is about 10 days away from giving birth. Due dates are a tricky thing . . . even now when we have ultrasounds to help us be more precise. But I imagine she is already on the journey to Bethlehem riding on the back of a donkey. Perhaps they’ve already started knocking on doors looking for a place to stay? Or perhaps there was still the worry, “Will we make it there? Will we find a place when we arrive?”
Longing for home, coming home . . . are they different? Are the advent longings and the journeys home for Christmas with our families good news for everyone or good news for only some us? We know that Santa and the mass consumerism frenzy of the holidays is true only for some of us. Have you ever felt displaced—not just physically, but emotionally or spiritually? Longing for a place where you feel safe, loved, seen? Where do we find home when the world feels so unstable? When life is full of fear, loss, or uncertainty? Where do we find home when we can’t even agree that EVERYONE deserves a home, a roof over their heads?
This longing for home—that ache we feel for safety, belonging, and wholeness—is real and deep. This longing reminds us that the world is not as it should be.
But here’s where Isaiah surprises us. We read today, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation” (v. 2). When the prophet Isaiah spoke these words to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, they were witnessing the annexation of their northern neighbors in Israel by the Assyrian Empire. The people addressed by Isaiah lived with the fear that their homes, their security, their very identity could also be taken away at any moment. Imagine the weight of that–the fear of losing not just a physical home, but the sense of belonging that comes with it. How could Isaiah sing of joy in the face of such uncertainty?
These weren’t just empty words to celebrate Isaiah’s comfortable life, rather they were his response in the midst of the longing and uncertainty. Isaiah chooses joy—not as a denial of reality, but as an act of trust in God’s promises.
This is defiant joy. It’s a joy that says, “I see the brokenness, but I trust that God’s love is greater. I feel the ache, but I know that God is with us, that God is redeeming all things, and that the worst thing is never the last thing.” Sometimes, defiant joy looks like my little one who—against all my efforts—finds pure delight in stripping off every article of clothing and running, giggling through the house. It’s joy that says, “No matter what else is going on, this moment of laughter belongs to me.” It’s that kind of joy that refuses to be contained, even by chaos or exhaustion.
Other times, defiant joy shows up in places that seem least likely. It’s in the kids in a refugee camp in Sudan (if you aren’t aware of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan you should make a point to become informed about it during this Advent season). Defiant joy is the kids in a refugee camp in Sudan kicking a soccer ball made of tied-together plastic bags, laughing and playing—even though civil war and famine surround them. That’s defiant joy: a refusal to let despair have the final word.
Sometimes, defiant joy is quieter, more tender. It’s the people facing the holidays and finding reasons to smile and be grateful, even as they grieve the empty chair of the person they most wish could be there. It’s choosing to say, “This isn’t how I want it to be, but I will still find something to hold onto, something to be thankful for.” Perhaps Isaiah’s word for us today is to remain present to hope and give our energy to joy. Rather than focus on situations where we feel powerless, we can root ourselves in God’s promise to dwell with us.
Maybe this joy of defiance is the kind of preparing the way that John the Baptist is talking about in Luke’s gospel. While a call to repent may not seem like “good news,” it marks an invitation to a life better aligned with God’s purpose—and on that path, there is joy. After all, the Advent journey, the journey to the manger, leads to a truth we might not expect. It’s not about us finding our way back to God, fixing ourselves, or creating the perfect home. It’s about the astonishing truth that God comes home to us.
God makes a home among us—that is God’s response to our longing. God sees the ache of the world, and chooses to enter into it. God comes home to us—not in power or majesty, but in vulnerability. A baby in a manger. A child born to displaced parents.
The reality that God became flesh to dwell among us in the most unlikely of ways forever blurs the boundary between the holy and the ordinary human. There is something about our bodies, about flesh, about embodied presence that matters deeply. Presence matters, and God knows this.
As a parent, this reality has taken on deeper meaning. I can care for my children, feed them, bathe them, play with them, clean up after them, talk to them, and teach them. But I’ve been overwhelmed sometimes by how much they need my arms and my lap and my body. My physical presence, just being near them helps them drift off to sleep. I’m amazed at how they can’t sit near me while I drink my coffee, they have to sit on top of me.
Sometimes home and belonging are more than a roof over our heads. The incarnation (God in the flesh) declares that God’s presence is the home we long for. It’s God saying, “I see you, I’m with you, and you belong to me.”
I remember one day about 10 years back, close to Christmas, when my grandparents were visiting. My Poppop ended up in the hospital over in Asheville in need of a blood transfusion. They were 83 years old at the time and had been married 60 years. My grandfather is a farmer from the deep south, his tan leathery skin tells of the many hours he’s spent working in the sun. His hands were so swollen with arthritis he couldn’t really make a fist. That evening a bunch of us who were gathered in a hospital room were making plans to go get dinner, when my grandfather said to my grandmother, “Momma will you come over here and hold my hand: I’ve been missing you.” So we pulled her chair up next to his hospital bed and she sat there and held his hand while the rest of us went to dinner.
These moments remind us that home isn’t just about a place. It’s about presence. The incarnation declares that God’s presence is the home we long for. It’s God saying, “I see you, I’m with you, and you belong to me.”
Longing for home, joy as an act of defiance, and the incarnation as coming home are all part of the same story. Our longing reminds us of the brokenness in the world—the ache for something more, something better. We see it in Justice’s story, in the faces of displaced families, and even in our own hearts. That longing tells us things aren’t as they should be.
But joy declares that brokenness isn’t the end of the story. It’s like Isaiah’s bold proclamation, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.” Joy is the act of lighting a candle in the dark, saying, “I won’t let the darkness win.” It’s finding a reason to laugh, to hope, to hold on—even when everything around you says otherwise.
And the incarnation—God becoming flesh—is the fulfillment of that hope. It’s God stepping into the darkness, into the longing, and becoming the light we were searching for. It’s as if God is saying, “You are home now. I am with you.”
This Advent, we’re invited to hold all of these together:
- To name our longing and recognize the brokenness.
- To choose joy, even when it feels like an act of defiance.
- To trust in the God who comes home to us, who steps into our longing and brings restoration.
When we live this way—when we hold longing, joy, and trust together—we not only experience God’s presence, but we reflect it. We become part of the story, creating spaces where others can feel the light of belonging and joy.
This is the story of Advent. And it’s a story that calls us to act—not just to experience the light, but to carry it for others. To be the kind of people who create home for those who are searching, who shine light in the darkest places, and who live with joy, because we trust that God is with us.
