Return from Athens B: Foxes have Holes

Last week, in the middle of the cleaning, and all the boxes, and the trudging through thick snow between the apartment we were clearing up and our friends’ house where we were now staying, another word from Jesus - 

“Foxes have holes” at one point, he said to someone who was enthusiastically declaring he would follow him wherever, “and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” **

Suddenly from the context we were living, and in the midst of all the insecurity of leaving a place we loved, and packing up with no clear idea of what’s ahead, that word carried a particular poignancy.

Here’s the Lord of all the Universe, the incarnate Son of God, the one of whom John said, in his Christmas account,** that he came and dwelt among us, or more literally, "pitched his tent" among us. And, here, he is saying, I don’t actually have a home here, you know. Of course, we understand that he had a parental home in Nazareth, where he spent his childhood and youth. But it would appear that, for much of the three years of active ministry leading up to his death on the cross, Jesus lived as an itinerant teacher, eating and sleeping wherever he found a welcome. 

That word is also a statement of his detachment from this world in which we live. He, who came from the glory of heaven, entered this world at a particular place and time, moved among his community, loved them, gave himself for them, was completely committed to them, but he never actually belonged. He never possessed a piece of land, built a house or raised a family. His was a temporary residency. 

So, when we think of all that, our own displacement from Greece back to N Ireland, pales into insignificance, and just as the “treasures in heaven” take on a new meaning, so too the idea of “I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am there you may be also,” ** becomes hugely significant for us.  

** Luke 9:58, John 1:14, John 14:3