The Big Story transforms the meaning of Jesus’ foreignness:

In the Incarnation, the Son of God went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself; in the Resurrection and Ascension, he returned home.

However: it is in his exaltation to the Father’s right hand that he receives the kingdom. He has gone away from us into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return, bringing with him his people from heaven.

So God becomes a foreigner, a stranger and sojourner, by coming in the flesh; but in so doing, he receives Abraham’s promise of a home for his seed forever, even though he then (like Jacob, Joseph, and David before him) leaves the land – the whole earth – that is his inheritance, until the appointed time.

The upshot is that when God becomes Man, He makes earth His home in a profound way, so that being in heaven with the Father is no longer being truly, fully, and finally At Home. How remarkable is that? Jesus Christ himself is no longer wholly native to heaven: the only true homecoming for him is for heaven – the dwelling place of God – to be with man forever.

Christ, during all the in-between, already-and-not-yet time between redemption accomplished and redemption consummated, shares our longing for the city with foundations, the kingdom that cannot be shaken, that will be established in the new heavens and earth.

There’s comfort in that for those of us who feel homeless: Christ has made our earth his home, which means wherever we are, we are home – not just in the sense that we belong where we are, but that we are Home, Christ’s Home, building and glorifying a dwelling place for the age to come, whether we live out our years in the same place we were born or an ocean away. We die and go into the far country, but our hope is that we will return with a Kingdom.

-Ben