Remember?

John 14:25-26, 15:26-27, 16:4-15
Pentecost
May 28, 2023

14:25-26”I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

15:26”When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”

16:4-15 But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.

Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”


A nice note arrived from a church friend who could not be here this morning. She ended the note by writing, “Happy Memorial Day and Happy Pentecost!” In case you missed it, both events coincide this weekend. Sometimes the national calendar bumps into the church’s calendar. Sometimes one of them pushes the other away.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. We pause to honor those who have died in the service of our country. At eleven o’clock, the fire engines drive down State Street, the high school band and the Scout troops will march, all of them preceded by the Veterans who made it out alive. If you’re in town, park up here and join us on Presbyterian corner at the bottom of the hill. It’s a big parade to mark a special day. When it’s over, someone will give you a ride back up the hill. That’s tomorrow.

Today is Pentecost, the 50th day of the Easter season. Originally a harvest festival, it became a celebration of the Torah, the Word of God. That’s why faithful Jews gathered in Jerusalem. And while they were there, the Spirit of God blew in through a window and out to the street. Jesus told his first followers to wait for this. On the fiftieth day, the Holy Spirit showed up and has never left.

Memorial Day and Pentecost, two quite different holidays, as different from one another as war and peace. At first hearing, they inhabit two different spheres. One celebrates the commitment to country, embodied in the ultimate sacrifice. The other names a Mystery which remains far too mysterious for many.

Yet as divergent as they are, the two days hold a single word in common: remember. Remember.

For Memorial Day, we salute the flag and spruce up the graves as we remember those who did not make it to this day. For Pentecost, there is no flag, no inherent nationality, for the Holy Spirit has pushed the followers of Jesus beyond their own borders. What began as a dissident fellowship in Judaism is now an international movement with Jesus at the center.

“I will send you the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son,” says the Lord to his friends, “and this Spirit will remind you of everything I have said.” The gift of Pentecost is memory.

For some of us, memory would be a gift. Especially short-term memory. Where did I put the car keys? What time did you want me to pick her up? Is tonight garbage night? And where is the calendar where I wrote everything down?

I would ask if all of you remembered to unplug the iron before you came to worship, except I don’t want anybody to scoot out of here, anxious, and forgetful. Or course, I don’t want anybody’s house to burn down, either.

John brings the words of Jesus, who is speaking to the church. He knows a forgetful church is tempted to reduce its reach and become a private club. Or in a lapse of amnesia, will forget that it’s born from the grace of God and not cobbled together by the achievements of its adherents. You don’t have to be anybody special to be part of the family of Christ. It probably helps if you’re not special at all.

And I’ve seen churches that forget who they are. Every week is another fundraiser, fleecing the flock for candy sales, raffles, tickets to tea parties, and bus trips to the casinos. Somebody asks, “Why are you doing these things?” The answer: “We need the money.” Why do you need the money? “To stay open.” But why are you open? They stare blankly. The blood drains from their faces. Nobody’s sure. That’s a church with amnesia.

See why memory is important? Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and we will send the Spirit, and you will remember.” When John talks this way, the word for “remembrance” sparkles because it is rarely used. He’s not talking about the inscription on a post-it note, something to reaffirm what might be forgotten.

That’s what the rainbow is. One day, God decided to wipe out the world. Too much corruption, too much sin. God had enough. So he picked out Noah, and said, “Build a boat and climb aboard,” then send a whole lot of rain. Everything and everybody was washed away, as Noah, his family, and the animals floated in safety. When that terrible episode was over, God said, “I shouldn’t have handled it that way.”

So God took his bow and put it in the sky as a perpetual reminder. “I will not wipe out the world again,” said the Lord, “I will look at the rainbow and I will remember.” So God remembers.

But Jesus looks at the church to say, “You shall remember.” Remember? Remember what? He says, “You shall remember my words,” at least the life-giving words, like love and life, grace and truth, judgment, and joy. “You shall remember because the Holy Spirit will come to teach, to testify, to confirm, and to guide.”

