The Word became flesh and made his home among us. —John 1:14

Frank Scoffield Nellessen has long been influenced by Willie James Jennings, a Yale professor teaching systematic theology and Africana studies. In the beginning God created … so that we could share together in the work of creation, of being creatures. God created home: a place of safety, of love, of belonging, where we could provide for and take care of one another. Where we could get to know one another, till land together: a place of life. For “to be a creature is fundamentally to be a homemaker.”

Home can also be a place of profound distortion, violence, trauma, and darkness that can stay with us for a lifetime, or even generations. Belonging can also be distorted — so that we belong only to a certain type of people determined by arbitrary markers: race, gender, nationality, citizenship, class, body parts. And home with such exclusions is a violent home. Yet the longing, though distorted, is still of God.

Jesus’ home was among Palestinian Jews in an occupied territory — a home in the midst of violence, as it is today. God was with God’s people through tent, temple and city as people built their lives together. God gave them a law to build a life together — a law to let them know what might cause hurt and break home. Then Jesus enters, becoming human amongst us — the fulfillment of God’s homemaking — the presence of God among us in the flesh. This is the word made flesh multiplied, gathered, and shared the way that Jesus gathered and shared loaves and fishes. The word made flesh unfolding from generation to generation, across land and place, that we might share home with one another. The word made flesh continues to unfold home among us. And so God’s home opens up to us, fully draws us in and is given away like Jesus’ body.

Hear more as Frank draws the theme of home throughout scripture, and talks about how God makes home.