Home Alone, two thousand years ago.

The family holiday classic Home Alone is on constantly, sometimes in August.  It's a Christmas story that plays so often that if you're over twelve you can lip sync the dialogue by now.  Kevin Mc Allister is the youngest of about seven-hundred siblings.  His family all go off to Paris for Christmas vacation and Kevin is left behind, at home, alone. Mom and Dad are frantic but they finally come home to Kevin. You probably know every single detail of the film better than I so I won't torture you because, by now, this Christmas season alone, you have already seen it 10,563 times.

The first 943 times the film is fun but then it is so familiar you just mute the sound and keep it on only because it's Christmas time.  You grew up watching it, now for over twenty-seven years (!!!!), and watched others grow up with it so it's downright "Grinch like" to turn it off. Even if it's on in August.

This is my 57th Christmas.  The pathologies of my many Christmas pasts are mostly painful, some even tragic.  There is a lot of loss and sadness in my past Christmas seasons.  A lot of alone, at home.  I understand the depression in this holiday season that shouldn't grip people but does.  The melancholy under the boughs of holly is familiar to me.  My deep dread of the Christmas holiday season approaching, now coming in August, used to hit me really hard.  I would physically and emotionally curl up, withdrawing from the expectations as the days counted down to Christmas.  Then I had to recover in a week to look ahead to a new year with hope as the clock counted down on New Year's Eve.  I couldn't find that hope which led to more anxiety and more stress and more agony of heart.  I felt only deep, unhealed pain for weeks.  The loneliness was unbearable.  It took decades to work through those feelings at Christmas time.

Our feelings are there and real but they are a poor tool for life decisions  They can be overwhelming and all consuming which makes them a very poor tool for navigating.  We need wisdom and truth. Hard and stable things that don't deviate.  Tangible things.  I found those things in faith. A faith not in feelings, the warm and fuzzies, the tingles or tears, but stable, trustworthy faith in a Person who is revealed in His word.  The more I got to know this Person the more my pains and anguishes were relieved.  My alone at home was over because Christ had moved into my heart and was gradually rebuilding it.

It wasn't a small reno needed but a total rebuild from the foundation.  The work continues...

The Christmas story can be like the movie Home Alone, possibly, sadly even in the church.  It is just a few chapters of the birth of Christ. A baby in a manger, his virgin mother, wise men, angels, sheep, shepherds; let's open packages.  The story gets packed away with the Christmas tree and lights until next year when it's on again.  The world outside of faith hits mute and keep's it in the background, on but not watched.  We think we know it because we have heard it and seen it over and over again but until you know Christ personally to your miserable core and in your core of misery, you know nothing of the story.  Or how desperately you need to.

Today, in church, while hearing the story of Jesus' birth, now for about the 40th time in my life memory.  I thought of  something I want to share with you that made me laugh to myself a little.  Jesus had his own, Home Alone moment.

In a precious chapter in the second chapter of Luke's gospel we read a story about Jesus when He was twelve-years old.  His parents had gone to Jerusalem with a whole caravan of His family and relatives as they had done every year to celebrate a Feast.  The family leaves Jerusalem for home and actually leave Jesus behind.  They thought He was with their relatives and discover Jesus in not with anyone.  Mary and Joseph return to Jerusalem and search for Jesus for three days.

Three days!  Have you ever misplaced or lost an article of something valuable in your life for three days?  Do you remember the frustration, anger, misery, shock, pain, terror, loss, tears?  They misplaced, not carelessly but humanly, the Son of God. After three days they find Jesus in the Temple with the religious teachers asking and being asked questions and they are amazed.  His parents find Jesus in the middle of this, most amazing Bible class ever conducted, and are astonished.

They are astonished because, possibly, because the text does not say, they are watching their Son in His zone.  He is twelve and teaching religious elites through the scriptures.  You lose your son at a football stadium and discover he is on the field playing with the greatest players of his generation and they respect him, in fact, they are amazed at his skill level.  His mother, Mary, (the virgin will give birth to a son), in twelve years of Jesus in her life had forgotten why He came.

He came to teach us about God.  He came to teach us who we are apart from God.  He came to teach us how desperately we need God.  He came to die to pay for our debt to God for our many sins committed in our lives. He came to save us from wrath from a Holy God that only Jesus can save us from.  He came to give us life; life eternal.

Jesus was not at home alone in the Temple those three days.
He was in His Father's house and the Father was with Him.

If you need to unwrap or unpack anything this Christmas to find the missing joy in your heart that stuff or people or trips or work or family cannot satisfy, open the Bible and carefully, prayerfully unpack who that Jesus is in that manger scene and why He came to this earth.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Matthew 1:21.

Merry, Glorious, Christmas.

tr