many dwelling places

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, May 22, 2011 - Easter 5

Text: John 14:1-14

“many dwelling places”

I thought it best to go ahead and prepare

a sermon for today, just in case the

apocalyptic prognosticators got it wrong.

Which they did -

again.

Here we are.

Here is the world.

And together we live on.

Thanks be to God!

Visions of the end times are

as old as humanity itself.

For as long as we have wondered about life,

we have wondered what will happen after death.

Is there reward for our goodness?

Is there punishment for our waywardness?

Is there . . . anything?

Think of all of the jokes we tell

about death, the afterlife, and people who stand

at the “pearly gates” talking to St. Peter.

I don’t remember many jokes,

but one I remember tells of a fellow who has died

and made his way to the pearly gates

and, much to his relief, has found

admittance into heaven.

He is welcomed in by an angelic tour guide

who begins to show him all of the perks

and pleasures of dwelling in eternal bliss and harmony.

There are choirs singing,

children and adults at play,

there are people lounging

in lush green grass with lions and lambs,

the streets glow golden,

the waters run clear,

and the sky is a perennial, crystalline blue.

As they walk down one street

the recently deceased fellow hears

a wonderful choir singing in perfect harmony.

The music comes from a simple

but beautiful stone building

that stands off on its own in a field.

It is different from the other heavenly structures

because it has no open windows

and no apparent doorways.

Somehow the beautiful sound of the choir

manages to escape from the building

even though there seems to be no way in or out.

“Who is in there?” the newcomer asks.

The angel guide replies:

“Oh, those are the Mennonites.

They think they are the only ones here.”

I’ve heard my Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian

friends tell a similar sort of joke on themselves.

What makes the joke funny

is the element of truth in it.

It puts a finger on the prideful, sometimes arrogant way

we hold our deepest beliefs and convictions.

This, too, is part of the human story.

“In my father’s house there are many dwelling places,”

says Jesus in this morning’s passage.

This has often been interpreted as a statement

about the afterlife and the realm of heaven.

I have heard this passage read at funerals

and memorial services, and I have heard

eulogies and funeral sermons that draw

on this imagery as a word of comfort for

those who are grieving in death.

The message being:

there is room enough in heaven

for all of God’s faithful ones.

If we look closely at this story, however,

we will see that it is not so much about death

and what happens in the afterlife,

as it is about life here and now.

The disciples in this moment are not so much

concerned about where they will go when they die;

they are concerned about

where they will go,

what they will do,

who they will follow,

now that Jesus has died.

Their “hearts are troubled” not because

they are fretting over the afterlife

but because they are wondering

which way to go in this life.

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

The reference to the “Father’s house”

is not simply a synonym for heaven.

We are meant to hear this message in the context

of this gospel of John in which the language

of place, location, and residence

is often used to signify something about relationship. (O'Day, p.740)

John often uses the language of

“abiding” and “dwelling” in his writing about Jesus.

He uses these words not so much to describe

a particular location as much as he does

to describe the particular shape of relationship

Jesus shares with God and that

we share with God.

To know where Jesus “abides” or “dwells”

is to discover the intimacy of his relationship with God.

And it is to discover something about the nature

of our relationship with God.

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

Jesus is reiterating what has been his message

to the disciples all along:

There are many ways and places to abide with God,

to dwell with God, in this world.

You do not need to be fearful, Jesus tells them.

You will know the way to where I am going

because you have known me.

And therefore you know

what it means to be part of God’s

household. You will not be lost or forgotten.

You abide where I abide,

in the very heart of the God of Love.

This message of assurance and presence

is at the heart of this passage.

And when we understand that, then I think

we hear the rest of this passage differently

than it is sometimes interpreted.

When Thomas gives voice to his

lingering fears and confusion,

Jesus responds with one of his most

widely quoted - and arguably most misused - statements:

“I am the way and the truth and the life,

no one comes to the Father except through me.”

How often have these words been taken out of context.

The context here is Jesus speaking

a word of assurance to his closest friends.

However, the church in various guises

has assumed this to be a universal message to the world,

a message of Christian triumphalism and supremacy,

with the essential message being:

There is no other faithful path than the Christian path.

