A Sermon Delivered at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, April 20, 2008
Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14: 1-14
Blair Pogue
About five years ago my mother made me clean out the closet in my childhood bedroom. She had threatened to do this for a long time, but I’d managed to avoid it. As I began to weed through the closet I found, to my great astonishment, every letter I’d ever received, all my childhood and college books, and an air popcorn popper. I also found a diary which I kept faithfully for one year when I was eight. In it, in large, rounded, sometimes misspelled words, there was a passage recording a conversation with my father the day before he underwent lung surgery. The radiologist had found a black spot on one of his lungs. Assuming the black spot was cancer, the surgeon planned to go in and try to remove it.
My father and I have always been close. Clearly, I had been anxious, and his words tried to address my fears. He told me what I meant to him, and that he was counting on me to be strong for my family in his absence, and especially for my mother. He told me that this surgery would be hard for her, and that I needed to support her, and not do anything to make things worse– like fighting with my sister. He told me there was a chance he would not be coming back, and he gave me some brief instructions as to how to carry on in his absence. He also told me that if he didn’t come back, everything would be okay. His closing words, at least as recorded in my diary, were “and remember to water the plants.”
In today’s Gospel from John, the Gospel we most often hear at funerals, Jesus’ words are spoken in the context of anxiety and uncertainty. Jesus is about to leave his disciples. He will soon be crucified. He will no longer be with his disciples in the immediate, physical way they have known him thus far. Just before this passage, Jesus symbolically washes his disciples’ feet, and then shares food with Judas, his betrayer. Each event – the foot washing, the sharing of food – is accompanied by Jesus’ command that the disciples follow his example and love others as he has loved them. In today’s reading Jesus addresses the sense of foreboding surrounding his approaching death.
While not intending to liken my father to Jesus, I see some parallels between the situation my father and I faced, and that between Jesus and his disciples. The disciples loved Jesus deeply. He had changed their lives, transformed their lives. His life, teachings, and deeds gave them purpose and focus. And now, as he had been trying to tell them all along, he was leaving. They could no longer be in denial about his approaching death.
Responding to their fear, Jesus attempts to comfort his disciples. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says to them, “believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus tells his followers that he leaves to prepare a place for them. In his Father’s house, there are many dwelling places. In some translations of the Bible “dwelling places” appears as “rooms,” but the Greek is more accurately translated “abiding places.” “My father’s house” and “abiding places” are not to be understood literally as physical locations like buildings or heaven, but as the realm of God in which all God’s followers will experience unceasing communion with God. The realm of God in which Jesus’ followers are to abide is not just something in the future, but also in the present. We are to abide in God here and now, as well as to look forward to abiding with God forever. We are able to dwell in Jesus through prayer, study of the scriptures and love for those around us just as Jesus dwells in God. Here Jesus affirms one of the main purposes of his life and mission: to make possible constant and eternal communion, meaning life-giving relationship between God and God’s children.
Jesus’ departure is necessary not only to make unceasing relationship between God and humans possible, but also so that his disciples can become who they are called to be. There are some parallels between Jesus’ need to leave his disciples and parents’ need to let their children leave home and go out into the world. For manychildren in our culture, it is only when they leave their parents’ home and live on their own that they grow into mature, independent adults. Children, like the disciples, will make mistakes and learn hard lessons. While Jesus has tried to teach the disciples many lessons, his lessons will not become their lessons, his experience will not become their experience, if they don’t have a chance to act on their own and respond in faith to God’s loving presence. Jesus’ absence, doesn’t mean that he won’t be present, that he won’t be with his disciples. He will be with them in a new way. The Godly Play baptismal story I shared with you when Kai Jiang was baptized illustrates this point. As you may remember, a Christ candle is lit. All the children then receive smaller candles lit from the Christ candle. Finally, a snuffer is placed over the Christ candle. The flame disappears, but smoke from the now blackened wick fills the room. The storyteller tells the Children that this is what Jesus’ death is about. Jesus leaves so that he can be present with his followers in a different way, a more expansive way.
Jesus tells his disciples that they indeed know where he is going. Thomas, however, replies, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” In response, Jesus utters one of the most well-known statements in the New Testament, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my father also.” What does Jesus means by these words?
In Jesus, the disciples were able to see and know God in a manner never before possible. Jesus’ was so devoted to and united with God that his words and actions pointed beyond himself to God. Jesus was so faithful that when people looked at him, they saw the face of God. God and Jesus experienced what theologians have called mutual indwelling; God dwelt fully in Jesus and Jesus dwelt fully in God. Jesus’ desire and prayer for his followers is that God dwell in them and they in God.
Jesus tells his disciples that those who believe in him will do the works that he does, in fact, they will do greater works than him. What? Us do greater works than Jesus? And yet here Jesus assures us we will do greater works than him, if they are done in his name. To guide, counsel, and comfort us in his absence, Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will guide us, as we continue Jesus’ work of spreading the good news of God’s desire for unceasing relationship with us.
Well, I forgot to water the plants, but my father did come back from the hospital. He had a long recovery period, and it was hard to see my typically active and energetic father lying in bed and moaning each time he moved. Jesus didn’t come back as the disciples expected him to, but in a different, more expansive way, a way that helped them grow up, in the words of our reading from 1 Peter, to “grow into salvation.”
