Sermon: "Our True Home"

Seventh in the "Nomads and Pilgrims" Series,
Delivered March 27, 2005 (Easter Sunday) by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

See the study guides that go along with this sermon series.

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... is from the gospel of John, a record written by one of the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. This is what John writes about a conversation Jesus had with his disciples before he faced the cross. It's from John 14. I am going to begin with the 1st verse and go through the 14th verse.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: " Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you for such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ' Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

Let's pray. We thank you God for this your word and we pray that as we think together now about it we pray that you will teach us the things we need to know, focus our eyes upon Jesus Christ, for we ask these things in His name. Amen.

Well, a very famous trilogy of books has become a trilogy of movies, three movies that were a part of the Lord of the Rings series. Some of you have read the books, and some of you have seen the movies. If you haven't done either then for about two minutes you are going to be sort of confused. At the end of the third book there are two hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, who have handled the ring at some time in their lives. Bilbo and Frodo ultimately leave the shire, which is their home. They leave Middle Earth entirely because their journeys with the ring have made them unsuited to stay in the world they knew. And so they get ready to get on ships that will take them to a new place and Bilbo, a very old man at the time, tells us that he is ready for a new adventure. Leaving is bittersweet because they are sorry to leave their friends behind, but they also know that the future holds extraordinary promise and beauty. Their journey through life had changed them and made them different. And so they go not just looking back at what they have to leave, but they also go looking forward to the great adventure ahead.

Now, we have been thinking over the weeks here at Central about the differences between being nomads and being pilgrims. Nomads and pilgrims both are on the move. But one of the differences between nomads and pilgrims is that nomads move around trying to make every place they go their home, but sometimes with little success. In contrast, the pilgrims know that they will never really be at home until the end of their journey. And so we as Christians know that our ultimate destination, our ultimate home isn't really in this life. We are just traveling through. On Easter weekend we celebrate the reality of home that's at the end of the journey, a home where we can really be ourselves, where we can know we are loved, a home where we are always welcome, a place made just for us. Jesus talks about home in today's passage. Jesus knows that he is going to the cross, and he knows that the world of his disciples is going to be turned over because they can't imagine that someone who is so obviously approved by God, someone who is so good, someone who can do miracles, they can't imagine that someone like this could possibly be killed as a criminal in their own society.

And so Jesus tries to get them ready for that event by teaching his followers what his death would mean. He wanted to show them God's hand in it, the plan and the purpose of the suffering. And so while Jesus is bringing this comfort to his disciples he tells them these words, I am going to prepare a place for you. This ultimately is what Jesus' death on the cross is all about. God's love is spacious and wide, but there is a deep breech between humanity and God and so we need someone to go ahead to prepare a place for us. Now in Verse 2 Jesus talks about this. He says, " In my Father's house there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you." Even though Jesus uses architectural images here of a room and a place with many rooms, it's not primarily that he's going ahead of us to prepare some kind of heavenly Hilton. It's not a place alone. It has more to do with a relationship. What's important is that it is the Father's house. Jesus is going ahead of us to make a place for us in God's family. Because we are not naturally a part of God's family, although created by God, we live our lives as enemies. We are hostile to God, ignorant of God, alienated from God. And so we go through life in this image that we have been talking about as nomads do trying to get it all together on our own, trying to make everything happen on our own, but Jesus goes ahead of us to deal with that, to change that kind of life. "I am going there to prepare a place for you."

The place that Jesus prepares for us is our home, a place where we really belong, a place where our best adventures only begin. There is something tangible about this placed called heaven. It's not just an idea or an image. Christian thought focuses in on time and space and ultimately the Christian hope is for a new heaven and a new earth and what makes it heaven, what makes the new heaven and the new earth so good is because God is there. Now, the Bible doesn't teach us nearly as many details about heaven as you might think, but what we do know is that the God who made joy, beauty and adventure for this life, lets it loose with no limits, no shadow of sin, no distance from God to quench the experience. But what's always central to heaven and eternal life is that this is where God is. This is where God is uniquely known and enjoyed, where God's love plays itself out to completion. We experience all kinds of longing in life, longings that intimate to us that life has to somehow be bigger than what we experienced, that there has got to be more. And so, for example, what love promises us now, what we don't fully experience, that longing is fulfilled in what God will do.

In our life now we experience all kinds of amazing joys, but those joys are things that our hearts can only hold on for a moment and then they disappear. And that joy is something that will be brought to completion and to fullness in God's future. There is harmony and peace that we know and long for in life now, but we know it only in part and it is so difficult to preserve, but even that will be complete and everlasting in what God will do. As one of our hymns puts it, sorrows forgot, loves purest joy is restored. And what makes it home is that this is where God assembles his family.

