A Sermon Preached By

The Rev. Dr. Peter W. Shidemantle

5th Sunday of Easter, April 20, 2008

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

            A couple of Sundays ago in a sermon I was talking about hope, and I made the comment that hope is always specific.  By that I meant that hope comes from somewhere and it points somewhere.  I was talking about it in reference to Martin Luther King, the hope that he spoke to and galvanized among so many.  Hope might come from a lack of something - for example, a lack of freedom or opportunity; or (and this could occur at the same time) it might come from just a taste or a glimpse of something - for example, what freedom or full opportunity looks like for others who do have it.  It has a definite direction to it. 

            Hope is different, I said, than a dream or a wish.  My daughter might have a dream of someday singing in the Metropolitan Opera (or is that her father’s dream?), but she hopes she’ll get into a school that will help move her toward fulfillment of that dream.  Meanwhile she’s taking lessons and working on developing the skills she needs to take just the next step.  The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years in the hope of reaching the Promise Land, all along the way learning what it meant to follow the God who promised to lead them there - through all their complaining and all their doubts, and more than once God was ready to give up on them.  Hope, in other words, is a path, a way.  It’s a commitment.  It has an end in sight, but unless you are involved and invested in the journey, the end remains little more than a wish, or a dream.  There is a difference here, and it’s not just semantics.

            Surely a central Christian hope is the hope of heaven. The first few verses of John, chapter 14, go right to the heart of it: Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many dwelling places (mansions).  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  I have conducted very few funeral services where this passage was not read, often requested by the family, or beforehand by the deceased.  These verses are like a warm embrace, as some have called them, “Christian comfort food.”  Comfort food is sometimes just what we need!  The setting where Jesus uttered them was John’s version of the Last Supper, where Jesus is praying to the Father on behalf of the disciples - and the church - offering comfort, assurance, and encouragement for when he would no longer be with them in the flesh.  So the original setting was not quite a funeral service, but close.  Actually, these first 14 verses contain quite a list of often quoted and quotable passages, some of them often contested - certainly struggled with:

“If in my name you ask for anything, I will do it.” (v14)

“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” (v12)

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (v9)

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (v6)

            Each one of them could be the text for a sermon, if not a book.  Some of them might even be quite troubling to us, intellectually, theologically (interesting that the passage begins with “Do not let your hearts be troubled!”).  But the whole text taken together illustrates, in a certain way, what we already know from experience - that the Christian walk is a hard one.  “I am the way, and the truth and the life,” Jesus says, and we know that way leads to the cross.  It’s not easy to swallow.  Sometimes over the years I’ve been asked, “How come we don’t hear any sermons about heaven?” - and I must admit I’ve never had an answer for that question that satisfied the one who asked it, at least at the time it was asked.  I think it’s because the Christian walk is a hard one that it has required all my attention to walk it, and - to the degree that God has enabled that in my ministry - to help others walk it.  Also, I have always been wary of the kind of approach to Christian faith that would, as Clarence Jordan put it, “substitute heaven’s rewards for earth’s demands.”  But, having said that, it is also important to acknowledge that we can put so much emphasis on what the gospel demands of us that we can begin to believe that it all depends on us.  Our hope can easily get misplaced, from hope in God to hope in what we can achieve or accomplish.  It’s a tricky thing, a delicate balancing act, sometimes. 

            The hope of heaven  is the fulcrum that helps us maintain the kind of balance that we need along the Christian path.  One of the reasons, I suppose, that I don’t often (?) preach about eternal life is because I don’t have any insider information.  I have heard, especially at funerals, attempts at describing heaven - and based on such descriptions it’s not a place I’d have much interest in going!  This central Christian hope cannot be based on description, but on promise.  The promise that our Lord gives is that there is a place for you.  It is hope, because in this life we have already tasted it, glimpsed it.  Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don’t know me?”  What kind of evidence are we looking for?  What if it’s less spectacular than Philip and we might prefer?  If God is present in creation, in the daily miracles of human love and compassion, in the hopes and aspirations of all who seek after God - can we see God in these things?  Maybe we’d better look again.  We don’t have the eyes to see God or God’s dwelling place in their fullness.  With our mortal frames and our limited vision we couldn’t possibly take it all in.  For now, Paul writes, we see as if through a darkened glass, but then we shall see face to face.  Now we understand only in part, then we shall understand fully, just as now we are fully understood.

            That in itself can be troubling, that God knows us fully.  Could we ever have the strength to confess our sins if we didn’t know that on the other side of it was the assurance of God’s forgiveness?  Just in the same way, could we ever attempt to walk the path Jesus sets for us if we didn’t know that he is preparing a place for us in the realm of God, to know that you have a place, that no matter what should happen you have a place that has been prepared for you - a place that is yours.  There is something that is so calming and assuring about that.  You know just how assuring something is for you when it’s taken from you.  Anna Carter Florence shares a familiar scenario that illustrates this (Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XIX, Number 3).  A young adult goes away to college only to discover that his younger siblings have cast lots to see who gets to take over his newly vacated room.  “You mean you gave my room away?”  Where will I go when I come home?  Where will I belong?”  It makes sense, in a way, which is why wise counsel suggests that you shouldn’t change anything at home during the first year that a student is away.  Leaving home, even under the best and most supportive of circumstances, is a stress-filled process.  You’re grown up, but not entirely ready for it, even though you might boldly proclaim you are.  You have to shoulder new responsibilities.  You’ve left the nest and you make do with some in-between kind of arrangements - a dorm room here, an apartment shared with someone there.  It takes time to grow into your new self.  You learn what it is to create your own home.  “But it helps, if in the midst of all that anxiety, to know that you have a room waiting for you somewhere.  Knowing it somehow gives you the strength to leave it.”

            Jesus is offering comfort and assurance for the trials that are coming.  He knows that though there are times for stirring, demanding words, there are also times for comforting words.  There are times for us to stand back and take a deep breath before we march ahead.  He knows that, because he knows us, fully.

            Last Sunday we sang and recited the comforting and assuring words of the 23^rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still water, he restores my soul . . .”  We noted that not only in times of trouble might this Psalm speak to us, because the path of faith is always filled with dangers and snares and threats, some we don’t even realize.  These words too, “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places . . .” provide comfort as we near life’s ending, but also in all the leave-taking and separations in life - some of them that are part of growing and moving on, some of them that are the result of broken relationships and hurtful circumstances.  In all of it, and through all of it, know that there is a place for you that Christ has prepared.  We don’t know what that dwelling place will look like, but we do know that he will have a hand in making it. 

            With the hope of heaven always and ever before us, based on the promise of the one who prepares a place for us, we, who are so prone to trouble, can live in a way that those troubles shall not undo us.  This hope is what helps us come down on the side of love.  We choose to live on the loving side of those things that want to shake our faith:

“If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”  Living in love, with the hope of heaven, our response is not, “What’s in it for me?” but “What can I do?”

“Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.”  Living in love, with the hope of heaven, we do not need proof for what cannot now be seen, but trust in what we have already seen.

“In my Father’s house are many dwelling places . . . where I am you may be also.”  Living in love, with the hope of heaven, we don’t need to wonder what our room will look like, but enjoy Christ’s presence with us each day.

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Living in love, with the hope of heaven, we realize that it isn’t for us to decide who is in and who is out, but to follow the path of the One who is the Way. 

(with acknowledgment to William Brosend for the responses to each of these verses, in “The Christian Century,” April 8, 2008.)

And so do not let your hearts be troubled.  There is a place that is your own, near to the heart of God.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, for “though this world, with devils filled, may threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.”  Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

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