The House at the End of the Way

Text: John 14.1-14

In my father’s house are many rooms, Jesus tells the disciples, and he is going to prepare a place for us.

I would like to know more about those rooms. I would like to know exactly what Jesus means by these verses. I want to know when this is going to happen, and how, and I want to know what those rooms look like. And so do the disciples. Disciples who in this reading are clearly confused.

We are a goal-driven culture. We like to know our destination. We say cute things like, “if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there.” We want our churches and our lives and our work to be purpose-driven. We want to be effective, by which we mean accomplishing goals set in advance. We like mission statements. We have a phobia about the unknown future inadequately prepared-for. It is frightening.

Lord, the disciples say, we do not know where you are going.

This story is placed here in John’s Gospel at the beginning of the story of the Passion, the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. He has shared with the disciples his last Passover meal (Passover, by the way, started last night), and washed their feet, and has sent Judas out to prepare for his betrayal. He has told the disciples that he is going to his death. He is trying to prepare them for that time.

Lord, the disciples say, we do not know where you are going. Tell us more, Lord, about our destination.

It would be nice if Jesus answered their question. But he does not. Jesus does not talk any more about those rooms. He does not talk any more about the destination. He does not talk about the end of the journey. He talks instead about the journey itself. Lord, we do not know where you are going, they ask. And he says to them, I am the way. I am the journey. I won’t tell you where you are going, but I will tell you how you are going to get there. You are going with me. Jesus does not belittle their fears, and maybe that’s why he tells them about the many rooms. But he does want their attention at the moment. In this moment. In their lives, as his followers.

Jesus is not some kind of magic transportation device, he seems to be saying. He is not some kind of tractor beam that pulls us out of this life into the next one. We can’t get there without the hard, confusing, and joyful business of living. Sometimes it is a slog, and sometimes it is a roller coaster, and sometimes we get a lift so that we can take a load off. But in all the times, it is our life to live. We can live it lots of ways, with Jesus or without, but we have to live it somehow.

The disciples do not get it. Show us the father, Philip says, and we will be satisfied. What is it that they want? What is it about the father that could satisfy them? Do they want to know how to live? Do they think that the father will give them the secrets that Jesus is withholding from them? Do they think Jesus is holding back? Do they think the father will give them a shortcut? Philip, Philip, says Jesus. Don’t you know me yet? You’ll get no more info from the father than you have already gotten from me. If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father. You have seen what there is to see.

God is in all of us—abides in us, as John says—but there is a lot to us that makes us opaque, so that the God in us does not shine out so that others can see. We hide the God in us for all sorts of reasons. It is as if we were hiding ourselves.

We hide to protect our real selves. If people knew who we really were, we think, they wouldn’t like us. If people knew what we feared, they would have power over us. If people knew what we most longed for, they would laugh at us. If people knew what we thought, they would punish us. But hiding hides God, too.

But Jesus is not opaque. Jesus is transparent. Jesus does not hide. God shines through Jesus, and people do see God in Jesus. Martin Luther said that to see Jesus is to see God; that what Jesus does, God does. One scholar said “the … heart of God, mirrored in Jesus Christ, is actually revealed. The veils which hide an aloof, distant, and unknowable God are withdrawn, and in the midst of a world of flesh and blood, dirt and water, God acts.” If you have seen me, Jesus says, you have seen God.

To grow in Christ is to allow us to move toward being as transparent to God as Jesus is. So that others can see God in us more and more clearly. This is not something we need to wait to do until the distant future. It is something Jesus prays for, for his disciples, for us. This is the work that the church does, through sacrament and practice and prayer.

In the Gospel of John, the present and the future are a little mixed up. Or rather, they are not so different as we usually make them out to be. Life now is not preparation for another life later. There is another life that Jesus brings, but it can start now, in the present. In that case, we might think about what “many rooms” means for us in the present.

