No Place to Park
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NO PLACE TO PARK
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
January 5, 2025
The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God (Psalm 84:2)
Two summers ago the Waring family traveled to the Pacific northwest for vacation. From Seattle we made our way down the Oregon coast. The area was in the grips of an uncommon heat wave, so when a beach day presented itself, we jumped at the chance. Cannon Beach in Oregon is amazing. It is often ranked among the most beautiful places on earth, and if you ever go there you’ll understand why. Unfortunately, we were not the only tourists who thought it would be a good day to visit. The parking lot was an angry, churning sea of cars. We began traveling up and down every row, searching for a place.
Suddenly, as if by a miracle, right before my eyes was an open spot – not just any spot, but the first one in a row beneath a shady tree. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was. Do you know the lineup of angel statues at Rockefeller Center, how they point their trumpets and lead the tourists towards the lighted tree? Well, it was as if a choir of angels were singing to me: “Park here.” So there I parked. And yes, the sparrow may have found her a house and the swallow a nest by the side of the altars of the Lord of hosts, but I had found a place to park at Cannon Beach beneath a shady tree.
Later in the day we began the trek back to the car. In the parking lot we found the same, congested mess: too many cars searching in vain for too few spaces. As we walked, a number drivers slowed to our pace and began following us. One woman lowered her window and asked impatiently if we were leaving. Strangely, I became reluctant to vacate the parking place. Correction: my parking place. I thought to myself, why should I relinquish my space to a pushy millennial in a Subaru? We should go back to the beach. Let’s linger for photos by the Dodge Charger we had rented. It was quite a car. People could admire us as we posed by it. Let’s stay here in this parking place that is mine. This is as good as it gets, I reasoned. Alas, the place wasn’t mine to keep. We had to move on, just as we always have to move on. As we pulled away, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that my happy parking place was already taken.
In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew (2:13-15, 19-23), we hear how the holy family of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus had to move on from where they had temporarily parked. In moving on, perhaps they took a last grateful look back at the place in Bethlehem where Jesus had been born. Matthew says the place was a house. Luke implies it was a stable. Whatever it was, the place had been an island of peace for Mary and Joseph. It had sheltered them when they badly needed to be sheltered. They had received visitors from the East. A lineup of angels had directed the shepherds in the fields to the location.
Indeed, Bethlehem had been a place of mystery and joy, but it was not a spot where they could remain. Now it was time to move on: “Get up,” said an angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream. “Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, for Herod is about to search for the child , to destroy him.” As Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ early childhood, the holy family was constantly on the move. They lived as refugees in Egypt until, once again, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” So it was back again to Israel, and eventually, finally, to Nazareth where the family finally settled.
The story that Matthew tells of Jesus’ first few years is that of a family traveling up and down, but having to move on from every parking place they found, whether they wanted to or not. Matthew and Luke tell different infancy stories, but both agree that an arduous journey was involved. Perhaps Jesus’ parents’ need to keep moving set a tone for the rest of his life. During his ministry, Jesus was always on the move, saying such things as, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” He had a destination in mind, and those who wanted to follow him would need a good pair of walking shoes, a willingness to leave behind much, and a readiness to move on. Their hearts would need to be set on the pilgrim’s way, as we read in Psalm 84.
Today, in many ways, represents a time for us to move on and continue on the pilgrim’s way. Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Do you know the Christmas carol, “Tomorrow shall be my dancing day?” Well, forget it. Tomorrow is not your dancing day. Tomorrow is Epiphany. Tomorrow is time for the Christmas tree and the decorations and the lights to come down and be packed away. Tomorrow is time for the three most despicable words in a child’s vocabulary: back to school. Tomorrow the pressures of life will re-assert themselves. For us, Christmas 2024 is fading into the rear-view mirror, as did Bethlehem for Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.
But this Second Sunday after Christmas Day allows to linger for one more moment. When most of the world has already returned to their routines, we have an opportunity to take one final look back before we move on. So let me ask you: Was Christmas a time of mystery and joy for you? Was it a place of peace and serenity, as we imagine Bethlehem turned out to be for the holy family? Did you have moments that you wanted to occupy more permanently than we are allowed to occupy any moment? Moments like: your whole family crammed into a pew on Christmas Eve; little children rushing toward the tree to open their presents; three generations of culinary artists at work in the kitchen preparing the afternoon feast; everyone you love gathered around the dining room table. Such radiant times. You want to stop the clock right then and park there indefinitely. This is as good as it gets.
