Dunston

Oh well. Not for the first time, football hasn’t come home. The original 30 years of hurt have extended to 58, which doesn’t really fit the song so well, does it? In my case I remember back as far as Italia 90, which puts my personal years-of-hurt tally at 34. Some of you will go all the way back to 1966.*

Thinking the other Sunday about the amazing possibility that this time football might just come home got us thinking about ways that the Christian faith expresses the idea of coming home.

The most encouraging thing is that coming home is an absolute certainty. One day, football might just come home. Maybe, just maybe, this new manager we are now looking for will do the job for us. (At this point a pessimist would point out that no English manager has even won the Premier League in its 32-year history since going back to the summer of 1992, but I won’t go there.)

But as followers of Jesus, we are coming home. One day, all of us will come home to a place where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. One day, all of us will come to a place that has been prepared for us, a room amongst the countless rooms in the Father’s house for everyone who has come home to Jesus.

Jesus tells the story of a man who leaves his Father’s house, and goes out and wastes his inheritance. And one day, he decides he would be better off back where he came from. He realises that he should come home. Arriving at his Father’s house, he is astonished that where he expected to meet anger and judgment, he encounters someone who is so delighted at his return that he runs from the door to greet him as soon as he sees him coming. He can’t wait for him to get home.

But it isn’t just about us coming home. He brings us home. Fans of Les Miserables will know that song as well, sung by Jean Valjean as he prays over his friend Marius. Rescue him, Lord: bring him home.

When I was thinking about this song the other day, for the first time I pictured a conversation between Jesus and his Father as he prepared to come at Christmas time. Of course it wouldn’t have happened quite like this, but I imagine the Father looking down at the world with all its sin and mess and pain, looking down at you and me, and saying to Jesus, “Bring them home. Bring him home. Bring her home.”

So yes, if we follow Jesus we are coming home, but only because Jesus, faithful to his Father to the point of death, has done just as he was asked. He has brought us home.

*I am very aware that for the purposes of this article I have ignored the brilliant Lionesses’ win at Euro 2021. Three years of hurt doesn’t make the point quite so well, does it?

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