When someone like Krister Stendahl encourages the inclusion of women in ordained ministry or works for ecumenical and interfaith respect and mutual admiration—maybe he sees and shows us rooms that we cannot see. After all, God’s house is very big. Bigger than we know. The church and other faiths have a long tradition of thinking they know all the rooms in Jesus’ father’s house and who is assigned to which. But though there are rooms for us, the house is God’s, not ours. God decides who gets a key. And I suspect he has lots of those keys.

I’m sure that as soon as the disciples heard Jesus’ talk about that house, the were not comforted as Jesus has hoped. I’m sure they began to worry about it. Just like we do. Are there enough rooms? Is there one for me? What are they like? And that they worried about the future, just like we do. Jesus knows they—we—worry about just how things are going to be. He tries to set their minds at ease: do not let your hearts be troubled over this. Jesus doesn’t have to encourage us to fret about the future—we do that naturally. He does, it seems, have to caution us not to forget the present.

Jesus teaches us to walk humbly and confidently through our lives, being free to reveal the God in us. Jesus does not tell us about the house with many rooms so that we can move heaven and earth to get there as fast as we can. He tells us about the house so that we can know that as we travel the way, the house is ready and waiting.

Don't Let That Screen Door Slam Behind You

Text: Luke 17:11-19

What is a gate? If you are in prison, a gate means one thing. If you are in a castle, it means something altogether different.

If you are in prison, the gate keeps you in. It is a place you do not want to be, but you cannot get out. If you are in a castle, the gate keeps the other people out. It is a place you do want to be, and you do not want anybody from the outside getting in. You think the gate keeps you safe if you are outside the prison and the people on the other side cannot get to you. You think the gate keeps you safe if you are inside the castle and the people on the other side cannot get to you. Closed gates both hold us captive and keep us safe. Open gates both free us and frighten us.

I am the gate, explains Jesus. Which gate is he?

The Gospel verses we just heard have confused scholars for centuries. They can’t decide whether the passage is a parable or an allegory. Both parables and allegories are a kind of figurative speech. They tell us things through stories. In an allegory, the players in the story stand for other things, often God and Jesus and Pharisees and us. In a parable, they don’t. In this passage, for example, are the bandits supposed to be the Pharisees, or do they simply represent the idea of a threatening evil? It is not always easy to tell. The consensus opinion about this particular story is that it is two stories. The first one is a parable and the second an allegory.

The trouble is, the Gospel writer has mashed them together so that one follows the other. When we hear the first story about the sheep and the bandits and the shepherd and the gate and all, it is pretty hard not to wonder: who stands for what? And when Jesus starts to explain it, we think “ah hah! things do stand for other things.” Jesus says so. But what he says is not what we expect, or at least not what I expected. The shepherd calls his sheep by name, and they know him and follow him, the story says. So we are all thinking. Right, Jesus is the shepherd. He loves us and cares for us, not like those nasty bandits. He knows us and we follow him. And if we were to read some verses further on in John, we’d hear Jesus say, “I am the good shepherd.” So, we would be right.

Except, in reading this passage, we are not. Not right. Jesus does not say what we expect to hear. Jesus does not say he is the shepherd. Jesus is not the shepherd. He is the gate. “I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus says. Which is kind of a different thing.

Walls, with or without gates in them, define two different spaces. Inside and outside. My side and your side. Or like the wall in Palestine, the powerful side and powerless side. There is a difference between the two sides for a reason. Walls that separate two things that are the same tend to fall down. So all around New England are stone walls that are in disrepair because they don’t separate things usefully. Walls require maintaining. It takes too much energy to maintain the stone walls that serve no purpose. Except they are beautiful, so they are more like decoration. It takes a lot of energy to maintain the wall between Israel and Palestine, but people spend that energy because somebody cares a lot about it. Someday, one hopes, that wall, too, won’t be worth the energy. Prison walls and castle walls stand as long as people feel there is a need to keep people separate.

