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.