The troubling truth is this: no matter how good your parking place is, sooner or later you have to relinquish it. You have to move on. Last fall we celebrated my 20th anniversary as Rector of Grace Church. Before we came here I was the rector of a church in Cincinnati. We lived in a house that Stacie and I had bought and made our own. We transformed one bedroom into a nursery. I’ll never forget installing the Noah’s Ark wallpaper while Stacie was great with child. In the backyard we had buried a beloved cat who had died before her time. The house was more than a house, it was home. Then Grace Church came calling, and we knew that God was opening the door to a new chapter of life and ministry. In heart and mind we were ready to get up and go. Or so we thought.
To make a long story short, the movers packed up our belongings and finally pulled away. It was time for us to roll. Stacie and I thought one final sweep of the house was in order. Thus, with the boys already strapped in their car seats, we went from room to room in the empty house. So far so good. Then we eventually came to the nursery with the Noah’s Ark wallpaper. Blast that Noah’s Ark wallpaper! I am not a person who cries easily or often, but suddenly we were both sobbing. The Noah’s Ark wallpaper got me. Moving on can be a wrenching experience, even when we know it is a calling from God. “Thou must leave thy lowly dwelling, the humble crib, the stable bare,” is how the choir will sing it today. As we set ourselves on the pilgrim’s way, somehow our strange yearning for permanence – for Home with a capital “H” – is never quiet fulfilled.
Whoever it was that wrote what we call Psalm 84 had the same yearning and unfulfilled desire for home that we do. Listen: My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are they who dwell in your house! They will always be praising you. The point that the Psalmist is trying to make is this: we have no permanent home here on earth. We are all displaced persons who wander through this life as nomads. We are all homeless people who are homesick for heaven. St. Augustine put it this way when he prayed, Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee. People often quote Augustine’s prayer because it rings true. We will always be restless until we find our rest in God. We will always be homeless until we find our home in God. We will always need to move on until we finally arrive Home. We are not meant to park here forever. Get up, says the angel. Move on.
So it is that on this Twelfth Day of Christmas we prepare to move on. We look back on another Christmas that we gratefully inhabited. We head into all the uncertainties of 2025 with no way of knowing what a new year will bring for any of us. But before you conclude that things can only get worse, before you decide that God has nothing new under the sun to show you in 2025, before you become reluctant to give up your parking place, remember Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus. Remember that the time came for Mary and Joseph also to leave Bethlehem and head into an uncertain future in an unknown land.
How did they find the courage to move ahead? I can imagine how they might have glanced back over their shoulders at the place where Jesus was born. Looking back sometimes can give us the strength to go forward. Looking back they might have realized that the humblest of places, the least likely of people, and the most unexpected of times can be charged with God’s presence. If God had made himself present in those surroundings, God could make himself present wherever they were headed. It can work the same way for us. We can look back on our own radiant moments and realize how God made himself present – how God became incarnate in the people that inhabited those times and places with us.
As Mary and Joseph moved on from Bethlehem, Matthew writes how they discovered God to be powerfully with them as they traveled. They did not leave God behind in Bethlehem. God would be present in front of them, leading them and directing them – even protecting them. God sent angels to warn Joseph in his dreams. God saved Jesus from Herod and eventually established the Holy Family in Nazareth. God was leading them all the way, all the time. Fun fact alert: the Greek word on the angel’s lips that we translate into the English “get up,” or “arise,” is significant. This word – “arise,” “get up” – pronounced “egi’ro” in Greek, is the main New Testament word for nothing less than resurrection. “He is not here; for he has been ‘gotten up,” said the Easter angel at the tomb of Jesus. “Get up,” said Jesus to the dead daughter of Jairus. “Get up,” said the angel to Mary and Joseph. “Get up,” says the angel to us. Thus when we obey the angelic summons, when we look ahead, when we un-dig our heals, when we arise and move on, we practice resurrection. We anticipate what some have called “that great getting-up morning.”
What of our final destination? What of the homesickness for heaven that afflicts us as we travel? The reason that God moves us on through this life and never lets us settle is precisely to satisfy our longing for the courts of the Lord. We have a desire that no parking place on earth can satisfy, so God is prodding us, calling us, cajoling us, and urging us to that Place of all places, where Christ has gone ahead to prepare us a room. He is leading us to dwell in his house. There the only moving on will be from height to height, to ever closer revelations of the Lord of hosts, as we read in Psalm 84.
Even the sparrow has found her a house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, by the side of the altar of the Lord of hosts. If such is true for the birds of the air, which neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, imagine how much more true it is for those who belong to Christ. You are of much more value than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, says the Lord Jesus.
So arise. Get up. Move on. Your destination is God, and your heart will always be restless until you find your rest in Him.