In this passage, “remember” is a remarkably passive verb. Jesus is not calling on us to memorize all the verses of scripture, although that wouldn’t hurt if we memorized a few. No, he’s hinting how the Spirit will come alongside us, how the Spirit will suggest something important to us, how the Spirit will keep speaking in the voice of Jesus, long after Jesus has gone.

When John says, “Remember,” he’s not calling on us to pick up a package of hot dog buns for the picnic that we were likely to forget. Rather, he is making a claim about the Resurrection of Jesus. The Spirit is coming as the presence of the Risen Christ, and we will know this through his Voice. Jesus continues to speak. When he does, we will remember.

I don’t know how all of this sounds to you, and that’s OK. It’s his text, not mine. It’s his promise, not ours. What I do know is that I have heard Christ speak – and perhaps you have too.

I grew up in a small town seventy-five miles northwest of here. The great gift that I received from my parents is that I was never given a choice how to spend a Sunday morning. Our family spent the morning in church. There was learning time, worship time, and cookie time. We did all three. And I know, those were the days before sports on Sundays, traveling every weekend, or any number of other diversions. My folks took us to church. Every week. It was not optional. They had committed to making Christian disciples out of us.

That’s not to say it was exciting. It was not. My church didn’t have a children’s sermon. We didn’t have a bell choir. But I’ll tell you what we did have. We had a preacher. Every week, he stood with his big, black robe and he talked as if something were at stake. I didn’t know what it was, but I recognized his passion. He had spent hours during the week, unlocking Bible passages, praying about what to say, writing it down, even practicing in the empty room when nobody was there.

A lot of the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Or why he went on so long. I was given permission to take the little stubby pencil in the pew and fill in the letters in my worship bulletin. Every zero or O was blacked in like a standardized test. I admit I was killing time while sermon words were ricocheting off my eardrums. Then the preacher would say “Amen,” the organist would crank up a hymn, and the quietest kid in our family pew was allowed to put the envelope in the offering plate.

Anybody else have a childhood like this? Anybody else not know what the preacher was talking about?

But then, one day, I don’t know how, I leaned forward. One of those words landed, it didn’t ricochet. I realized he was talking to me. I didn’t get all of it, but something got through and I was startled. I put the pencil down. Whatever the preacher said was coming from somewhere really deep. He was telling the truth, even though I didn’t comprehend the whole thing. And I kept leaning forward.

One day, I spoke to the preacher on my way out the door. I told him what I liked about what he had said. Can’t remember what it was. He smiled and said, “Thank you.” Later I discovered from my dad that what I thought the preacher said, he hadn’t said at all. But that was OK, because a good sermon doesn’t merely impart information; it enrolls us in a conversation – and by that, I mean, a conversation between the Alive Jesus and the people who are learning to love him. And he’s still speaking.

It's not to say that every word in a sermon is worth hearing. I’m sure you know that. But you never know which word is the one that carries Christ to somebody who is open, available, and listening for him.

Years later, I discovered a line from the Apostle Paul, who was a vastly different writer from John. It’s a good line, a truthful line. It’s where he says, “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17. Jesus keeps speaking. Sometimes it’s a whisper, occasionally it’s a shout. Often, I’ve heard some of you say it’s a gentle nudge, or a metaphor that you can’t chew, or a parable that turns a picture sideways so you can see it better. Christ speaks and faith happens.

Let me assure you that, when something like that happens, that’s not the preacher. That might be the Holy Spirit, giving you a friendly elbow, inviting you to lean forward and drop the pencil. If and when that happens, listen – and remember.

This is a good place to conclude fifteen Sundays with the Gospel of John, because John never actually finishes his book. The Voice of Jesus goes on. The cross did not silence him. The resurrection took him out of our sight, yet he comes again in the presence of his Spirit to keep speaking, to keep teaching, to keep commanding us to love one another – and to love all that he loves.

