Easter is an invitation to homecoming. But where is our home? Where is Jesus’ home? And what makes for home?
This Memorial Day weekend is an official start of summer and a chance to reflect on our national homeland and honor those of our nation who have died. The big picture of homecoming concerns “the healing of the nations,” a time when the nations will not be fearful and aggressive because all will be safe and cared for (Revelation 22:2).
Jesus says in the Gospel lesson for today: “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). If we love God, God and Jesus will come and make their home with us! This is a promise of an ultimate future home—a New Jerusalem!—but also a promise of God’s daily home-making presence in the hearts of all who believe — where all sings God’s praise.
What kind of home would God want? What type of home would make Jesus feel most welcome? What home does God make with us?
For those who live in domestic violence or even strained relationships, home can be a painful place. For those who don’t recognize their country’s values or feel divided into loyalties and priorities, home can feel like a conflicted and strained place. Even those who have served their countries in civil or military service even to the point of injury or death can feel a lingering memory of trauma or feel as a stranger and unwelcome in their own home. Amid our anxiety and alarm, we are offered a vision of a future filled with promise—the promise that the reconciling God of new life will make a home with us.
Jesus, the Son of God the Father, is known through the word and experienced in love. He will send the Spirit, who will lead the community into peace and truth. John, writing in the mid-90s, repeats his claim that the believers can live in peace, without fear, despite the present persecutions. The home God makes with us — is one of welcome, dreams, and peace.
First, at home with God is a home of welcome.
In Acts, Luke and Paul go outside the gate by the river to find a place of prayer, and there they find Lydia. In her body is a physical divide: a woman, outside the city gate, who provides hospitality., We are told that Lydia “opened her heart to listen eagerly”; she was in a moment of readiness, disposed to listen as “a worshiper of God” (Acts 16:14). As she listened, she responded by inviting Paul to stay “in my home.” She practiced hospitality and opened her home in welcome. Perhaps the practice of hospitality is the outcome of the Easter season, when there is no fear of others, but readiness to host (see Romans 12:13). Still God finds a way from the “gates” of the community who extend hospitality.
In a world of great golfs between rich and poor, our closed hearts shut doors, build walls, and force the removal of our brothers and sisters. In a world of fear we live into anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence. God who shows no distinctions, who authorizes hospitality, who opens prisons, who breathes the world new.
Fear, sadness, and anger may overcome us, but today we are also reminded of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the advocate, as Jesus says in our Gospel today, that although Jesus is going away, he will come to his disciples in the power of an advocate, the Holy Spirit and that both he and the Father will make their home in all who believe. Into the anxieties and uncertainties of our everyday life we are offered both a vision of a glorious future when God will be at home with us and we will be at home with God.
Second, at home with God is a home of dreams.
Some suggest you can dream when you have the safety to rest safely — or at least some fairly deep REM sleep. But those in persecution and pain can also dream of a better world. In any case, dominant Western cultures tend to downplay the significance of dreams, even as the Bible suggests they are one way to show that the Spirit of God is at work in the world.
In the reading today from Revelation, the visionary of Patmos pictures the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, in a mystical dream in the spirit of a city that flows from heaven. Using everyday images (trees, water, animals, fruit) John sees the world around him differently and discovers the presence of God in new and exciting ways.
In this wondrous city that flows from the throne of God, there’s no need for a temple because God’s presence permeates everything. The gates are always open; everyone is welcome. Even foreigners are invited to enter into the radiant city whose lamp is the lamb, Jesus. The tree of life, planted next to the river of life, produces twelve kinds of fruit, and the abundance of creation is shared with everyone. From being expelled from the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis to the tree of life from which hung the savior of the world, where the tree is a place of healing. I was told this past week that trees are the lungs of our planet, turning carbon dioxide into healing oxygen.
It seems a perfect picture of heaven. Yet, the Rev. Joy Love writes in her sermon on this text, “The new, beautiful city of God is not just about pie in the sky when we die, although we certainly don’t discount that promise. This vision is about that wonderfully delicious pie we all crave on earth now, a life that basks in God’s presence now, a life that keeps God’s commandment to love one another and mirrors God’s glory today and every day! Revelation is powerful precisely because, amid our anxiety, fear, and hopelessness, our dreams for a future life with God break into the present. Revelation assures us that good overcomes evil, love overcomes hate, hope overcomes despair, and life overcomes death–all here and now, as well as in eternity.”
All places and circumstances have the potential to be visible manifestations of God. Revelation calls us to live as citizens in God’s New Jerusalem even now, with hearts wide open to the call to be God’s presence in the world.
Third, at home with God is a home of peace.
Peace I leave with you; the peace I give to you (John 14:23b, 27a). Jesus says, “I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27). As the world gives, we often say gifts are freely given, yet in many contexts, gifts come with expectations. Gifts indicate a relationship, a binding together to some degree. When Jesus says he does not give as the world gives, does he mean Jesus is conferring peace?
Vitor Westhelle writes in The Church Event, “Jesus’ words in wishing them peace . . . did not allude to anything even close to their cozy and relaxed feeling. . . . Peace meant: ‘Get out of here,’ or ‘Open these doors and fear not’” (Fortress Press, 2010, p. 133). It is an encouragement intended to accompany the disciples and us in our work. A few verses after today’s reading Jesus says, “Let us be on our way. Implied in Jesus’ granting of peace, is a call to action.
When we say “Go in peace, serve the Lord” it is perhaps less about being still and comfortable but more about being sent to be about God’s mission. The song Wade in the Water has the line “God’s gonna trouble the water.” Getting in good trouble may be God’s call on us not to fear not but reshape the world in God’s peace.
God making a home with us is one of always offering a hospitable welcome, giving room for visions, dreams, and hopes to send us out in peace-making and peace-doing.
French Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin tried to grasp the mystery of the resurrection. The great scientist and mystic wrote: “I desire it because I love irresistibly all that your continuous help enables me to bring each day to reality. A thought, a material improvement, a harmony, a unique nuance of human love, the enchanting complexity of a smile or a glance, all the new beauties that appear for the first time, in me or around me, on the human face of the earth—I cherish them like children and cannot believe they will die entirely in their flesh. If I believed that these things were to perish forever, should I have given them life? …Show all your faithful, Lord, in what a full and true sense ‘their work follows them’ into your kingdom… ” (Revelation 14:13).
In this season of Easter victory, the good news of Jesus Christ prevailing over death opens us to this unsurpassable peace and opens our dreams and opens our doors. This radical hospitality strengthens the body of Christ and fills us with the hope that even in the face of evil, the advocate is with us, empowering us. And nevertheless like the hospitality of Lydia, she persisted, and she prevailed. Amen.