In Verse 2 Jesus says, there are many rooms in my Father's house and then again in Verse 6 he says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The focus here is on relationship. The focus is on being close to the father, close to God. Now, Jesus goes on and tells them I will come back and take you to be with me, that you may be where I am. What this means is that the Christian pilgrim doesn't have to find heaven with the map or with some kind of set of instructions. We have a guide, a guide who walks with us along the way, a guide who will carry us those last few steps that we can't cross on our own. Jesus tells his disciples "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He doesn't just teach us the way; he doesn't just point us to the truth. What this tells us is that our journey in this life is a journey toward the fullness of a relationship with God, to experience that, to consummate that in fullness, but the journey itself, our pilgrimage now, is a journey in relationship with God, with a living Savior right now. It's not just in the future; it's right now as well. And so we can now experience a living Savior who even now rules in glory and walks beside us in life. And that's what we celebrate on Easter. A living Savior. This is a day that a few dozen scared people who love Jesus made the astonishing discovery that he had come back from death. Reality was not what they expected it to be. All bets were off. A new unexpected adventure had begun. This is the foundational reason that Christian teaching about heaven has any creditability at all. The founder of our faith has risen from the dead! Jesus is alive right now. Jesus is available right now. So he can be our way, our truth and our life. He's won the victory. He's made a place for us. Death is conquered. Jesus Christ has won.

In movies, adventure movies there is often some moment when there are people assembled, maybe they are in a village or a fort and they are afraid because there is a battle going on on their behalf somewhere out of sight and so everybody is sweating it out wondering how will the battle turn out. Everybody wonders if the suffering has been worth it, whether somehow they will have the final victory that makes all the other victories matter. And then off in the distance over a hill you hear a horn sound and then a banner appears and then the Calvary on their horses come over the hill and its our people. Our heroes have won. The battle has been won. Victory is ours. It's all been worth it. The big battle has been won. That's what the resurrection of Jesus is all about. He tells them in this passage, look if things were different I would tell you. Jesus wasn't afraid to give people bad news. But here he is trying to comfort them and he is saying that God's love is why there is plenty of room, and I am going ahead to prepare a place for you. And the resurrection of the dead is a sign that the victory has been won. It's not just words. The world is different than we could have ever imagined. God loves us.

Now we don't have to take the word of the twelve disciples that this happened. There is great variety in the witnesses to the resurrection. Men and women, small groups of two, much larger groups. Each person there was an eyewitness from what God did in Jesus Christ. What if we had these people assembled and had each person that witnessed the resurrected Lord come up here in to our service today and we give them fifteen minutes to give a testimony about what they saw? The first thing is I think that fifteen minutes of hearing that testimony would be better than a sermon any old day. Fifteen minutes to hear an eyewitness testimony, but we are going to hear from all of them so we've got to sit here all through today and tonight. We will still be here on Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday night, all the way to Friday morning; One hundred twenty-eight straight hours of testimony to hear for just fifteen minutes each the testimony of those that saw the Lord after he rose from the dead. Over five hundred people in forty days. We can't prove that the resurrection happened. But it is extremely reasonable to believe that it did. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ points to the victory of God, the victory of God's love on our behalf and the resurrection of Jesus points to our true home. The one who loves us has gone before us to prepare a place for us.

Where do you most feel that longing for home, that good longing that God has put inside of us, that longing that shows something about who we are, where do you most feel that longing for something more? Do you long to hear loving words that will tell you with utter sincerity that I love you, I chose you, and I want you? Is that what your longing is? Is your longing for justice, justice in this world and an end to suffering? You look around this world and you know it's not the way it should be. People are oppressed. People suffer because of poverty and illness. There is all kinds of injustice in the world and this you know it needs to be better and you want someone to make it better is that the longing in your heart? Do you want peace? Peace in your heart? Peace in relationships? Peace among countries? Do you long for peace with God? What is your longing? Do you long for the security of knowing that nothing will keep you from reaching home, that you are really safe? Whatever that longing is, look to Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus that is already shown that he is for us and not against us. The Jesus who tells us that he is the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him, but we can get to the Father through him. Our goal is in reach. God's love can reach down and grab us and pull us back. Jesus, the living Jesus, the conquering Jesus, the Jesus we celebrate today has told us, "I am going to prepare a place for you."

Let's pray. Gracious God we celebrate this day, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. Lord, we remember the greatness of what you've done, and now we want to experience the reality of following him in this life, even as we long for the day when your kingdom, your love, your power will come in to this world and remake it from the bottom up. And so we give you our praise and our worship, for we say all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt.
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org