The Great Homecoming
(Free Version)- Second Sunday After Christmas- Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:10-18
We are running a special offer for the New Year! 20% off all paid subscriptions if you sign up today. Start the year off right with a deeper look at each week’s passages.
Our three readings today weave together themes of new kinship, homecoming, and light shining in the darkness. All are themes of something new that has happened and is happening. All are cause for rejoicing.
In our Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 31:7-14), we hear the proclamation that Yahweh is bringing his people back home. No matter how far they have traveled, they are drawn back in because of God’s divine action.
In this reading, we are reminded that God is a shepherd and his desire is always to lead the sheep home to life giving water, to radiance, and to rejoicing. The only proper response to this is to sing (loud) and raise shouts, praising the Lord.
The Christian can’t help but seeing the the Jesus story in this reading. Christ is the one who has brought us home. The good news is that the exile of sin and death is over (though not all have yet been gathered). God calls us home to his new creation, and the Church is to embody this homeland where those who come from far away, the lame, and those with child are welcome.
Not only have we been brought home, we have been brought into a family, as our New Testament reading (Ephesians 1:3-14) reminds us. We have been adopted, redeemed (also in our Jeremiah reading), and sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit, who, we are told, is the “first installment of our inheritance. “Inheritance” is the language of land, once again pointing to the themes of exiles and homecoming which we see in the Jeremiah reading.
Paul understood that a new homecoming had taken place and was taking place in Christ. It is God who calls us, not because of anything that we have done. God has taken the initiative by his grace. We are now invited to live out our adoption and future inheritance, which is the world made right.
Our gospel reading (John 1:10-18) may feel overwhelming to the preacher. “Twenty minutes on the incarnation….Go!” The description is of the “light” (vs. 9) who has come into the world. Yet, the world did not get him. In fact, God’s own people did not get him.
Yet, there is a community (an adoption, redeemed sealed people—to borrow from Ephesians; a group of exiles returning home—to borrow from Jeremiah) who are now called his children. This has happened, not because they were part of the right biological family, but because of the divine act of God.
Because of Jesus, we can see the glory of God. If we want to know who God is, we look to Jesus. He is the truth, faithful all the way through.