There is a time and a season to go back home – to return to some kind of beginning, whether this is to rediscover the reason we set out in the first place, or to scour the memory of the place we left from our minds, or to reevaluate where we have ended up. We do it all the time in our faith, we return to the source, and ask ‘how, now, are we doing?’ We don’t go back to find the past, because it is gone and we have, we would hope and expect, moved on as well and if we returned to find everything the same, we may well question those who maintained it thus. We move on, we grow and develop, thanks be to God. But now we find ourselves putting up trees, opening boxes of baubles and getting excited about a plastic baby and moving the statues of the wise men a little closer each week. It is, frankly, a little odd, and there is an unchanging familiarity about it which is both hypnotic and concerning at the same time. We don’t have to do any of it, but we do, and we enjoy it because it’s a little like going home to the place where our faith was born and finding that we have a home there as well. Advent is, among other things, about returning. In our first reading we witnessed the return of exiles to Jerusalem, to God’s city. From east and west, at God’s command, they return, carried back like royalty. God has removed every obstacle to their return, as though he had flattened mountains and hills and filled in the valleys, so Israel can return in safety, saved by the Lord. The endless wanderings of Israel this time bring them back to the place they loved, the place where God is with them.

But more important is the fact that the people are accompanied by God in their return. He is present with them, escorting them, just as they had been escorted away into exile by their enemies. So when they return home, the Lord’s special presence among his people is also returning home. This is as much about the return of God as it is about the return of Israel, although like most apocryphal literature, there is a shady historical background to Baruch, but we will overlook it, because it’s Christmas, and we do not want to spoil it.

In today’s Gospel, we see how these prophecies are more deeply fulfilled in the New Covenant. John the Baptist is that voice foretold by the prophets which calls for a straight road to be prepared for God, with valleys filled in and hills laid low. That return takes place definitively in Jesus, when he comes amongst us, and the salvation of God is made plain for all. He is God returning to be present in the most special way of all among his people, when God becomes human. And all this is done so that we too can return to him and be part of the city of God, the restless wanderings are about to end, and things will be ok again. It’s neat, and untrue, but we cannot possibly dwell on bad things when all our minds are focussed on a baby, can we.

Scripture teaches us how we human beings turned away from God in our first ancestors, at the very beginning of human history. Now, as soon as we come into existence, each one of us, we share in that turning away from God. This is the mystery of original sin. But in baptism that sin is taken away: we are turned back to God by grace, and our return to him is underway, the arc of our salvation is about to find its home in the womb of the Virgin and the plan so long ago formed is to be made manifest. He is coming, he is coming back to us again.

We read also in the prophets how the Lord declares, ‘Return to me, and I will return to you.’ But we can only return to God because he first returns in his grace to us. But when God returns to us, he enables us to return to him. This is as much about our returning to God as God’s returning to us.

This good work has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our returning to God has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is begun by the grace of God and becomes a stable reality in us through baptism. It is completed at Christ’s Second Coming when we are raised from the dead in glory. But in the meantime, that return is an ongoing journey of faith.

Of course this is part of our Christian faith all year around. Perhaps in Lent we concentrate a great deal on our returning to God, on manifesting our repentance in prayer, fasting, almsgiving and other forms of penance. Perhaps in Advent we can turn our thoughts first to God’s return to us, that he has returned to us in Christ, that he has begun our return within us, and that we wait for the return of Christ at the end of time and in the celebration of Christmas. Last week we saw how our bodies have learned to stand erect, and to hold our heads high, and this week we see the immensity of the journey we must undertake to realise that redemption. But today, just for a little while, there is a return home, and the familiar things of Christmas. We don’t live there, but we can drop in to remind ourselves of where we are going and then get on with the journey, following quite quickly through Egypt into uncertainty and hope.