The Fifth Sunday of Easter (2008)

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (2008)

New Song Episcopal Church

April 20, 2008

Preacher:  Bill Kupersmith

In today’s lesson from the gospel according to Saint John, Jesus tells his disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Other translations say “many rooms.” We older folk recognize the traditional “many mansions.” But I doubt that any of us has a clear sense of what Jesus may have meant by the expression, however translated. Yet Jesus’ disciples must have understood something specific. In the gospel according to John our lesson today comes at the Last Supper, immediately after Jesus predicts that Peter will deny him. Then he tells the disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” So what Jesus is telling the disciples he expects will reassure them with a promise that would mean something to them. But what that was depends on how we understand those “rooms” or “dwelling places” in his Father’s house. Commentators appear to be divided as to whether these “dwelling places” are permanent or transitory locations.

  If we understand the “Father’s house” as Heaven then Jesus may be telling us that there is a place for all sorts of people in Heaven. This is appealing to many of us who are liberal Christians. We can imagine different heavenly dwelling places for different denominations. Now the dwelling place for us Episcopalians would probably seem like a bed and breakfast in some scenic rural English village in the Cotswolds. And I imagine the Roman Catholic dwelling place is a huge and understaffed hotel managed by a grumpy but efficient German with lots of warning signs for what will happen to the guests if they try to steal the towels. (When I composed this sermon, I’d forgotten that Cindy was going to be celebrating, so we might also imagine the Evangelical Lutheran dwelling place, with folding chairs, paper plates, and fruit cocktail jello. [Cindy nods and says, “you got it.]) And perhaps the Southern Baptist dwelling place is a resort in the Ozarks featuring Country and Western singers—oh, let’s just not go there. And if you’re really a liberal Universalist you can imagine a Moslem dwelling place and a Hindu dwelling or perhaps even a Zen Buddhist dwelling place where everybody is made one with everything. But somehow I doubt that is quite what Saint John had in mind, although surely Jesus wanted his followers to know that there will be plenty of rooms for them.

  The other possibility is that these “dwelling places” are not our final destination but rather stops along the way. One of the effects of growing older is that I have become a much more cautious and fastidious traveller. When I was an undergraduate touring Europe with a friend in a little sports car the generosity of my parents provided, I thought nothing of arriving in a strange city in the middle of the night and trusting to luck to find lodging and if worst came to worst spending the rest of the night in the railway station waiting room—I knew how to ask, “Where is the central railway station?” in four languages. I thought tours and tour buses and tourist hotels were for elderly yokels. Now in my later years when I am on the road and late afternoon approaches and I don’t have an advance reservation I go into panic mode—and that’s when I am simply travelling in America! Abroad I want to be met at the airport by someone in a chauffeur’s hat holding a sign and ready to load my luggage into a van and drive me to my hotel. And in this interpretation of “dwelling places” that is basically what Jesus is telling his followers. They need not be afraid to follow him wherever the call takes them because Jesus will have already gone on ahead of them and booked rooms for them.

  Personally I find the notion of Jesus as a kind of personal travel agent who has made all the reservations in advance very comforting, but we see in today’s lesson that Saint Thomas has some problem. He asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” In the gospel according to Saint John, Saint Thomas frequently is portrayed as the most clueless of Jesus’ followers, although I know from my own experience as a teacher that the student who asks the “stupid” questions is an invaluable asset in many classes. When that student understands what is being taught, the teacher knows that everyone in the class understands the lesson. And Thomas has put his finger on the essential difference between Jesus’ travel service and that of Thomas Cook or whomever. We expect our travel agent to supply an itinerary so we know where we are going to be when. In my youth there was a European joke about uncultured provincial American tourists figuring where they were according to the day of the week, “If it’s Tuesday this must be Brussels.” But Jesus does not supply an itinerary. He does not tell his followers where he is going to send them and what route they should take. Instead, because Saint John’s gospel is a theological gospel—which means the author is more concerned about who Jesus was than just what he did —Jesus takes the discussion to another level, and tells the disciples “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Now the image of God as a safe path we should follow was familiar to Jews of Jesus time.  But here Jesus applies these terms to himself, because as he tells Philip, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” What Jesus is saying seems very hard to put into ordinary language. Jesus somehow is saying that he is not just giving us directions regarding the way to reach his Father’s house, but that he quite literally is the way to get there. Jesus doesn’t just show us the road to Heaven; Jesus is the road to Heaven.

  If we can begin to grasp that seeming contradiction, and it takes a very fuzzy sort of logic, then both interpretations of  “in my Father’s house are many dwelling places” are correct, but with different applications to our own lives. The transitory dwelling places on our journey would refer to the events of our lives in this world and Jesus is telling us that wherever he calls us to go, he has seen to it already that we will be equipped with what we need. Often we find that we encounter the assistance we need or the friend who can help us when we never had reason to expect it. When the coincidence is too good to be true, is it not a sign that Jesus sent this person? Think about the people in your own lives who have made the presence of Jesus known to you.

  But the idea that a dwelling place as a permanent residence in Jesus’ Father’s house refers to our final destination, where we shall be at the end our journey. One of the friends who made Jesus known to me whom I encountered along the way—whom some of you know, Father Peter Sanderson—said to me once about those we love who have died, “they are not gone; they have just gone ahead of us,” and when I am trying to console grieving families at the hospital that is one of the things I try to tell them, perhaps if they are terminating life support for their mother. I may quote this scripture and say, “Jesus said, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms. . . . I go before you to prepare a place for you.’ He is preparing a room for your mother right now.”

  I’ve had the wonderful chance to meet a Hospice chaplain in Omaha who refers to the Hospice House there as an “airport”; because it is from where the residents will take off for Heaven. That image may be helpful in trying to imagine what it will be like for us when we arrive at the end of our journeys. It will be like coming out of the arrival gate at a wonderful airport where you have never been before. Jesus said, “I will come again and I will take you to myself.” Yes, he will be there, to take you to his Father’s house. He’ll be wearing a chauffeur’s hat, and holding a sign with your name on it. Of course he’ll have a sign with your name on it. After all, he does know your name.