“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus tells his disciples in today’s Gospel. When we read this scripture, we often assume that it’s a reference to life after death: Jesus ascends to the Father in Heaven and prepares a place for us there when we die. It’s a text that is often read at funerals. But Jesus isn’t emphasizing “where we go when we die” in this passage. He’s emphasizing the here and now. We don’t have to wait to die in order to dwell with Jesus in the love of God.
Think for a moment about how we prepare a place for a loved one, just because we love them. I’m thinking of expectant parents, excitedly preparing the nursery for a new baby, picking out the safest crib, gently placing tiny outfits in dresser drawers, all for a child as yet unborn.
I’m thinking of newlyweds, preparing their first apartment for the couple that they are still becoming, carefully blending “his” and “hers,” choosing just the right picture to hang over the bed.
I’m thinking of children, preparing the house for their new puppy, still at the kennels. They set soft blankets in the crate, find the perfect spot for the food and water bowls near the family kitchen table.
I’m thinking of adult children, preparing a parent’s final earthly home. They are entering into a new kind of relationship with mom or dad, uncertain, as they haul in mom’s favorite dresser or dad’s favorite chair. They choose and hang family photos, as they make a nursing room into a place that treasures what was, and prepares for what will be.
In these examples, to prepare a place is to carefully set the stage for a new or changed relationship, isn’t it? For John, the writer of our Gospel, physical location is also a symbol of relationship. Poor Thomas thinks that he needs Google Maps in order to find the “place” where Jesus is going. But John tells us that it’s the person of Jesus himself, not some far off place, that is God’s residence. Remember, in this part of John’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to his beloved friends and telling them that he is about to leave them. It's the night before his crucifixion. It’s the last time that they will be together in the familiar way. He knows that the coming new reality is going to turn their world upside down and backward. He’s trying to prepare them for what’s coming next.
The disciples have all experienced how God dwells in Jesus of Nazareth: Jesus is the face of God on earth. They learn to know God as they watch Jesus welcome sinners and eat with them. They learn to know God as they watch Jesus heal what is broken, as they watch him calm the storm and give sight to the blind. They learn to know God as they watch Jesus forgive all who come to him with heavy hearts. As Jesus explains to Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” 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.
OK, that’s all well and good, but how does it work when Jesus is no longer with us as the man, Jesus of Nazareth? What then? We too ask that question right along with the worried disciples. How do we find our way? Jesus’ answer is in those well-known words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Whoever comes to the Father comes through me.” These words have been so misunderstood and so misused by Christians! Contrary to what many Christians have crowed about over the years, Jesus doesn’t mean here that God only cares about Christians—that only Christians are “saved.” Instead, Jesus is saying that we don’t set off on a journey to find God all alone, without the stories of scripture, without prayer, without community. We can’t rest in God all by ourselves. We need the Risen Christ—more specifically, the Body of Christ.
What is the Body of Christ? You are! Yes, WE are! Through us together, as Christian community, the world now sees God’s face. If we follow Jesus’ path, his truth, his life, then our communities are places in which acceptance, forgiveness, and joy are carefully nurtured and widely shared. The many “rooms” or “dwelling places” in God’s house are, in the Greek, “resting places.” They are “abiding places” where we can be in relationship with God and with one another. These abiding places are here, in Christian community, in the love of this Jesus, in whose name we pray.
I immediately thought about the ways in which many of you describe your experiences of arriving at St. Ambrose. “We can be ourselves in this place,” so many of you say. “We feel as if we matter.” “We accept one another, despite differences.” “We lift each other up when we’re down; we celebrate good things with one another.” I’ve even heard people say that this is a magical place. But let’s be careful! It’s not this parcel of land in Spanish Hills that is “magical.” It’s not the church building. It’s not our favorite program. It’s the amazing power that comes to us when we are together in Christ, and Christ is in us, and Christ is working through us, doing more than we can ask or imagine.
Our problem now is that we’re like the disciples in John’s Gospel. Jesus is on the move, always changing tactics, and we’re scared to death of getting left behind. The tried-and-true ways of reflecting Jesus to the world aren’t all working so well any more. There are new ways, but we’re not quite sure what they are or how to do them! And oh my, to us older folks it seems as if there are too many new ways for us to handle sometimes! I can definitely identify with those folks who sat at the table with Jesus on that last night of his earthly life and heard how their lives and their goals and their frameworks of understanding were going away, never to be the same again.
I’d like to close by telling you a secret about our garden blessing after church. After the service, I have some very special seeds and mulch to show you. They are a work of “performance art,” if you will, in which we are going to participate. Remember how, after the terrible mass shooting at the Table Mesa King Soopers in 2021, Boulder residents filled the parking lot around the store with flowers and messages? There were cards from children, from outraged protestors, from grieving loved ones. There were posters, candles, stuffed animals ... and so, so many flowers. It was as if all the flower shops in the county had been poured out in love on that blood-stained concrete. People had prepared a formidable dwelling-place for our common grief. Those flowers were a powerful reminder of love, carefully laid down to bring healing in a place of pain.
As the store was being remodeled for use again, the flower memorial began to fade. With the passage of time, those flowers died, like all things do. Brown, shriveled, and decaying, they became reminders of the very pain and death that they were meant to heal. To leave them there, just the way they were, was unacceptable. And one day, when I went to the memorial, they were gone. I thought that the city had thrown them away. But that’s not what happened.
An artist, Ana Maria Hernando, had an idea. She gathered a team to compost all those flowers and cards. For two years, they cared for the compost, until it had become a rich mulch. In March, small bags of that mulch were distributed, along with pollinator-plant seeds, to each of the several hundred people who attended this year’s second memorial of the shooting. Participants were told to use the seeds and the mulch to create a “Flowering Eulogy” at our homes. That is what we will be doing here at St. Ambrose this morning. That carefully-prepared memorial has now spread and multiplied. It looks different. It involved serious transformation. But it lives. It brings love. It carries memories. It carries hope, too. Those flowers died, but there is now resurrection, new life.
It's now our time at St. Ambrose to carefully, lovingly prepare a place for new relationship, new life, new growth, different from the old. Will you help Jesus prepare such a place in this part of his Body? It will be difficult work, but remember what Jesus assures us today about Christ’s Body in this precarious, changing world of ours: “Do not let your hearts be troubled... My Father’s house has many rooms... 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.”
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