II Samuel 7: 1–17 / Psalm 89: 1–4, 19–26 / Romans 16: 25–27 / Luke 1: 26–38
This
is the homily prepared for St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene
Tucker for Sunday, December 20, 2020.
“A HOUSE AND A HOME”
(Homily texts: II Samuel
7: 1–17 & Luke 1: 26-38)
Ever think
about the difference between a house and a home?
For
example, when we think of a house, we might think of a structure, one that has
an address, one in which much of our daily living takes place, a space we might
share with others in the same household. If we’ve moved from one house to
another in our life’s journey, oftentimes we carry with us memories of
significant events that took place during the time we lived in those locations.
What
transforms a house into a home?
When we
think about a what makes a home, it’s much more (usually) than a physical
structure, even one we might have lived in for a long time. Emotions and
emotional attachments (loving relationships, in other words) are part of the
ingredients that change a house into a home. We invest ourselves in a home, we
share our lives (perhaps) with others in the same home. It is from home that we
go forth to interact with the world, to go to work or to other tasks. But we
want to return home. Home allows us to form an identity. Forming an identity is
a critical part of our wellbeing as human beings.
Perhaps
there might be other things we could add to the observations here.
Our Old
Testament reading from Second Samuel, and our Gospel reading for this morning,
the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Blessed Virgin Mary, have a great deal
to do with house and home.
Let’s
explore this idea a bit.
King
David’s desire is to build a house for God, Second Samuel tells us. Up to the
time of David’s reign, God’s people had provided God with a visible place to
call home among God’s people, the Tabernacle. It was a moveable tent, appointed
with various spaces within it for various assigned duties, furnishings and so
forth, all of which enabled the worship of God to take place, and above all, it
was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided. The Tabernacle moved with
God’s people during their time of wandering in the wilderness, and then it took
up a permanent place at Shiloh once the people of Israel had taken possession
of the Holy Land.[1] The Tabernacle served as a visible reminder of God’s abiding presence among His
people.
It wasn’t
God’s plan for David to build a permanent house, a home, for God. That task
fell to David’s son, Solomon. The Temple in Jerusalem became the permanent
replacement for the Tabernacle. The temporary and moveable home for God became
the permanent one in Jerusalem.
The
Temple’s function, like the Tabernacle’s function before it, was to provide
God’s people with a tangible place that served as God’s home among them, as
we’ve noted a moment ago. Having a place that they could see, a place they
could come to for worship, allowed the reality of God’s unseen nature to be
seen in tangible form. Emotionally and spiritually, the Temple and the
Tabernacle were “home” for God’s people. It was the place to which they went
for sustenance, for worship, for connection with God. From it, they went out
into their daily lives to carry with them the blessings and the benefits of
their connection with God, their spiritual home.
Turning now
to our Gospel text from Luke, we can understand this very familiar passage from
the perspective of house and home.
In the
fullness of time, God’s son came to take up residence with us. Our Gospel
reading, appointed for this morning, relates God’s plan to the Blessed Virgin.
God intended to “tent” with humankind. (Yes, that’s the exact word that John
uses in John 1:14, as the Greek would be literally translated.) God came in
tangible, visible form in the person of Jesus, the Christ.
And it is
to this new, spiritual home that we come. We come to worship, to be sustained
in our earthly journey, to go forth from this new way of connecting with God to
face the daily tasks and challenges of life.
Yet, this
new spiritual home of ours is transportable, just as the Tabernacle of old was.
We take our connection with Jesus Christ with us, wherever we are. We are
emotionally and spiritually grounded because of this way of maintaining our
home with God, through Christ.
You and I,
created in the image and likeness of God, need the visible, the tangible, the
observable, to serve as reminders of God’s continuing presence with us. To that
end, our church building seeks to serve those ends, pointing beyond itself to
the unseen reality of God’s abiding presence with us. As we come to this house
of God, we are surrounded by reminders of God’s holiness, for everything inside
the church building and outside of it is designed to evoke within us reminders
of the holy.
Then we go
out from this spiritual home of ours, like God’s people in ancient times did,
to live our lives in godly ways, showing by what we do and by what we say that
we are seeking to be living reminders of God’s presence, dwelling within. We
might say that this is sacramental living, providing the world with outward and
visible reminders of the unseen presence of God in our hearts and minds and
bodies.
AMEN.
[1] In I Samuel 2:22, the tent at Shiloh is called the “tent of meeting”. Yet, the structure at Shiloh is also called a “house” (see I Samuel 1:7), so it’s unclear what the exact nature of the center at Shiloh was. To be sure, it wasn’t the permanent structure that took shape in the time of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Temple.