For the sheep and the shepherd, there is a difference between paddock and pasture. The sheepfold keeps the sheep in and safe. So that’s good. But it is kind of crowded and a little stinky, and the food is just hay, so that’s less good. The pasture is open and free, and smells great, and the food is green grass. If you’ve ever seen sheep eat grass, you know the sheep think that’s very good. But the pasture can be a dangerous place. There are not wolves in the sheepfold. There might be wolves in the pasture.

One reason the 23rd Psalm moves us is that it so clearly portrays a place of peace and safety. But the green pastures that the Lord makes for us are not in and of themselves safe. It is only safe because the Lord keeps it that way. The sheep can only lie down in green pastures if they know they are safe. A friend was talking the other day about the fields of Iona, a small island off the coast of Scotland. The island is home to an ancient and famous abbey. It is also home to a lot of sheep. The fields of Iona are full of sheep. Nothing threatens the sheep. There are no wolves on Iona. Iona is the perfect safe pasture. The fields there are the perfect green pastures of the 23rd Psalm. But for even the sheep on Iona, there is time to go back to the sheepfold.

All creatures, including us, balance safety and risk. In the sheepfold, behind walls, things are safe but limited. Outside the walls, things are free but risky. In our lives we move back and forth. Responsible or adventurous. Frugal or extravagant. Somber or silly. Mature or childish. Cautious or passionate. Prudent or impulsive. Found or lost. Obedient or rebellious. Faithful or skeptical. You can make your own list based on your own life.

Our lives are not a constant progression to better and better, whatever that means. We don’t start out one way and smoothly become something else. We go back and forth, in and out, taking risks and being frightened of those risks. Sometimes the sheepfold feels like the right spot. Other times we cannot wait to get out of there. Sometimes the pasture seems pretty perfect. Then something scary comes up, and we think how nice a safe sheepfold would be.

And through this all, all these changes and changes back, there stands Jesus. Jesus at the gate. Jesus seeing us work out of lives in experience. Jesus making a way for us to get through the walls that might otherwise block us. Jesus understanding that we are of two minds—at least two—about almost everything.

A gatekeeper is someone who polices the gate. The admission committee at a college is a gatekeeper. The hiring committee. The Department of Motor Vehicles. The guard at the checkpoint. The gatekeeper is the decider of who gets to pass and who does not. The gatekeeper has to power to keep people in and keep people out.

Jesus in this story by his own assertion is not the gatekeeper and he is not the shepherd. He is not the decider or the boss or the owner. I am the gate, Jesus said. I am the gate, and the sheep get to go in and out, Jesus says. When Jesus is the gate, we are not trapped. When Jesus is the gate, we are not captive. At the same time, when Jesus is the gate we are not thrown unprotected into danger. Jesus the gate keeps the wolves out there, not in here.

There are many names for Jesus in the Gospel of John. Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi. He calls himself the Bread of Life, the Resurrection, the Light of the World, the Truth. These are, some of them, strange titles. But they are all ways to describe and think about Jesus. They tell us different things about Jesus, about the way Jesus works in the world. And one of those things he does is be an opening in the middle of the walls that surround us.

I am the gate, says Jesus. One of many things that I am. I come to free you from your prisons and let you walk in freedom. And I am the gate, says Jesus. I come to gather you in and keep you safe from harm. I am the gate. I invite you to go out and to come back in, as often as you must. Safe and free.

A New Road

Text: Luke 24:13-35

There is a theory of the physical world that says that in every instant things decide what they will become in the next instant. In this theory there is a kind of timeout between the past and the future. In that tiny moment, a thing has a chance to become the same as it was, or become something new. It pays attention to the things around it and makes a choice of what to be. Mostly, of course, things choose to be just what they were. But not always. So, for example, the pieces of this pulpit mostly stay pulpit pieces, being strongly influenced by the other pieces of the pulpit surrounding them. But some are influenced by the air, for example, or my hand resting here. That explains why the pulpit can remain a pulpit for hundreds of years, but eventually will be worn away, eroded by the elements and by the preachers.