All others are left on the outside of God’s favor.

It is put even more bluntly by a billboard

that stands along one of our local highways:

Repent and believe in Jesus Christ . . .

or regret it forever!

Dwelling behind such statements

is a rather fierce and fickle God,

and a a very exclusive sort of Jesus,

both of whom do not ring true

with what we find revealed through the gospels.

Yet many in the church,

have clung to this exclusivist claim on God’s favor.

Rob Bell, the widely known Christian author

and pastor of Mars Hill bible church,

recently published a book entitled,

Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.

Quite a title!

The book has landed him in hot water with

many North American Christians because

he claims that in the end, love and mercy

trump judgment and vengeance.

In the end, God’s love will reconcile all things

and all people to God’s self.

Bell challenges the exclusivist claims of a Christianity

that cannot hold alongside its deep convictions

all that remains unanswerable and incomprehensible.

As another contemporary author, Marilynne Robinson put it,

“There is something about certainty that makes

Christianity very un-Christian.”

Bell is being called many things by others in the church:

a heretic, unfaithful, and a universalist.

Those who try to dismiss him in this way

miss the fact that he arrives at this viewpoint

not because he has tried and practiced

a myriad of other faiths and found them true

but precisely because he has rooted himself in Christ

and it has transformed how he sees the world. (Marty, p.25)

The world needs less, not more, people who

claim titles like “chosen people” or “royal priesthood”

over and against their sisters and brothers.

The world, I believe, cries out for followers of Jesus

who are clearly grounded and rooted in Christ’s way,

who are not afraid to say this is

“the way, the truth and the life” that shapes my life,

and who recognize that at the center of that

Way is an eternal spring of merciful Love,

a God who is seeking to reconcile all things

to Godself and not necessarily under the heading “Christianity.”

“In God’s house there are many abiding places . . .

I am the way the truth and the life,

no one comes to God except through me.”

There is a tension in these words of scripture.

We might be tempted to resolve it by either

assuming Jesus was making an exclusive claim

about himself to the whole world,

or, we might focus on the

“many places” element and say that really

all ways are okay as long as we don’t step on toes

or ruffle each other’s feathers.

At one extreme the church festers in exclusivist certainty,

and at the other end of the spectrum is a Christianity

diluted into a secular relativism that

has a difficult time witnessing with faithful conviction.

I think, as Christians, we are asked to stay in the tension.

It is a tension that found voice at our Coordinating Council

meeting a week ago here at Shalom.

We found ourselves at one point

celebrating the way we seem able in this church

to stay in community with one another

in the midst of some significant differences -

we have recognized and allowed room here

to witness that there are indeed “many ways

and places in which one can dwell with God.”

In our discussion we also named what a challenge

it can be to also act as a community with conviction,

to state together - maybe not with one mind,

but at least with a unified voice and witness:

“this is where we stand,

this is the faith we bear witness to with our lives,

we live this way because we live in Christ

who has shown us the way of life lived in love.

Therefore, this is who we are called to be.”

How do we celebrate different expressions of faith

and also root ourselves in the unity of Christ Jesus

in a way that we can bear witness in the world

to the love of Christ?

The challenge for the church today, I believe,

is to do just that. To root ourselves -

to choose to abide and dwell -

in the way, the truth and the life of Christ,

and in so doing to find there in the end

a dwelling place with many rooms.

We do not need other ways to be wrong

for the Way of Christ to be right.

We do not need other faiths to be false

for our faith in Christ to be true.

We do not need to try to be all things to all people

in order to root ourselves in the love

that in the end reconciles all things and all people.

The most vital questions for us today are not,

When will the world end?

or

What happens in the afterlife?

The vital question of faith standing before us

here and now in this moment

is the same as it was for the disciples long ago:

Will we get the great joke of God's love

that has been told in the life, death and resurrection of Christ?

Will we get it

and tell it with our lives?

__________

Sources:

Marty, Peter. "Betting on a generous God," The Christian Century, May 17, 2011.

O'Day, Gail R. "The Gospel of John," The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.