Readings
Acts:7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
To say we are living in difficult times would be a gross understatement. We live in a time of climate crisis. We live in a time when the biodiversity of our planet is being threatened through habitat removal and massive deforestation. We live in a time when we are more politically divided than we have been in a century and the content and nature of our politics is fraught with matters of great urgency. And we live in a time when increasingly violence against the helpless and the innocent is becoming commonplace. Who among us is not troubled by all of this? Who among us is immune to the desperation and despair that arises out of such times?
While their circumstances were different, in today’s Gospel Jesus’ disciples are feeling a similar sense of overwhelm and trouble. The passage we just heard takes place during the last supper and in the verses preceding it, Jesus has just told them about his impending betrayal, his imminent death, and Peter’s betrayal. Their world is rocked, and their hearts are overwhelmed. In just the passing of a few moments normalcy has disappeared and been replaced with uncertainty and loss.
But what is Jesus’ response? He says to them “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place I am going.”
Now traditionally we have taken this passage to be about the afterlife. We’ve often interpreted it to be a promise that we’ll go to heaven when we die. But there’s more going on in this passage than simply the promise of heaven. Jesus isn’t only offering the disciples immortality in response to their pain. No, if that’s all that’s going on, then his response is, in some ways, woefully inadequate to what they’re feeling.
The disciples are facing a multitude of endings and uncertainties. They’re already beginning to grieve the loss of their friend and teacher. They’re wondering what, if any, future they might have. This is a moment of death, a time of endings. But as they despair Jesus responds with a message of hope.
Isn’t it interesting that he says, “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” If his only point was to say that we’ll be with God when we die he could have simply said “We will dwell with my Father in his house.” But that’s not what he says. He says that there are many dwelling places. Now we can take this literally and expect that each of us will have a home in heaven that is our own. But, often when heaven is the subject, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. So perhaps, rather than speaking of literal dwelling places, he’s speaking of the breadth and diversity of God’s reality. Perhaps he is pointing to the idea that the end is never the end. Perhaps, just perhaps, he is inviting us to consider that there are as many new beginnings as there are possible endings.
And as for Jesus’ remark that he is preparing a place for them, this isn’t a literal location that he is preparing. No, again this is metaphorical. Jesus promises to come and take us to himself, to take us to a new reality. The promise of a prepared place is the promise that we’ll be with Christ no matter what we face. That when we face an ending, whatever it may be, we will find ourselves in one of many new possibilities and we will not be alone.
This is all about resurrection in the truest sense of the word. Jesus’ resurrection, which we celebrate during these 50 days of Easter isn’t simply about the resuscitation of a body or life in heaven. The hope and promise of Christ’s resurrection is that when faced with an ending, we can take hope in knowing that the end is never the end. We can recognize that even in the midst of suffering and death, new life awaits us.
And so, even as we face all the pain and suffering of the present age we can have hope. We can recognize in creation the truth of the resurrection. We can see how when things come to a close it is rarely if ever the end, but a new beginning. This is the promise of every spring after a lengthy winter. It’s in the promise of life in the birth of each new generation. It’s the hope of rising again after we have fallen.
And this hope doesn’t need make us Pollyanna in our approach to the challenges we face. We still need to be advocates for our environment and those species that are at risk. We still need to vote, to be civically minded, and to speak truth to power when injustice occurs. And we still need to follow our conscience and work diligently against the violence that plagues our society. But we do so not with a sense of dread or hopelessness.
No, as we boldly face the challenges that confront us, we are a people of hope. A hope bound up in the truth that with each ending there awaits for us a multitude of new beginnings. A hope that assures us that Christ is also with us in every circumstance. A hope that brings new life not only to us but to the troubled world in which we live.