Easter 5A
John 14:1-14
There has
been quite a lot of buzz lately about the book and now the movie, Heaven is for Real. Even as I was
wandering around St. Martin’s garage sale this week, I heard people talking
about it to each other across the tables. It isn’t just this book-turned-movie,
either. There have been a slew of books written lately about people’s near
death experiences, and their encounters with Jesus and/or heaven. People love
them – they are flying off the shelves.
I can
understand why. Death is for many people their greatest fear, largely, I
imagine, because it is such an unknown. Not many people die and live to tell to
the tale, after all! Lazarus is raised from the dead… but he never tells us all
about the experience. Jesus hung out for a while after his resurrection, but he
also does not elaborate on the experience, at least not visually like we so
long to hear about. So death remains a frightening unknown, and we humans don’t
do well with the unknown. And so when someone does die and then comes back to tell about it, especially through
such innocent eyes as young Colton, whose story is told in Heaven is For Real, we cling to it, looking to it for answers, for peace
with the prospect of dying, for hope, and for proof that our faith in Christ is
legit.
I’m as
intrigued as the next person by these stories, and I have read a couple myself.
And I admit I do find some sense of calm and even some validation in them. But
as a pastor, I also find a bit of concern. Not in the stories themselves – I’m
not one to judge people’s experience or their telling of it. Life and death
stories are some of the very best, and I do believe that people’s telling of
their experience is true – at least
for them, if not also in some broader, more eternal sense.
So if I
believe the stories, what is my concern about? First of all, it is that when we
read such accounts, we are tempted to turn heaven into a distant location, a
place with a zip code, an almost physical destination that is what our
existence is all about. Of course we’re in good company on that one – the
disciples in today’s Gospel reading do the same thing. The part we hear today of
Jesus’ story
actually brings us back to Maundy Thursday, the day before Jesus
died. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet, and given them a new
commandment, to love one another as he has loved them. He has foretold his
death. And then when he says he is going to prepare a place for them in his
Father’s house, and they will know how to get there, Thomas immediately goes to
the same place we do, assuming “there” is a physical place, and he blurts out,
“But Lord, we don’t even know where you are going, where this house is that you
speak of. So how are we supposed to know the way?” He wants Jesus to give him what
to plug into his GPS, so they will be sure not to get lost, and avoid any tolls
along the way.
It is an
honest question, an authentic question, and one I would probably have asked as
well. But as we can see from Jesus’ response, Thomas misses the point. Jesus
responds with what have become some of his most famous words: “I am the way,
and the truth and the life.” Taken alone, it is a pretty bizarre response to
Thomas’s very practical question. But remember the context in which Jesus says
it: he has just given them the new commandment, to love one another as he loves
them. He has just sat before them and washed their feet. And now he is saying,
“I am the way.” Like in English, the Greek word for “way” can mean a pathway or
route as well as a “way of life” or practice. Given that Jesus has just shown
them in the profoundly humble act of washing their feet that he wants them to
love and serve one another, it seems likely that when Jesus says, “I am the
way,” he is referring to himself as a way of life, rather than the pathway to a
destination.
Taken that
way, faith in Christ is no longer about ending up in heaven, a location that
can be described and pinpointed, and which is lauded as the ultimate goal of
the Christian life. Rather, it is about a journey, walking a walk, walking the
way, the truth and the life. Life with Christ is not about a destination or an
achievement. It is a way of being, and a way of becoming. And so going back to
where I started this sermon, I get concerned when we are so focused on the
destination, a place called heaven, and also about who is going to be there and
who is not, that we forget that following the Way, the Truth, and the Life is
not just about then, it is about right now.
We talked
about this just yesterday in confirmation class. In the midst of talking about
Jesus’ crucifixion, a question came up about how we get to heaven and who is
there, and I told them plainly what I believe about heaven: that it isn’t so
much a destination, or a physical location, as it is an eternal existence
within the loving and light-filled embrace of God, a place ruled not by sin and
brokenness, but by God’s love and grace.
But even
beyond that, I don’t believe it is something we just hang around and wait for,
nor something to be thought of as a reward, or a carrot to dangle, or a threat
(like, “do this if you want to go to heaven”). Rather, it is something that we
seek and pursue even here on earth, even now.
That is the reason, after all, that
God decided to come down from heaven, to be God-with-us, Emmanuel: it was so
that heaven might come to earth, so that God’s kingdom, might be present here
and now. That is what we pray each week, after all, in the words of the Lord’s
Prayer. We pray, “thy kingdom come,” and not, “to thy kingdom, we go.” This we
pray so that we remember that not only is God’s kingdom a place where we hope
to someday go, but it is a place that comes
to us – that comes to us when we love one another as Jesus loved us, when
we truly believe and behave like Jesus really is the way, the truth, and the
life.
And this is
where my second concern about to-heaven-and-back stories comes in. How tempting
it is to place our hope in these stories – when really, our hope is in the
story of a God who would come from heaven to earth to be with us and show us
the way, the truth and the life. Our hope is in the story of how that man named
Jesus would suffer on our behalf and die, bringing all of our sins with him to
the grave. Our hope is in the story of how Jesus defeated all our fears and
rose from the
dead to prove to us that death doesn’t get the final word; God
does. Our hope is in the promise that Christ continues to be with us here on
earth – when we hear the Word of God proclaimed, when we are baptized, when we
partake of the Lord’s Supper, when we gather to pray, to worship, and to
praise, and every time we love and serve one another as Christ has loved and
served us. And in the end, when we have done all we can to participate in an
experience of heaven on earth, then we enter into the eternal glory that is
life basking in God’s unfailing love. And what a hope that is.
Photo by Bill Madigan, walking "The Way" (the Camino de Santiago) in Spain with his wife, Sue, who was my 4th grade teacher. (They are there now!) |
Let us pray…
God, our Way, our Truth, and our Life: We
search for hope in so many places. Help us to always place our hope in you. In
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Sprit. Amen.
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