REFLECTION 4TH JANUARY 2026 CHRISTMAS 2 

 

COMING HOME AND CULTURE SHOCK 

By Rev. Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai  

 

A reflection on Jeremiah 31:7–14 

When I was working in the UK at the Selly Oak School of Mission and World Christianity, I had been there four years, with two still to go in my tenure. I loved that place. I loved the work. I loved the thinking, the stretching, the global church conversations, the sense that theology mattered in the real world. It felt like vocation in its truest sense alive, as well as demanding.  

 

And then my father had a stroke. 

I was single. There were no guarantees about how long he had left. And I remember thinking with absolute clarity: you will always have a call, but you will not always have your father.  So I came home.  It wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t tidy. It was costly.  And it was right. 

 

But here is the part we don’t talk about enough: coming home is not always a joyful return. 

We like the biblical stories where exile ends with dancing in the streets, tears wiped away, arms flung wide. We like neat resolutions. We like homecomings that feel earned and celebrated. 

But Jeremiah is more honest than that. 

Jeremiah knows that return is complicated. 

Layered. 

Disorienting. 

When I came home, it did not feel like Jeremiah’s “great company” streaming back together. It felt lonely. 

I had left with experience, ideas, stories, questions. I had been stretched and reshaped. And yet, returning to my home parish, among familiar faces, it felt as though none of that mattered. There was no real curiosity about where I’d been. No invitation to share. No space to speak. 

Opportunities to preach or reflect simply were not there. 

It felt like a kind of reverse exile. 

And yes, I will name it honestly: there was something like tall poppy syndrome at work. Not openly hostile—but quietly closed. A sense that my experience overseas was awkward, unsettling, maybe even threatening. 

If you have ever returned home changed, only to discover that the community you left has no language for who you have become, you will know exactly what I mean. 

This, too, is exile. 

 

The Myth of Homecoming can be that we can romanticise home. 

We imagine it as the place where people know you. 

Where there is warmth and familiarity. 

Where everyone knows your name and remembers who you were before life complicated things. 

But for many people especially the exiled home is not a soft landing. 

Home can be culture shock as much as comfort. 

Culture clash rather than belonging. 

For some, homecoming is not healing at all, but re-traumatising. 

This is especially true for those who have fled war, violence, abuse, or systemic oppression. Returning, if return is even possible can mean re-entering the very conditions that caused the flight in the first place. 

The trauma does not stay neatly behind borders. 

Even when danger has passed, the person who returns is no longer the same. 

That is why homecoming must be handled with care. 

It is not always a celebratory word. 

It is not always good news. 

Sometimes it carries grief, disorientation, and deep disappointment. 

Sometimes it exposes how little space there is for change—for growth for stories that no longer fit the old narrative. 

Jeremiah understands this. 

Jeremiah’s Honest Hope 

Jeremiah does not promise a naïve return to “how things were.” 

He does not suggest that going home erases pain or restores innocence. 

Instead, Jeremiah speaks of God accompanying a vulnerable people through a complicated return: 

the blind and the lame, 

those with child, those in labour, 

weary bodies moving carefully, slowly, tenderly. 

What is redeemed in Jeremiah 31 is not nostalgia. 

It is relationship. 

Not geography alone, but belonging. 

Not a perfect past, but the possibility of a future held by God. 

For those for whom home has been unsafe… 

For those who associate home with fear rather than welcome… 

For those who have returned and found that home no longer knows how to hold them… 

God does not say, “You must be grateful.” 

God does not say, “At least you’re back.” 

God says: 

“I will lead you.” 

“I will walk with you.” 

“I will tend you like a garden that needs constant, careful care.” 

That is the deeper hope of this text not that home is always good, but that God is present even when home is complicated, contested, or painful. 

God’s Promise Is Not Applause 

Jeremiah’s audience knew this truth well. 

Return does not magically erase trauma. 

Coming back does not instantly restore belonging. 

Sometimes the hardest displacement happens after you arrive. 

That is why God’s promise is not, “You will be welcomed by everyone.” 

The promise is, “I will lead you.” 

God does not guarantee applause. 

God guarantees accompaniment. 

“I will turn their mourning into joy,” God says but not by pretending the mourning never happened. God does it by walking with people through their vulnerability. 

And here is the quiet truth I learned in that season with my father: 

God was present even when the community was not ready. 

There was grace in hospital rooms. 

Grace in ordinary days. 

Grace in conversations that never made it into pulpits. 

Grace in choosing relationship over recognition. 

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is step away from visibility and choose love. 

A Word at the Turning of the Year 

As we come to the close of Christmas and stand at the threshold of a new year, a certain honesty often settles in. 

The decorations may still be up. 

The hymns may still echo. 

But for many, the season has not delivered what it promised. 

There are empty chairs at tables. 

Names we did not speak aloud this year. 

Prayers that feel unfinished. 

And the world continues to unravel especially in the Middle East, where land, memory, identity, and survival remain painfully contested. 

It is into that space between longing and loss that Jeremiah 31 speaks. 

This text is a song of joy, yes but it is a joy that has walked through grief first. It does not rush the tears. It dares to proclaim praise from inside the wound. 

Not because the people have done everything right, but because God refuses to abandon them when identity feels fragile. 

For Those Who Are Returning Changed 

As we begin a new year, Jeremiah 31 speaks especially to: 

Those who have come home after caregiving. 

After loss. 

After burnout. 

After illness. 

After study. 

After living abroad. 

To those whose experiences no longer fit neatly into the communities that shaped them. 

Jeremiah says: 

You are not invisible to God. 

Even if your story is not asked for. 

Even if your gifts are not recognised. 

Even if your return is met with silence rather than celebration. 

God still gathers. 

God still leads. 

God still nourishes. 

The image of the watered garden is not about public success. 

It is about hidden sustenance. 

Roots being kept alive. 

Soil being restored. 

Life continuing quietly underground before it ever shows above the surface. 

God Is Still Gathering 

Jeremiah does not offer certainty. 

He offers companionship. 

A God who walks with the vulnerable. 

A God who chooses relationship over rejection. 

A God who keeps watering gardens others overlook. 

And sometimes this matters that gathering happens quietly, slowly, without fanfare. 

My return home did not look like success. 

But it was faithful. 

And over time, God did what God always does: 

brought life out of what felt diminished. 

So if you are entering this year carrying a story that feels uncelebrated… 

If you have chosen love over recognition… 

If you have returned home and found it harder than leaving… 

Hear this good news from Jeremiah: 

We are not forgotten. 

We are not alone. 

We are still being gathered. 

Even now. 

Even here. 

God is leading us.  Amen. 

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Audio of selected readings and reflections

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Audio of the complete service