Second Sunday after Christmas Day
All Years
Home by Another Way
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
If you look closely at the readings today, you might notice a profound tension. It’s a tension we all live with every single day: the gap between the world as it is, fragile, unpredictable, sometimes terrifying, and the world as God promises it will be.
Look at our Gospel. It starts in the dark. Joseph is woken up in the middle of the night by an angel with an urgent, terrifying message: Get up. Take the baby and his mother, and run. Herod is coming. The Holy Family becomes a family of refugees, fleeing by night into the desert, leaving everything behind to escape a brutal tyrant.
This isn’t a sanitized, greeting-card version of the Christmas story. This is real life. It’s the anxiety of a parent trying to protect their child; it’s the weight of uncertainty, of having your life upended in an instant.
But then, look at Jeremiah.
Jeremiah is speaking to a people who know all about being upended. They were conquered, scattered, and dragged off to Babylon. They knew what it felt like to live in exile. And right into the middle of their grief, God speaks this radically beautiful promise: “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth.”
And notice who God brings back first. It’s not a marching army of the strong and powerful. Jeremiah says God is gathering the blind, the lame, the pregnant mothers, and those in labor. God gathers the vulnerable. The people who thought they would be left behind or couldn’t keep up. God looks at them and says, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path… I will turn their mourning into joy.
That journey from exile back to the heart of God is exactly what the Psalmist is singing about. Psalm 84 talks about the “pilgrims’ way.” It says:
“Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.”
We all know what those desolate valleys feel like. Maybe you are walking through one right now, a valley of grief, of a broken relationship, of financial stress, or just the heavy, exhausting feeling that the world is a chaotic place.
The promise of our faith isn’t that God detours us around the desolate valleys. Joseph didn’t get a detour; he had to go to Egypt. The Israelites had to endure the exile. But the promise is that God walks through the valley with us, turning the dry, parched soil of our pain into a place of springs. God takes the scattered, broken pieces of our lives and begins the quiet, steady work of gathering us back home.
How does God do this? Paul tells us beautifully in his letter to the Ephesians. He says that before the foundations of the world were even laid, God chose you. God destined you for adoption.
Think about that. You are not an accident. You are not a bystander in God’s creation. You are a beloved child, fiercely protected and deeply wanted. When Joseph had to look for safety in Egypt, and later when he had to navigate around Archelaus and settle in the quiet, overlooked town of Nazareth, God was working through the messy, frightening logistics of history to fulfill a promise. Out of the dark, out of the exile, out of Egypt, God calls His children.
So, what do we do with this today?
When Joseph woke up from his dreams, he acted. He didn’t have the whole map. He didn’t know how long they’d be in Egypt or exactly how things would pan out in Nazareth. He just took the next faithful step in the dark.
If you are feeling scattered today, if you are mourning, or if you are simply tired of the valleys, listen to the promise of Jeremiah: Your life shall become like a watered garden. Trust that the Shepherd who keeps the flock is holding onto you right now.
We don’t have to see the whole horizon to trust the one who guides our steps. Let’s pray today for what Paul calls the “eyes of our hearts” to be enlightened, so that we can see the incredible hope to which we’ve been called, and trust that even in the middle of the night, God is leading us home.
Amen.