A House with Many Rooms

John 14:1-3
The Sixth Sunday of Easter

“What is heaven like?” she asked. “I want to know,” she said. “Tell me about heaven.” It wasn’t an idle or abstract question on her part. She is essentially bedridden, in Hospice care, and confined to the bed in which she will die, if she has her way, at least. It’s one thing, you see, to engage in academic or intellectual or cosmological or theological speculation about heaven. But when the questioner is staring death straight in the eye at the same time she is staring you straight in the eye, the question is not a game of academic or intellectual or cosmological or theological speculation. In the face of death, “What is heaven like?” is a pressing question about an impending reality. It’s as much a question about impending reality as “What’s for lunch?” or “Where do babies come from?” or “Are we there yet?”

In John 13, the chapter immediately before this morning’s gospel lesson, death is an impending reality for Jesus. John 13 begins, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” That verse, John 13:1, serves as an introduction to chapters 13-17, the five chapters in John’s gospel that treat the night on which Jesus was betrayed. In that context, Jesus’ words in John 14:1-3 are not academic or intellectual or cosmological or theological speculation. They are words spoken by Jesus in the face of the impending reality of his own death.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many Christians turn to these words in times of impending death and in times of grief at funerals and memorial services and graveside services. In John’s gospel, Jesus spoke them when death was an impending reality, while he was staring death straight in the eye while he was staring the disciples straight in the eye. “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.”

The irony is not lost on me that on Mother’s Day we have in front of us a gospel text that speaks of “the Father’s house.” It just worked out that way. Don’t let the culture-war battles over gender references in Scripture get in the way of understanding these powerfully comforting and challenging words of Jesus. It is certainly the case that “Father”-language dominates the traditional Christian discourse about God. But that doesn’t mean that God in God’s essence is masculine or feminine either one. The Bible uses mothering imagery of God as well as fathering imagery of God. In Isaiah 66:13, we read these words of divine promise and provision: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” In Hosea 11:4 uses nursing imagery to speak of God’s provision for God’s people, when it says, “I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” And Jesus, in a lamentation over Jerusalem spoke of himself in mothering terms when he said, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34). According to the Bible, a mother’s comfort, a mother’s nursing, and a mother’s protection of her children are every bit as characteristic of the essential nature of God as any father-language is. God is at least as often revealed to us in the love and care and provision of mothers as of fathers, and we remember and celebrate that love and care and provision especially on Mother’s Day. God is not our “father” only; God is our “mother” also: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,” says the Lord. And it is just so that Jesus speaks to the disciples with the impending reality of his death in view. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says. “Believe in God; believe also in me.” These are words intended to take Jesus’ followers up in his arms, to hold them to his cheek, to gather them under his wings.

Now, if you happened to be reading the gospel of John very carefully in the Greek of the New Testament, you might have noticed that the verb translated “troubled,” tarassō, has already been used once in each of the three chapters before chapter 14. Each time it occurs, it refers to Jesus’ own “agitation and disturbance in the face of the power of death” (O’Day, NIB, IX.740). In John 11, when Mary the sister of Lazarus says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” John’s gospel tells us that Jesus “was deeply moved in spirit and troubled (tarassō)” (John 11:33, RSV). Then, when Jesus speaks of his impending death in John 12, he says, “Now my soul is troubled (tarassō). And what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour” (v 27). And in the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel, as Jesus sat with the disciples at the table on the night he was betrayed we read, “Jesus was troubled in spirit” (tarassō). In John’s gospel, tarassō is a “staring-death-in-the-eye” kind of verb. Bill Hull put it this way, as only Bill Hull would: tarassō is what happens when you feel more like you live in “a haunted house” than “a spiritual home” (Broadman). Jesus has been there, done that. Jesus experienced it. Jesus knew what it was like. And so he said to his disciples, instead of going there to the haunted house in your soul, “Believe in God; believe also in me.”

It is by faith in God and in Christ that we can continue to live in a spiritual home instead of a haunted house, even in the face of impending death—our own and others’. In Jesus day, the image of the “Father’s house” would have reminded his listeners of familiar Jewish apocalyptic terminology for “heavenly dwellings” in the life to come. The image of “many rooms” in the Revised Standard Version’s translation implies abundance and rest in that life to come. This is not a place of scarcity. There will be more than enough room in this inn, Jesus says. Theodore of Mopsuestia characterized the image this way in the late fourth or early fifth century when he suggested that Jesus has already made advance reservations for you! One of the curious quirks of my personality that serves me particularly well is what happens to me physically and emotionally and spiritually once I have set the dates for my vacation on my calendar. Once I have written that vacation on my calendar and the reservations are made, it is as if—in some small way, at least—the vacation has already begun. I’m already there. I know I can make it ’til then. There is a place prepared for you, a spiritual and eternal home, ready and waiting, in the presence of God and in the presence of the risen and living Lord. And because Jesus has already made the reservations for you, you have already begun to live in the physical and emotional and spiritual light of that reservation.

The most important thing to say about John 14:1-3 is that they are not in the end primarily—or at least exclusively—about life in heaven but about life on earth. However else we might read them, Jesus’ words in John 14:1-3 are not intended to describe heaven to those who are dying as much as they are intended to remind those who are living that it is already “on earth as it is in heaven.” We do not live in a haunted house but we have a spiritual home wherever by faith Christ is present with us. Listen to what Jesus says in v 23 of chapter 14: “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.” Did you hear that? “We will come to them, and make our home with them” . . . on earth as it is in heaven! Two verses later, Jesus says, “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. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’” Heard that before? Of course you have. At the beginning of the chapter—as at the end. Jesus is always and everywhere present “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Now, let’s go back to those words from the beginning of chapter 13 that starts a new section in John’s gospel: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Well, listen to what Jesus says of his followers at the end of that section, at the close of chapter 17 in a great unity prayer: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. . . . so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me. . . . so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (v 21-22,26). All of life and all of death is all wrapped up in the love of God and the love of Jesus; it’s all wrapped up in the presence of God and the presence of Jesus. It’s already “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I said to her, “Heaven is like the very best you can possibly imagine it to be, except that it’s better than you can possibly imagine. You know how good it is to be loved and to love, don’t you?” I asked her. She nodded and smiled and looked at her son, her only child, who was sitting in a chair beside her bed. Well heaven is just like that, only better than you can even imagine. The love of God surrounds us, embraces us, and fills us in heaven in ways that we can’t possibly understand on earth except in the smallest part in knowing what it is like to love and be loved. I think that’s what heaven’s like,” I said. She smiled, laid her head back on her pillow, and said, “That’s what I thought.” And she went on living. Because she understood that it is on earth at it is in heaven.

Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word,” and the God who is like a father beyond all fathering and like a mother beyond all mothering “will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them . . . . I in them and you in me. . . . so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Those are words for living, now and forever, Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.