So it’s a weekend to remember. We remember faithful souls who gave their lives for our freedom, and that’s important. And we remember the One who has given his life for all. He’s the One still speaking. Remember?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

The Question That Nobody Asks

John 17:1-11
Easter 7
May 21, 2023
William G. Carter

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

 

”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

 

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

We have just heard the opening words from the final prayer of Jesus. The Gospel of John remembers Jesus giving final instructions to his friends and then lifting his eyes toward heaven. He has told them not to worry. He has commanded them to love one another. He warns them of a hostile world that he has overcome in his cross and resurrection (16:33). Now, he seals his work by offering this prayer.

It is a long prayer, longer than the other prayers recorded in the New Testament. You remember the Lord’s Prayer, taught in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, and offered in Luke’s gospel as a model for prayer. There’s the prayer in Gethsemane before the cross, “Father, let this cup pass; but your will, not mine.” (Matthew 26:29) And there’s the prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

The Bible describes Jesus as a person of prayer. He prays at his baptism (Luke 3:21), prays before selecting his disciples (Luke 6:12), prays before his transfiguration (Luke 9:29), prays before raising the dead (John 9:41-42), prays before breaking the bread (9:16). It comes as no surprise that Jesus concludes his ministry with a prayer.

But this prayer of his raises a question that I’ve never asked out loud. I’ve thought it many times through the years, but never dared to ask. When I was a teenager, taking Jesus Christ seriously for the first time, the question bubbled up – but I worried I might get in trouble for asking it. Maybe it’s a question that I alone have pondered. Maybe it’s a question you’ve never thought about.

Well, here it is. Ready for the question? When Jesus prays, who is he talking to?

Ever think about that? First time that I tuned into the question, I thought, “Here is a human being talking to God in heaven.” That’s what I was taught about prayer. We are down here; God is somewhere up there. Tell God what you need. I didn’t probe the issue too deeply. It had not yet occurred to me that God knows what we need even before we ask. Prayer was asking for what we did not have within ourselves.

In this line of reasoning, Jesus was praying to select the right people as disciples. He was asking for permission and power to feed a hungry multitude. He wanted God to forgive the world that put him on a cross. Likewise, when we pray, we ask for strength in trying times, for bread when the cupboard is bare, for the capacity to love those who do not love us, and for the teenagers to return home safely from prom night. The fragile and needy humans turn toward a strong and generous God. That’s prayer.

But when Jesus prays, particularly the Jesus of John’s Gospel, to whom is he speaking? John tells us outright: Jesus is divine. He and the Father are one. So some time in my irreverent youth, I recall the moment when a sassy answer surfaced in my brain. When Jesus prays, is he talking to himself?

It seemed a fair question. Quite a few times, John tells us that Jesus knew what he was going to do before he did it. Like when he fed the multitude (John 6:6). Or before he washed the feet of his friends (John 13:3-4). Hypothetically speaking, if you are the Christ and you know what you’re going to do, why pray? Why speak to the hidden Father with whom you are one? Sassy, yes, but I thought it was a good question.

And then we landed on the prayer for today, the long prayer that constitutes the 17^th chapter of John. Interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus doesn’t pray for us until verse eleven, the final verse for today? No, the first part of the prayer is a request that his words and actions will glorify the Father (17:1). Then he says, “Father, I have glorified you in the work that I’ve done.” (17:4) His prayer requests, then names, what has already been accomplished.

He speaks to the Father, so it’s obvious that Jesus and the Father are distinct from one another. He’s not talking to himself; he’s praying to God. Yet then he says, “I pray that they may be one, as we are one.” The Father and the Son are separate – but they are united. In fact, four time in this chapter, he declares to the Father, “we are one.”

