Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Children, I have a job for you to do
today. Every time you hear the word “stone” in our readings, I would like
for you to pick up two stones from this pile and collect them on the ground in
front of you. Then during the sermon, I want for you to use all of the stones
to build a wonderful mansion, a lovely house, right on this brick here. The
brick is your cornerstone. It will hold your building together. Remember, use
all the stones to build one mansion. No fair each building your own little
thing. I need for all of you to work together to build ONE. OK?
(Then to the adults):
My father, a NASA scientist, believed
that the “many mansions” that Jesus prepares for us, are distant worlds filled
with extra-terrestrial life. Most of us might think ourselves adventurous in
populating Jesus’ heavenly rooms with people of different cultures or even
different religions, but my father imagined the heavens to be full of even more
exotic life-forms, extending out into space. The men and women in his Sunday
School classes, back in the exciting days of the Apollo program, used to eat up
his visions of worlds far from our island home, the earth, and there was
standing room only in his lectures at our Presbyterian church in Houston. But
for me, I was somewhat frightened of the cosmic scale of the divine mansions
that he built in my imagination. They were too distant, too tentative, too
cold, and too dark. I ran into a quote from Pascal and tacked it up on the
little bulletin board next to my desk: “The eternal silence of the infinite
spaces frightens me.” I was looking for homier, cozier rooms in the house of my God.
Reading today’s Gospel closely, I
think that Jesus would have agreed with me. John tells us that it is the person
of Jesus himself, not just a heaven far off in time or space, that is God’s
residence. God dwells in Jesus of Nazareth: Jesus is “in the Father” and the
Father is in him. Jesus is the face of God on earth. “Whoever has seen me has
seen the Father,” Jesus explains to the disciple Philip. The reason that the
disciples should know the way to God’s place is that they have already been
there—indeed, they are there—as they
interact with Jesus himself, as they watch him welcome sinners and eat with them,
as they watch him heal what is broken, as they watch him calm the storm and give
sight to the blind. Moreover, for John, physical location is a symbol of
relationship. Poor Thomas is looking for GPS directions to a physical place
where he can find Jesus, but Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is trying to
describe in poetic language an interlocking net of relationship between him and
God and humankind. The “rooms” or “dwelling places” in God’s mansion are “resting
places”--“abiding places” where we can be in relationship with God, as closely
as Jesus is in relationship with Him.[1]
I recently read about Huguette Clark,
an heiress with “many mansions.” She grew up in the largest house in New York
City, a dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four.[2]
She owned several mansions all over the country, yet she did not live in any of
them. She became a recluse, and when she died at age 104, she had lived for
twenty years in a hospital room, although she was not ill. There is a picture
book that has just been published, filled with photos of lavish but empty,
untouched rooms and portraits of a lonely, wistful-looking girl. The book is
called: “Empty Mansions.”[3]
Clark’s lifeless mansions are the opposite of God’s mansions that Jesus is
describing in our Gospel. Clark’s life is a story of failed relationships and
intolerably empty spaces. The life that Jesus is offering us in our Gospel
lesson is a life of deep relationships, purpose, and fullness. Jesus’ promise
is that, as we follow Him in reaching out in love to every human being, in
healing, in welcoming, in prayer, in doing the will of the Father …. then we
will no longer roam rootless through the earth, hungry for home. We will no
longer roam rootless through the cold, vast expanse of interstellar space, either,
for that matter. Instead, we will become the stones brought together as God’s
mansion, secured by Christ, our Cornerstone, and as tightly in relationship
with one another as the stones in the mansion that our children have built for
us today.
Children, what will happen if you
take away the big brick, the cornerstone, from underneath your mansion? (It
will fall.) What will happen if you take out any of the stones from inside the
walls? (It will fall.) We are the stones. Christ is the cornerstone. All are indispensable and intertwined. Abide in
one another. Become the living place that Jesus prepares for the life of the
world.
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