5 Easter.A.26
John 14:1-14
The Rev. Melanie McCarley
Perhaps you, like me, have driven past an apartment complex or housing development brandishing an eye-catching sign that reads: “If you lived here, you’d be home now.” Generally located along busy streets near office complexes or close to the lakefront, they are designed to entice weary commuters who would like a shorter trek to work or those who want to get away from it all. Perhaps you take a glance at the abodes and consider. Is that a place I’d really want to call my home? “If you lived here, you’d be home now.”
Home is as much a concept as it is a place—perhaps moreso. In the Gospel lesson for today Jesus says: “In my father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Many folks interpret this passage on the literal side. They tend to be the ones who prefer the word “mansion” to “dwelling places.” For them, Heaven is real estate. And there, as now, location matters. The dwellings these folks conjure generally include swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses a grand view of the water and splendid gardens (presumably with someone else doing the heavy lifting.) Which always leads me to consider—how many golf courses does Heaven need? This isn’t limited to adults. I once asked a Confirmation Class to describe heaven and what they came up with was an amusement park—complete with roller coasters and spinning teacups. For anyone who has ever spent their vacation in ninety plus degree heat waiting in endless lines in an amusement park on a summer’s day along with thousands of other families—perhaps this doesn’t sound so much like heaven as it does hell. But I digress.
So… what is home to you? I suspect that for many—if not most of us here—home isn’t so much a building as it is relationships. “Home” is comprised of people. Home is wherever you are surrounded by those you love. What this means is that “home” could just as easily be a campsite as it could a favorite pub, a gymnasium or track, a suburban dwelling or a mansion by the sea. Take the people we love out of it, and these are just places. Home is with the people we cherish. Sometimes these people are relatives, sometimes not. Most of all, they are the people who accept us as we are and love us anyway.
What if this is what Jesus is saying in this passage? What if home isn’t a place, but a person – specifically, Jesus. Today’s Gospel is at once one of the most comforting passages in Holy Scripture, and also one of the most troubling. Allow me to explain.
In the gospel for this morning Jesus is speaking to the disciples about leaving. And not surprisingly, the disciples are disturbed. They are not sure their hearts can bear his departure and this is why he attempts to quiet their troubled spirits by speaking of his Father’s house. Home. “In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Beautiful words—no wonder they are the most frequently chosen to be read at funerals.
Enter Thomas, the concrete over-thinker of the apostles—who is—no doubt, a bit anxious, and he asks for GPS coordinates—as well as a map. “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Here, I suspect Jesus does his best to avoid the eye-roll we all know he wants to give, and he says the most reassuring thing he can to someone who is not able to visualize or comprehend in anything other than concrete objects. Jesus says: “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me (and you do, Thomas), you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Jesus can’t get any more concrete than that. And perhaps, now, Thomas begins to get the point. Home isn’t a place, it’s a person. And if you are with Jesus, no matter where you happen to be, you are home. “If you lived here, (if you live with Jesus in your heart) you’d be home now.” It’s a reassuring, embracing concept.
How tragic it is that this passage has become the war cry of exclusivist and triumphalist Christian dogma that uses the very words of our Lord, that are intended to reassure, to instead proclaim division, separation and isolation from others.
Perhaps the best rejoinder to those who use and hear the words of Jesus in this passage to be judgmental and exclusive, comes from the Christian theologian Richard Rohr. When faced with someone who brandishes this biblical verse as something of a weapon: “But Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.” He gently responds: “When Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life”, it means that you are NOT. A pointed reminder that who gets to heaven is really none of our business. This is a mystery of the highest order and our best response is awe and wonder, rather than bigotry and belligerence.
So, perhaps we need to reacquaint ourselves with the concept of home. If the home of which our Savior speaks isn’t so much of a place as it is a person(say, the Holy Trinity)—how do we understand this? From my perspective, home is where you are loved unconditionally, where you are understood, accepted and valued—not for what you do, but simply for the remarkable person that you are. If you want to get to heaven—what you will discover is this: There are no applications, qualifying exams, entrance fees or contracts. There is simply this—the willingness to follow Jesus, to get to know Jesus and love Lord and Savior of all.
“If you lived here (if you live with Jesus in your heart), you’d be home now.” Home is when we are with God—not just in the future tense, but in this present moment. If you want to truly feel at home, get to know the One who knows you better than you know yourself—and loves you, no strings attached. The great fourteenth-century mystic and philosopher, Meister Eckhart puts it best. “God is at home. It’s we who have gone out for a walk.” Come home, come home to Jesus and find your place, not only in heaven but in this world as well. “If you lived here, you’d be home now.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.