Suddenly the light goes on, at least for me. And I realize that whenever we hear Jesus pray, we are lifted into the mystery of the Trinity. Jesus and the Father are united in relationship (The Holy Spirit too, but we’ll hear about that next week). The Jesus we’ve heard about, the One who walked the earth on Palestinian feet, was – is, and ever shall be – united with the Creator of the world. They are distinct yet there’s no daylight between them. One is on earth, the Other in heaven, yet they inhabit the same space, the same life, the same purpose. Prayer, for Father and Son, is a form of communion – of being together.

Now these are big thoughts. It’s so much easier to regard Jesus as the One down here and God as the One up there. Trinitarian thinking is multidimensional and so much harder to nail down. That’s why I called it a mystery. Or as one of you once said to me, “Whenever I think about the Trinity, it makes my head hurt.” Fair enough.

The concept of Trinity is more than we can take in. As one of our resident scholars asked recently, “Did God die on the cross? Or was that Jesus alone?” He paused and said, “If Jesus is God, didn’t God die?” I suggested he take a breath and have another sip of coffee. Then I pointed out that all the accounts say, “Jesus was raised from the dead.” It’s passive language, suggesting Somebody else (like God the Father) was doing the raising.

I’ve been doing this work for nearly thirty-eight years, and I don’t have it figured out. Whenever I try to explain the Trinity to kids, I oversimplify it. Then I go back to the books and discover I was teaching a fifth century heresy. I was trying to make Monophysites out of little kids.

Like I said: Trinity is a capital-m Mystery. The 17^th chapter of John is ushering us into it. Jesus, distinct from the Father, prays in communion with the Father. They are distinct and they are One. I get it, mostly. This is big, really big. I take it as truth, but I don’t entirely understand.

But here is I do understand: prayer is the practice of relationship. Through Jesus, God has reclaimed us as the Beloved Children. We belong to God, distinct from the selfish and destructive ways of the world. Because prayer practices relationship, it’s possible to pray without words. There’s a kind of dwelling. Or what Jesus calls “abiding.” It’s being still, being quiet, being held. In this quiet, we trust. We release our worries and fears. We open our hands – and therefore our hearts and minds – to the Presence which is best described as “life.” The life of eternity.

When the well-intentioned Baptists down my street ask, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” I return the smile and say, “I pray.” Prayer is the relationship. These days, my prayers are a lot less verbal, a lot less verbose, and have more of a sense of hovering, of seeking the Presence of God and remaining within it. If there’s a need, I bring it into the Presence. If there is somebody in need, I carry that person into the Light. The God I’ve met in Jesus knows what they need, knows what is best. What he desires for them is what he desires for all: Life. Abundant, Everlasting, Well-Illumined Life.

This is what is on my mind and on my heart, on the day when we “set aside” normal Presbyterians for service as elders and deacons. We ask a lot of them: care for our people and reach out to our community, plan worship services and deliver the flowers, oversee budgets and encourage the rest of us to underwrite them, take care of this building and build the people who pass through its doors.

Yet we ask at least two things more.

The first is the most obvious. They are called to serve as leaders of the church. On the face of it, the church is a very human community. There are differences of opinions in any group of people. Different points of view, different experiences, different joys and sorrows, different stations in life. Diversity is a given. Monoculture is impossible. How can we possibly remain as one?

The answer is in this prayer from Jesus. He prays it on the eve of his cross, the singular event in which he takes away the sins of the world. What holds us together is self-giving love of God shown through Jesus, by which we are claimed together as a community. We are not here because the shape of this building, the songs that we sing, the ways that we worship, the economic status of those who are here, the places where we serve, or the adjectives that the world foists upon us. All of us are here because we are forgiven and loved. Elders and deacons don’t let us ever forget that. We are included in God’s Beloved Community.

The second thing we ask of our elders and deacons is keep us in prayer. To pray for us, of course, and for the rest of us to pray for them – yet greater than this, it means to keep us grounded in the continuing relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit. The great invitation of the Gospel is to dwell in the Presence of the Holy One-in-Three who is Three-in-One. With words, silence, or deeds, to abide in Jesus as he offers to abide with us.

