Christmas is coming and we are all going home. But what if home is not that towards which we run, but precisely that from which we run away? What if home is not that which is familiar to us, but precisely that which is unfamiliar? Christ’s Incarnation is the ultimate act of inclusion, when God so humbles Himself out of His love for us that He puts on the flesh of His Creation, so that we may all become One.
What if home is actually this very Oneness in Him, this enlargement of our selves, this letting go of what is familiar in search of what we lack in our humanity? What if home is actually Christ Himself? Isn’t this the time to let go of these crumbling ‘selves’ we built ourselves, and embrace His Being as ours?
What wondrous beings would we become if we opened our caves for Him, with everything that Christ is? What would our humanity feel like if His Divine humanity entered our caves? If His meekness took over our hearts? If His forgiveness and sacrificial love invaded the darkest corners of our caves and inundated them with His Divine Light? What wondrous beings would we become in Him?
Christmas is coming and we leave the world as we gather our earthly tribes and shut the doors behind. Christ travels at Christmas too, but He does the exact opposite journey. He descends from the Throne of His Divinity to embrace the world, while we leave the world to hide within the walls of familiarity. We reject all that is not part of our identity, while Christ embraces the unfamiliarity of our created flesh and makes it part of His Divine Identity.
When you look at what Christ is doing by becoming Incarnate, and how we celebrate His Incarnation – we seem to be going in opposite directions. He is so enlarged by love that He overcomes the ontological difference of natures between God and Man, while we are so absorbed by our tribalism that we cannot overcome the imaginary differences of blood (and blood is dust), wealth (and wealth is illusion) or status (what status will ever overcome death?) within the human nature we all share.
How is it that we celebrate Christ’s ultimate Act of openness and inclusion, by marking our familiar territories and cutting ourselves from the rest of the world? Christ came into the world and the world rejected Him because He was a stranger to all. We closed the gates to our hearts, and we kept outside the Saviour Himself. Two thousand years later, have we not learnt that our salvation comes from opening ourselves to the world, from enlarging our being through love and the pain it brings?
Christmas is coming, and it brings us once again face to face with our Creator. May this be the Christmas when we hear His call and we open the gates of our caves to Him. May this be the Christmas when we let Him enter our being, so that all that He is becomes ours, and we may find our true selves, our true home and our salvation in Him.