I'll Be Home For Christmas

I don't make it a habit to read poetry often.  Maybe twice a year, but this coming year I commit to imbibing much more. It's been over the accumulated years I've found that I gravitate to T.S. Eliot as one of my favorite if not my "go to poet."  Although, it takes me a great deal of time interpreting for myself what most poets are telling me I think in reading the poem Journey of the Magi, it seems Eliot is imagining the reminiscent thoughts of one of the Magi who journeyed from afar to witness the birth of Christ.  Using the voice of a pagan king, it seems to me that he is portraying the weight in the soul of one who has truly confronted Christ, the king. This is how the poem concludes, powerfully for me:

"Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt I had seen birth and death.
But had thought they were different, this Birth was
hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
with an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death."

Coming in contact with the Christ, proclaims Eliot, setting one's eyes on the child who was born to die is in a very real sense like dying myself. Although the poem strikes a somber note in me, I find that it is the very note echoed triumphantly throughout the New Testament Scriptures. The apostle Paul readily utilized the words and imagery of death to describe life in Christ. For example he writes in Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."  Jesus uttered similarly, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

I think that especially, during this Advent season, I find myself a bit more watchful and waiting, remembering and anticipating with those who first watched God step into the world through the mean estate of a dirty stable. As I look at the small crèche beside our dinning table I sometimes have a mental vision of those who first set their eyes on the child who was born to die, becoming, in a sense, as Christ was on that first night, homeless and out of place. I also remember, too, that I am still far from home, longing for a kingdom I only know in part. For having embraced the person of Christ, the I proclaim the reality of his kingdom and find myself as Eliot describes, "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods."  These past couple of weeks of Advent my heart has been awakened to a sense of homelessness, stirring a longing for home, and reminds me - as I spoke of in my last journal entry – in the darkness, that I am waiting for the return of the king.

In what I think probably was one of the most comforting conversations between Jesus and the disciples, Jesus gives a description of this home and the certainty of an invitation inside. "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going" John 14:2-4. Compounding this hope, his words are followed by one of his most quoted promises. As Thomas replied, "But Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Jesus answered: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

Christ is the herald of my homelessness and the harbinger of my home, even as he proclaims this very kingdom among us and himself as the way inside. As another of my favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, once penned,

"For men are homesick in their homes,
and strangers under the sun...
but our homes are under miraculous skies
where the Yule tale was begun."

Father, God, the story of Christ's birth is a certain message of hope and home for me. I realize that You sent Him to take on the fullness of humanity became homeless that I might come home. He still proclaims a kingdom among us and continues to prepare us a place within it. I pray that I and every other heart, is or will prepare him room.