This is to know God, and to know God is life eternal.

To that end, let us pray: (after silence) Holy One, grant us the fullness of your presence, that we may know you, the only true God, now and forever, and that we may know Jesus Christ whom you have sent. In the light of your Spirit, we pray. Amen.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

The Way to Walk

John 14:15-21
Easter 6
May 14, 2023
William G. Carter

Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”


We are winding up our journey through the Gospel of John. Today we return, and two more weeks after this. Some of you have told me how you are hearing a resonance from week to week as one story leads to another, as one text echoes with another. That’s what happens when we dwell with a significant text. We hear something more than once. Or we hear deeper dimensions to something we might have zipped by in a hurry.

That’s certainly true with the Gospel of John. As he gives us the teachings of Jesus, John builds in a lot of echoes. He doesn’t merely say something and keep it straight. Rather, the truth moves in a spiral. We hear something once, then we hear it again, and again. It’s more than repetition. To use one of John’s favorite verbs, we are dwelling with the text.

This morning, Jesus speaks of love. Or rather, he speaks love. Five times in eight sentences. Love, love, love… Fresh from telling us, “I am the Way,” he’s making that way clear to us. His way is the way of love. The truth of the Gospel is that Jesus reveals love, even love for a world that doesn’t love him in return. The life he exemplifies is a life of laying ourselves down for one another. “There is no greater love than this,” he teaches.

Yet I could not read the text without flinching. Did you hear how he begins? “If you love me…” And when I hear those words, I wait for the shoe to drop. There’s a yellow flag signaling future conditions and iron-clad expectations. “If you love me…” (fill in the blank).

  If you love me, you will take out the garbage.
  If you love me, you will clean up your room.
  If you love me, you will remember me at Christmas time.
  If you love me, you will buy me something on my wish list.
  If you love me, you will make a favorite meal for my birthday.
  If you love me, you will phone me once a week.
  If you love me, really truly love me, you will come to church with me on Mother’s Day.

If you love me, if you love me… Hear those words enough times and affection is hardened into obligation. Freedom is padlocked to responsibility. Joy is demoted to drudgery.

And then comes the full sentence, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Most of us pause to consider that. If we are here today, we probably saw those words circling two stone tablets on the front of the worship bulletin. Keeping the commandments is the fundament moral requirement of faith: worship no other gods, keep Sabbath, don’t murder, covet, or steal – and all the rest. We are commanded to keep them. But to quote Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Let’s face it. Some of the Bible teaches conditional love – like most of the book of Deuteronomy. “If you do this, then…” For instance, Deuteronomy 5:16 – “Honor your mother (and father, too), so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you…” That is, honor your mother, followed by an implicit “or else.”

This is one of the venerable ways for scripture to keep people in line. “Do this and live.”

The difficulty is that sometimes we can do what is commanded and life may not turn out as we’ve been told. I know people who never smoked, but contracted lung cancer. There are some who kept to the straight and narrow, yet their lives came to ruin. In fact, I know a few or more who cared for their parents even when the road was difficult; and it did not go well with them. It seems that old Deuteronomic “do this and live” formula is not as airtight as it promises.

And our text does come from the Gospel of John. This is the book where faithful Jews ask Jesus, “Who sinned, in order that a man was born without his sight?” They assume causality or consequence, and Jesus doesn’t go there. He knows what you and I know. Sometimes tough things just happen.

So I went back for a second look at what John is telling us about Jesus. And I had a little help from a scholar named Dale Bruner, who had a few things to add.[1]

Here is the first: our text has been translated poorly into English. We think it says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What it should say is “When all of you love me, you will be keeping these commands of mine.” It’s not “if” but “when.” So cancel all those notions of condition and consequence. Jesus speaks to those who will be loving him. Rather than an obligation, he offers an invitation: “when you love me,”

Next, if we follow up on that invitation to love him, we are not keeping the Ten Commandments. Nor are we keeping the 613 commandments of the Jewish Bible. We are keeping his commandments. Or as the original text put it, “these commandments of mine.”