“Things” in this theory are undefined in size or type. So it applies not only to pulpits but to human things, people, you and me. In this theory, the basis of the whole world is not permanence, but transition. The universe is not a place in which things are, but a place in which things happen.

In our local part of the universe, mostly things remain the same. Good thing, too, or we would have to deal with a whole new world each morning. Mostly the people we met in the office yesterday will be there today. Mostly the home we come back to at the end of the day is the same one we left at the beginning. Mostly the people we love act pretty much the way they have always acted. Life advances with twists and turns and bumps and potholes, but mostly it advances on the same road.

But not always. Tomorrow is not always the same as today. Sometimes that is a good thing, when today is not so hot. Sometimes not so good, when tomorrow turns out to be not so hot. Sometimes changes are gradual: getting older, learning more, becoming friends. Sometimes sudden: getting sick, getting fired, falling in love. Sometimes you see the change coming a mile away, welcome it, and are prepared: like getting married, or going away to school. Sometimes you don’t even notice the change until it is too late. Sometimes the change is a result of something you do. Sometimes it is a result of things that happen outside of your control. Sometimes you think, how the heck did I end up in this place, or in this job, or with this person. Sometimes it is a good thing you did, and sometimes not.

For all their differences, these kinds of transitions are like hinges. Bending a little or a lot, they mark a boundary between one place and another, one situation and another.

But some transitions are not so well marked. Sometimes it seems that the past ends before the future begins. What you thought you knew no longer applies. And what you need to know, you do not know yet. It is a foggy time. Things are up in the air, an apt metaphor, for your feet certainly do not feel they are on the ground. In such time, it is hard to recognize what part of your life is the old life and what part is the new life.

That is the way it was for the travelers on the road to the village called Emmaus. Just a few days ago they saw a future of a glorious and victorious Jesus, mighty prophet, the one to redeem Israel. The expectations had been high and confident. Yet in an instant, it seemed, all that was gone. Jesus was arrested, tried, condemned, executed. On one dark Friday, they had gone from disciples of Jesus to… To what? Who were they now? What would they do? To whom would they turn. In whom would they put their hopes? What would happen to them?

They stand in the road, standing still, the story says. There is no future for them yet. They have no plan. Their only hope is denial and disbelief. What had happened could not have happened.

This is where Jesus meets them. Half-way there, between the city and the village. Jesus meets them half-way there, between the past and the future. He comes in the transition, in the gap. He speaks to them there. But he does not, by his meeting them, undo what has been done. Though he returns from the dead, he does not return to stay. He does not return as if nothing had happened. Though the disciples no doubt hope that things will be just as they were, things will not be. They will be something different, but as yet unknown. We know, from watching two thousand years later, that they will go from disciples—students—to apostles—ones who are sent. They will go from learning to doing. Jesus will go from teacher to resurrected Christ. But they don’t know that yet.

God calls to us most loudly in times of transition. Or probably we listen to God most loudly in these moments. Acting like the creatures we are in times of stress, our eyes are open to signs and our ears strain to hear a voice of comfort, certainly, and guidance. God, now what? What now?

It is a scary time when the past is disintegrating and the future is still forming. Stay with us, Lord, they said, the day is almost over. Stay with us. In this time, Jesus came, but not to push the rewind button and restore what had gone, or to reveal the future in high def. Jesus came to lead his followers through the foggy parts. To share with them a common and ritual meal and a reminder of their life together. They knew him, it says, in the taking, the blessing, the breaking, and the sharing of the bread. The meal we share every Sunday.

None of us knows the future. It is not an extension of the past. It rarely turns out as we predict. Our best bets of what will happen are poor wagers. But we don’t have to make any such bets. As we wander in that timeout moment between what we have been and what we are about to be, God walks with us.