Finding Home

Sermon by the Rev. David Anderson
Christmas Eve

Jesus came to save the lost. That’s the whole drama of salvation, and it begins tonight in Bethlehem. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. You may not look lost: you have your home and your hearth, a place to go and people who, “when you have to go there,” in Frost’s memorable words, “they have to take you in.” But you’re lost all the same.

What we all seek, finally, is home. A place with blue shutters and a white fence is nice, of course, but even that is not enough. You know this. What we yearn for is a home for the heart, a home for the soul. A place where our true self is at peace, at rest. But we can’t seem to get there. Our lives of achievement take such a toll on the soul. At the end of the day we’re aching and empty. You say to your spouse, or just to yourself, “How did we get here? We never set out to live a life like this. There’s no happiness here. Whatever we were after, it’s not worth it.”

In the Bible, that’s what God calls “lost.” And in sending Jesus, God calls us to come home—to live finally in the right place.

Tonight my niece Melissa and her husband Steve are in the Ukraine. They have been planning this trip for more than a year. That’s when they decided that they wanted to adopt three Ukrainian orphans. Some people thought they were crazy, especially since they already have three girls under 8. But they were deeply moved by the plight of all these orphans, in a country of poverty and failed social programs, where 70% of orphans end up in crime or prostitution.

When Steve and Melissa left on December 11th, all of us in the family held them in our prayers and checked their blog every day. After a discouraging start with cold bureaucrats, they were given a file: three brothers, 8, 6 and 3. First they were taken to an orphanage for little children. They sat in a room and waited for the two younger boys. In came the youngest, Vitali. He’s three years old, has been in the system since birth, never known a mother or a father. Steve and Melissa introduced themselves by their first names, but the boy called them “Mama” and “Papa.” Vitali has a recurring dream, the orphanage worker said—that he has a mother and a father. “He is desperate for parents,” she said.

Then they brought in Mikhail, or little Misha, the six year-old. He stood there, frightened. So Melissa gave him a candy, and Steve handed him a matchbox car. He was thrilled and ran off, waving the car above his head, to show his friends.

That was it. Melissa and Steve knew they had just met their new boys. And yet now they knew they had to take all three brothers. But Max, the eldest, was too old for this orphanage. He was miles away in another facility, and hadn’t seen his brothers in over a year.

Melissa and Steve were apprehensive. This was a boy who’d been in the system since he was three. Any child over seven has to consent to his adoption—would he consent? Furthermore, they were told that Max had suffered some kind of head trauma, maybe shaken-baby syndrome—throttled, perhaps, as a fragile infant by some ogreish parent. Would he be ok?

They waited in a large room, empty but for three school desks and a built-in sofa against one wall. The workers come in—with the Inspector, who is there because the boy is over seven. And then, in a moment, a little blue-eyed, blonde boy stands in the doorway wearing a black suit and a blue coat with a big hat.

“Do you wish to be adopted by these Americans?” the Inspector says in Russian. The boy looks at the two strangers sitting on the sofa against the wall. “He was sizing us up,” Melissa wrote. Then he turns to the Inspector and says, in Russian, “Da.” Yes.  She asks him again, to be sure. He’ll have to get on a plane and fly to America. He’ll have to learn English. He’ll be reunited with his brothers, but he’ll also have three sisters! “Max, do you wish to be adopted by these Americans?” He pauses, smiles shyly and says, “Da.”

Melissa and Steve play with him for a while, drawing pictures, and when it’s time for them to leave, little Max puts on his coat and hat. “Let’s go,” he says through the interpreter. He’s ready to go right now! Not knowing it will take a court appearance, a passport, and weeks of waiting. Take me home. Now.

I wish you could see the pictures of these boys. I found myself staring at the face of Max. Maybe it’s because he’s blue-eyed and blonde, but somehow I was looking at myself. The orphan within. The part of me that knows I’m lost—I’m meant for something better. I’m lost and I just need to find my real father, my true mother. The place where I really belong.

We all share this longing, which is why so many of our heroes are orphans—Moses, Romulus and Remus, Cinderella, Oliver Twist, Annie, Harry Potter, Tarzan, Superman, Frodo Baggins, Jane Eyre, E.T., King Arthur, Huck Finn, Luke Skywalker.

They’re all lost, these orphan heroes and heroines, all in danger, all seeking a place to be, a place to rest, and most of all, someone to love them, to give them in that love the power to be the good soul that lies within and to do great deeds.

I wonder if you know what that feels like tonight? The ancient story we celebrate is about a God who descends the stairway of the stars to bring us a little child, an orphan of sorts himself, who will lead us by his life and death—lead us home.

Christmas says emphatically: Our true and lasting home is in God. A lovely home on a leafy street is a good thing, and a loving mother and father to feed and clothe and enfold us is a very good thing. But that is not enough, is it? Unless we find our eternal home, we’re lost. And the voice of the orphan within is the call of your eternal soul, your true self. It calls out like a neglected or abandoned child. “I don’t belong here,” it says. “I don’t know how I ended up living this life, but this is not me, not where I belong. I want to find my home.”

We all hear that cry. It wakes us in the night, when we’re worried and anxious, when we feel lost. Tonight God invites you to answer that voice, to find your rightful place in the presence of God, to be a spiritual orphan no more. To come home.

How do you find your way home? It helps to admit you’re lost, it really does. And then, you can go it alone and wander forever, or you can follow someone who knows the way, who in fact is “the way and the truth and the life.” He’s come tonight for you. Don’t wait. Run, like Max, to put on your coat and your hat and say, “Da—Yes. Let’s go home. Now.”