So pause for a minute: which commandments are his? You can probably think of one of them. He says, “This is my new commandment, to love one another.” (13:34) Of course – when we love him, we will love one another.

But are there other commands, especially in the Gospel of John? Dale Bruner says, “Yes, there’s one more. And it’s Christ’s first command. We skipped over it in the chapter before this one.” That’s the foot-washing chapter, chapter 13. Jesus says to Simon Peter, and then to us, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a part of me.” Bruner says this is the Gospel in a short sentence, namely this: “Let me wash you. Let me forgive you. Let me love you.” Christ offers a cleansing that is pure grace. It’s his gift, and he commands Simon and the rest of us to receive it.

Dr. Bruner says it this way: “Forgiveness of sins will be the foundation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ – constantly – or there will never be a firm foundation or good relation with Jesus Christ or with his Father… This is hard on our pride, but it is medicine for your soul.”[2]

So Jesus says, “When you love me, you will keep these commands of mine.” First, we let him love us with the soapsuds of forgiveness and grace. Second, we love one another as he loves us – presumably, with forgiveness and grace. Love flows from him through us. That’s the Christ life. That’s the way to walk.

Just as soon as he says it, more promises swirl as a spiral around us:

 

They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me;

and those who love me will be loved by my Father,

and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,

and we will come to them and make our home with them. 

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;

and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

It’s a lot to take in, a verbal tornado swirling around us, yet the key to it all is this: the love of God is a gift for us all. God sent Jesus to show love, to be love, to offer love, and to command love. According to the Gospel of John, if you love, you are part of Christ’s life, his risen, abiding life.

He demands no further obligation from us, does not require us to do something we are unable to do, and he never asks us to be religious, pious, or reputable. Neither does he expect us to figure out the mysteries of heaven nor the deep questions of earth. He doesn’t tell us how many candles to light, nor does he shake us upside down until all the quarters fall out of our pockets.

All Jesus commands of us is to let him love us, and then for us to love one another.

And to this, let me say one more word. There are no experts in these things, and that’s OK. We live by the grace of Christ, not by a twisted sense of our own accomplishment. Loving, like believing, is for beginners only.

  If we wish we could believe, we are already believing.

  If we want to love, we have begun to love.[3]

  We stay with Christ, we dwell in the love of Christ,

  and he will keep polishing our love until we are finally lovable.

In the meantime, the world will know we are Christians by our love.

(c) William G. Carter. All right reserved.

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[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012) 835-6.

[2] Ibid., 766.

[3] Bruner, 836.

Abide with Me

John 14:1-14
Easter 5
May 7, 2023

William G. Carter

“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 where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “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. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

I don’t know what you were talking about this week, but I overheard conversation about King Charles III, freshly crowned yesterday. The topic was not the coronation ceremony, which was opulent, extravagant, and included more fancy hats than the Kentucky Derby. No, there was curiosity about where the King would reside.

Buckingham Palace is the official royal home in London. It’s a modest residence of 829,000 square feet and has 775 rooms. Sadly, it’s going to be renovated for the next three or four years, so the King and his bride need another place to live.

Fortunately, he has some options. There’s Balmoral Castle, up north in Scotland. That’s a family house which he inherited when his mother passed. When Charles visits there, he becomes a temporary Presbyterian. The house is smaller, but there are 150 other buildings on the 50,000-acre estate. Lot of room if he chooses to go.

There’s also the Windsor Castle, a favorite residence of his mother, the Queen. Or there’s the Holyrood house in Edinburgh, the Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, among others. In all, King Charles now owns seven palaces, ten castles, twelve homes, and 56 cottages. And I’ll bet he has enough money to afford a night in any Holiday Inn he desires. Frankly, I don’t care.

