"Not at Home"

Dear WRC,

The Holiday season is here! Somehow, we’ve passed Thanksgiving and are already on our way to Christmas. The preparations are well underway, the parties have begun, and I want to talk about nostalgia.

Nostalgia is everywhere this time of year. It struck me the other day when I discovered Disney+ is streaming all the “Home Alone” movies this year. Growing up in the ‘90s, “Home Alone” was quintessential Christmas. I have great memories of watching it with friends and family and am so excited to watch it with my kids. It’s been at least 20 years since I’ve seen Kevin take on the Wet Bandits. I’m not sure how well it will hold up to my memories. Nostalgia often doesn’t.

 Christmas movies aren’t the only place we experience nostalgia. We swim in it as we set up our decorations—remembering the trees and lights of our childhood or of our children’s—as we plan our menus—mouths salivating at the memory of dishes-past—and even as we gather for worship—lighting our candles and singing “Silent Night.” Because it’s a season of such rich meaning and experiences, those memories hang on and shower us with their warm glow, calling us back to times that were simpler, happier, slower. We find ourselves yearning for something that’s gone—the time, the place, even the people.

The problem is that if we could go back to visit those memories and live them again, we’d surely find them lacking. I’m sure I’ll still love “Home Alone,” but I’m going into it aware that I’ll probably find Kevin a tad annoying this time around, be horrified by the depiction of parents, and roll my eyes at some of the classic ‘90s camera work. For all the fondness with which I remember spending Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house with all my cousins and aunts and uncles, if I squint hard enough, I can see the family drama in danger of boiling over. I can remember being bored some years and wanting to just go home. I can feel my disappointment in some of the presents. If we went back in time, we’d realize that our parents were fallible, that the lights never quite twinkled like we remember, and that there never was a golden era when everything was the way it should be. We’d discover that our nostalgia is just the best bits of our memories, distilled by time, and warmed like chestnuts over an open fire. That doesn’t mean none of it is true, though. We just need to recognize that our nostalgia isn’t pointing us back but forward.

One of the fascinating things about human beings is that we’re never content with our lot. Within every human being there seems to be this sense that things aren’t the way they should be. Maybe it’s a desire for justice in the world. Maybe it’s a restlessness telling you that if you only had a better job or a nicer house or lived somewhere more exciting (or with more ideal weather), THEN everything would fall into place. Maybe it’s a sense that there was a time past when things were just as they should be, and it would all be alright if we could only get back to it.

I’ve been challenged recently to consider that ALL of this is good. These aren’t desires to be squashed with stoic realism, but to be coaxed and stoked. The problem only comes when we don’t recognize where this discontent is truly pointing. The truth is that we won’t experience real justice until Jesus returns, the next job or house or city will only quell your restlessness for a season, and the past was never as rosy as we remember. But the discontent, the dis-ease, that’s what I want to pay attention to. Friends, your nostalgia and your restlessness and even your righteous anger are there to point beyond themselves to something so much better.

C.S. Lewis talked about this perhaps better than anyone. In his sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” he said:

It was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

 So, friends, this Christmas pay attention to your nostalgia, to your longings and your restlessness and your discontent. The desire for something else, something better, something more is not a desire to stamp out, but to breathe into life and aim toward its true source. At its heart, it is the desire for God and God’s country, and following that scent will bring you home to Jesus.

 It’s a little early for it, but I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I know that for many of you this is not an easy time of year, it’s filled with pain and grief and loneliness, but that may actually bring you closer to the heart of Christmas than tinsel and Bing Crosby ever could. God sees our tears, God hears our cries, God feels our pain. That’s why Jesus came, to meet you right where you are and bring you home.

In Christ,

Pastor Andy