May 10th Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

John 14: 1–14
Lord, may we hear your voice in the words spoken in your name. Amen

I pulled a book from my shelves this week, a collection of essays I hadn’t read in years. It is titled Comfort Ye, and its subtitle is Finding Light in Times of Darkness¹. In it are essays by people like Rowan Williams, Desmond Tutu and a whole host of pastors and priests – some of them writing in response to the events of 9/11, others in response to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or a devastating coal mine disaster. But all of them are trying to come to terms with a profound sense of loss that resulted after some unspeakable tragedy – a tragedy that seems to have changed everyone’s worldview.
So this week I reread some of those essays as I tried to comprehend the sense of abandonment, the sense of betrayal, grief and fear Jesus’ disciples show when he tells them that he is about to leave them. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says to them. But how could they not be troubled? All they could understand in that moment was that the Lord they had come to trust in, believe in, had just told them plainly he was going away – and going to a place they could not follow, at least, not yet. How could their hearts not be troubled?
So Jesus tries again. “I am going,” he says, “to prepare a place for you. And I will come back for you so we can live together –– forever –– in my Father’s house.” He’s speaking metaphorically, in beautiful poetic language, using images they only half understand. But they do catch his effort to comfort and reassure them. Maybe that is why we come back to this passage and read it at every funeral and memorial service we attend. In a dark time for us, Jesus is pointing ahead to a celebration. In a time of separation, Jesus is promising life together. The light of the small oil lamps set around the dark room flickered against the walls in much the same way as faith flickered in their hearts. Now they see it . . . now they don’t. Now they understand . . . and now they question.
And yet, the metaphors he is using this evening all point to one thing – to a celebration still to come, a huge joyful wedding banquet. For in Jesus’ day, after a young man had asked a young woman to marry him, and their fathers had settled on a bride price, the hopeful groom would pull out a skin of wine and a single cup . . . and he would offer the girl a sip of wine from his cup. In effect, he was offering to share his life with her. And if she accepted, and drank with him from that cup, their engagement was sealed.
That, in fact, is what Jesus had just done with his disciples at the meal they had shared. He had shared his fresh cup of wine with each one of them, telling them to remember this moment every time they drank wine again. And now he was reminding them of the next step in the whole process. For after the would–be bridegroom had received the girl’s consent, he would go back to his father’s home to build a room – or several rooms – adjoining the father’s house. For the newly married couple always lived at the father’s house. And as soon as the bridegroom could prepare their new living quarters he came back for his bride – and the wedding feast could begin.
I have to imagine, as Jesus used that imagery of betrothal and weddings, that some of his disciples might have begun to catch on to the offer he was extending to them. Maybe they could begin to see that this occasion was less a sad farewell than a fresh invitation to spend eternity with their Lord. In effect he was saying, “With all that I have . . . and all that I am. . . I thee wed. Just let me – now – go back to my Father’s house to prepare the place where we will live together for eternity.” Only this groom wasn’t speaking as a single individual to a single bride. He was extending a wholesale invitation. “In my Father’s house there are many rooms, many abiding places,” he said. “There’s room for all.” And the joyful thing was –– they weren’t just invited to the ceremony. They – we – are to be the bride, the Bride of Christ.
But then, just in case some people are still missing the point, John, the master storyteller, uses a device Biblical scholars call ‘the Johannine misunderstanding.’ It works like this. He has one character in the story play ‘stupid’ –– so the whole situation can be explained again. And in this story, John offers us not one but two characters who play ‘stupid,’ each one presenting his incomprehension in a different way.
So when Jesus says. ““You know the way to the place where I am going,” Thomas replies, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” That gives Jesus the chance to explain, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. Look to me, to my example. . . and you’ll find the way. Look to me and you’ll get the Father too.”
Then Philip chimes in, saying, “Lord, show us the Father. Let us see him – and we will be satisfied.” Which gives Jesus the chance to say, “Philip, you have seen my works. If you have seen my works you have seen the Father in action – because the Father is in my works.”
And then, as if the thought were just occurring to him, he adds, “In fact, if you will follow me by doing the works you have seen me do, you will find the Father. For then the Father will be in your works too. Just ask me, and I will be there. Just ask the Father to do anything in my name, and I will do it. . . ”
Now I don’t know if, at this point, the light of those little oil lamps flared up brighter in that dark room, but I do know that that light then begins to dawn in our minds –– maybe not in explicit words and clear thoughts, each one following the other in logical progression, but in understandings too deep for words. For that seems to be how darkness and light, confusion and understanding, sadness and joy all work together. The light shines out of the darkness and the darkness has never comprehended it. Joy comes in the morning. And hindsight, always 20–20, comes much later – in understandings too deep for words.
C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

        Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength,
        not knowledge and words that we get in them.²

And the prophet Isaiah saw that interplay of darkness and light coming in a day which for him was far distant, but is for us a day we fondly recall every year just before Christmas, when we celebrate coming of the Light of the World.

        The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light:
        light has dawned upon them, dwellers in a land as dark as death.
        (Isaiah 9:2, NEV)
Today, we are once again in a dark time, and we are looking for that light to dawn, that understanding to come. And somehow these words of Jesus to his disciples that night before he entered into glory are reaching out to us in a fresh invitation. Through the marriage imagery we are reminded of his commitment to us. We remember that we are family – members of an extremely large family coming together and connected by Jesus’ own example – gently washing people’s feet, forgiving those who will betray him, reconciling with those who will deny him.³
It is a story meant to comfort us, include us, and encourage us to trust that as we do the works he has shown us to do – the light will dawn.
May God be with us all.
Amen


¹Comfort Ye; Finding Light in Times of Darkness  Edited by Richard H. Smith (Forward Movement, Cincinnati, Ohio; 2007)

² C.S. Lewis   Till We Have Faces  As quoted in C. S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love, and Literature Compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf & Kelly Anne Leahy (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. Charlottesville, VA; 2018) p. 175.

³ Lindsay P. Armstrong Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship; Year A, vol. 2 Lent Through Pentecost (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY; 2019) p. 269.
 
 
 
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