Yet when Jesus says his Father has a big house, I lean forward. Why? Because he promises a place there for you and me. It’s an extraordinary promise. For many of us, it was fueled by the King James Version of that verse, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

Wow, just imagine that! If it is God’s house, it must be a magnificent house. Extravagant, opulent. Marble staircases inside, sidewalks of gold outside. It must be enormous, if as the King James Bible said, it’s going to contain many mansions within.

That word “mansion” has sparked a lot of wishful thinking, especially for those who live in a shack down here. How many sermons have preached heaven as a reward? You can hear them now: “Life may be difficult this time around, but when we get to heaven, it will be magnificent. You may be poor, needy, or sick, but after you die, welcome to Downton Abbey.”

This hope has fueled all kinds of Gospel songs. Here is one song from the 1880’s:

  A mansion is waiting in glory, My Savior has gone to prepare;
  The ransomed who shine in its beauty, will dwell in that city so fair.
  Oh, home above, I’m going to dwell in that home;
  Oh, home of love, get ready, poor sinner, and come.[1]

Yet imagine the dismay when the National Council of Churches commissioned a new Bible translation in 1952. The Revised Standard Version rendered the verse differently. Instead of offering many mansions, the RSV promised “many rooms.” In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. That makes more logistical sense. A house has a lot of rooms. In an ecumenical age, there can be a Presbyterian room, a Roman Catholic room, a Baptist room, and as many rooms as God will provide.

For some believers, this had to be a letdown. Just imagine some poor soul inquiring at St. Peter’s gate, “Where is my mansion?” And Peter replies, “Sorry, pal, all you get is a room.” The reservation has been downgraded. Oh, it’s still a luxury resort: the food is fine, the weather is magnificent, and every golf swing makes a hole in one. And it is God’s house. It must be better than our houses. The hope is still there.

And yet, did you hear how the verse was translated today? “In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places.” Dwelling places – that’s how the 1990 New Revised Standard Version renders the text. “Many dwelling places.” Where does that come from? Where indeed?

Here’s the answer. It comes from the rest of the Gospel of John. If you read the book, John is always talking about dwelling places. 

It’s there as early as chapter one. Two of John the Baptist’s disciples see Jesus. They ask, “Rabbi, where is your dwelling place?” He invited them to come and see, so they went to his dwelling place and there they dwelt with him (1:38-39). It is the same terminology as our text.

And it emerges from a central theme in the Gospel of John. In the opening paragraphs of the book, the Gospel writer says Jesus didn’t stay far off in heaven. No, he came down here. Quite literally it says the Word of God “pitched his tent among us.” His dwelling place is right here. That is the great truth of John’s Gospel – the incarnation, the Son of God dwelling with us.

When the word translated as “dwelling place” becomes a verb, it becomes one of John’s favorite verbs. He uses it no less than 41 times. To dwell means to abide or stay or remain. So, Jesus looks at his disciples on their last night together, and says, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Stay with me and I will stay with you (15:4-7).” It’s the same word. Stay with me, dwell with me, remain with me. 

You may notice that Jesus is not deferring a promise until we die. He is making an invitation here and now, a present-tense offer to live with him, and for him to live with us. What Jesus offers is not a reward but a relationship. He is not pitching an imaginary castle on a cloud. Rather he invites us to a continuing friendship as One who loves us. 

There is a dwelling place because Jesus goes to prepare it for us. The words we hear today are Last Supper words. In that context, his “going” means his going to the cross. His “coming again” is his return after the resurrection. He goes to prepare for us, and returns to claim us as his own. His cross and resurrection are the Way he welcomes us to share his life. 

Does this mean we don’t get a castle after we die? I can’t say; answering that question is way above my pay grade. What I hear Jesus promise is what the scriptures have promised to us elsewhere. Like the last line of the beloved 23rd Psalm: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” His promise, his invitation, is to live with God.

Now, when I heard that verse as a child, I groaned. “Dwell in the house of the Lord forever”? My parents were among the last to leave coffee hour on Sunday mornings. I never thought I would get out of that church. It seemed I would dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

What further study revealed is that is the Jewish way of describing the relationship between the Eternal God and God’s people. It doesn’t mean you will be crazy-glued to a pew and stuck there forever. No, no, it is a way to speak of living in “the Way” of God, elsewhere described as a “walk.” Walking in God’s Way is the way we live. God’s life becomes our life. All other distractions fall away as we dwell in this truth.

For the Gospel of John, the central invitation of Easter truth is dwelling with Jesus. He goes to the cross to prepare a dwelling place for us. He comes back, back from the grave, alive to invite us into his life. If we dwell with him here and now, we live with him forever. Life goes on, eternally with Jesus. We live with Jesus - who came from God to live with us. The promise begins now and continues even when this life concludes.

So how do we do this? How do we make our dwelling place with Christ? Not later, but now? How do we walk in the Way, receive the Truth, and live the life? The answer is not complicated. He has already given us three clues.

The first thing we do is listen to him. We listen. We pray to screen out all competing voices, and we listen. Today his opening word is, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust in me.” This is where abiding begins. We listen to him. His Word gives us the freedom to look over the shoulder of all our pressing concerns.

Worry and fretting are natural human reactions to trouble, but God has befriended us in Jesus. As real as our worries may be, we hand them over to the God who is greater than ourselves. Trust is a matter of the heart. Trust can inform the mind and direct the will. So we listen, and we trust. 

There’s something else we can do, something more than listen. We can dwell. We can inhabit his words. We must stay where we are. There is a profound spiritual lesson, in an American culture that tempts us to flit around and never sink our roots into a single place. What if we were to inhabit the “dwelling place” Christ offers and truly sink into his words?

We might find that, rather than be confined, we are deepened. I like what Henry David Thoreau wrote about sinking into his hometown: “I have traveled widely in Concord.” Abiding there meant paying attention there. He noticed what he previously had missed. Imagine sinking into the words of Jesus, savoring a phrase at a time, chewing on each metaphor, receiving the wisdom. As we dwell in his words, we discover what the speeding tourist will never see.

One thing more: we live the life. We welcome the living Word of Christ, let it dwell in us. Then we get on with living. There are friends to love, enemies to forgive, bread to bake, music to create, lawns to mow, e-mails to answer, a forest to enjoy. Next week, we have mothers to remember and cherish.

I like the story the late Eugene Peterson told about his grandson. A preacher and a scholar, Peterson was highly regarded as a spiritual writer and Bible translator. His young grandson would visit and ask, “What are you doing, Grandpa?” He would tell him, and the boy would tootle off. After a while, the grandson returned with a baseball and glove, and said, “Come on, Grandpa. No more God-talk.”

They would go outside and play catch. Or go kayaking. Or go for a long walk. Or watch the bald eagles and the rough-legged hawks. No more God-talk. Let’s get on with living.

This invitation lingers for you and me. We can let our hearts be troubled, or we can trust God who comes before, dwells in, and follows after, all things. We dream for an escape from the troubles of this world, or we can welcome the One in our midst who still speaks in the power of his Word. We can jump around from place to place, looking for something, somewhere, that can give us peace, hope, and joy. Or we can sink our roots into Christ and find our home.

For as Jesus declares, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them. And we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23)

Easter reveals this promise. We don’t have to wait until the afterlife to dwell with Christ. Jesus Christ is our true Home. We abide in him, with him, forever. Can you trust that?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] “A Mansion is Waiting in Glory,” D. S. Warner. https://hymnary.org/text/a_mansion_is_waiting_in_glory

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] “A Mansion is Waiting in Glory,” D. S. Warner. https://hymnary.org/text/a_mansion_is_waiting_in_glory