I do not know why she specifically targeted my friend for her soul redeeming work, but there we were, standing in the auditorium of the High School theatre during rehearsal talking about being saved by Jesus. Just so you understand, my friend had been going to church since he was a baby. He certainly loved Jesus and Jesus certainly loved him. But, one of our classmates started questioning if he had ever gotten down on his hands and knees and earnestly prayed that Jesus save him.
“I know that Jesus saved me. I’ve been taught that forever. Why do I need this prayer?”
“I’m afraid that if you don’t pray to be saved that you won’t get to heaven,” the classmate responded with conviction on her face.
My friend looked at me and I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“So, if I don’t pray this prayer I won’t go to heaven?” he asked skeptically.
“You need believe in Jesus and pray with me so that you can be saved,” the classmate urged. “I don’t want you going to hell. I want you in heaven.”
“I believe in Jesus. Why would I be going to hell? Who do you think you are?” he answered, starting to get mad.
Another classmate, who always seemed just a little off, came near and put in her two cents, “I think heaven is like, when all of our energies merge together, like when the all the energy and pressure of the earth merges together to form a diamond.”
The first girl just stared at her. She stepped toward my friend.
“You need to pray with me so that you can go to heaven. The Bible says, ‘That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ You need to pray with me so that you can go to heaven!”
Why was she so insistent? Was this some sort of weird, new tactic to ask someone out? Did she secretly want to get married to him and spend her time in heaven with him? What was her deal? Was she given a quota by her youth pastor for how many people she needed to pray with during the week? It was so bizarre. Why was she doing this, at school, and at play practice? I looked at my friend and his face had become inflamed.
“Heaven, I don’t care about heaven, I care about people,” he shouted and stormed away.
Crystal energy girl said, “Jesus didn’t care about himself either, just people.”
The first girl gave her a look so full of crust that she nearly made herself blind. She stormed away.
To tell you the truth, I was good with that. I had no desire to be the girl’s next target.
I think about my friend’s words every once and a while: “I don’t care about heaven, I care about people.” It was true. He did care about people. He went into a caring for people career. He truly did not care about the place he was going. When choosing a college, he did not are about which school it was, just who would be there with him. He genuinely did not care about where he was going; he cared more about the people around him.
In contrast to that, I think about the funeral of an acquaintance where the pastor read today’s reading from the gospel of John, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” and he preached about how Jesus has gone to prepare a place for this man in God’s huge house with many room. In that house, the pastor explained, Jesus prepared a room in such a way as to welcome a guy who liked fishing, playing cards at a rickety old table, and relaxing in his recliner.
We all sat there and imagined that Jesus had prepared a room that had fishing rods hung on the walls, a card table with new decks of cards stacked on top, maybe a mini-bar in the corner (he would have loved that), and, of course, the beloved, comfy recliner with the shape of his back end already imprinted on the seat. The pastor assured us that Jesus had prepared this place for him because Jesus truly knew him. Jesus had not forgotten him. In fact, Jesus had done the opposite; Jesus had prepared a spot just for him, even before he arrived because he knew everything about him.
It was a comforting image. It was a good sermon. Heck, I have even preached practically the same sermon myself. But, so much of that sermon is focused on a place; the room with the recliner, the card table, and the fishing gear. And, all of this talk of a “place” once again aroused the memory of my friend’s words: “I don’t care about heaven, I care about people.” My friend did not care about the place, but cared about the people.
Why am I telling you all of this?
I only mention it because the memory of those words, “I don’t care about heaven, I care about people,” rushed back to me once again while I was studying John 14:1-14 in preparation for delivering the good news of Jesus Christ to you this morning. The memory was triggered when I took a deep dive studying Jesus’ line: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
For some reason, the Holy Spirit drew me to look closer at that word, “house.” So, I did.
The first thing that struck me was that in the ancient world, there is no difference between the ideas of “house” and “home.” In our culture, we tend to say something like, “This place is my house, where I sleep, but my home is miles down the road.” The idea is that houses are things made of wood, but homes are made of people and memories.
I want you to keep that in mind because, in the ancient world, there was no difference between the building and the people and memories. These ideas were all jumbled up into the same word.
Furthermore, in the Hebrew world, houses and tents are the same word. In other words, in the ancient world, your home can be a portable tent. You can take your home with you wherever you go. Home can be wherever you are.
Keep that in mind too, as you further discover that the word that means both “house” and “home” also means “household.” A “household,” of course, means all the people included in your home; your spouses, your children, your elderly parents, your dogs and cats, and (in the ancient world) even your slaves and paid servants. Your house includes everyone in it. Think in these terms: “The House of Windsor” does not refer to a building, but to all the royals and their associates who reside with them.
So, this is where it all hits home for me, because when Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” he is not only talking about a place. He is talking about people. Another way to rightly translate the words is to say, “In my Father’s household, there are many abiding places.” A modern way to read this Bible text would be to say: “In my Father’s family there is space for you to live and grow. If that wasn’t the case, would I have mentioned to you that I go to make some space for you? And if I leave in order to make space for you, I will come right back and will pull you along with me, so that where I am, you can be right there also. And you know how to get to where I am going.”
It is like Jesus is saying, “I care about people.” In fact, it is not “like” he is saying that, he is saying that! Jesus is saying, “I care about you.” Jesus is saying, “I don’t care what others think, or if others would bring you into their family; there is a place in my family and in my home for you. I am going to prepare a place for you. I am making space for you. I am going to the cross to forgive you, and I am going to the Father so that you can tag along too. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I care about people.”
People ask me all the time what heaven is like. When I was little I wondered too. I wondered if I could jump as high as I wanted in heaven and not get hurt. I loved jumping and bouncing around as a kid. It was great! Just ask my mom how great it was.
When I was little I wondered if I could skydive without a parachute and be just fine. After-all, I was too scared to try it, but I wanted to. Eventually, a member of the church roped me into it. You can ask me about that experience later.
When I was little, I wondered if I could eat all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups I wanted in heaven and not get fat. I still wonder that. So, just like all of you, I wondered what heaven was like.
But, in answer to that question, the Bible actually does not say much about “the place.” It hints that it is like the Garden of Eden. It is a holy city that comes down to earth, has streams spilling from it that restore the earth, and within the city’s open and welcoming gates it has a garden with a tree that heals all people and all nations. According to the Bible, heaven is God actively restoring the earth to what it should have been all along.
But, the most important feature about the Bible’s depiction is that God is right there. Revelation 21:3 reads, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…”
The most important thing about our Father’s home is that we are all drawn and pulled by Jesus to dwell with God. Jesus does not care if you get to heaven, as a place; Jesus cares about you being brought to the heart of God, in a relationship. A better way to say it might be: for Jesus, to care about heaven is to care about people. Another way to put it: God living in you, and you living in God, is what heaven is all about.
This is what Jesus is preparing for us: God being our home, our life, and our existence. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus says. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Jesus’ life is about drawing us to exist in God. And, like the tents that the ancient Israelites used, God desires more than anything to be at home with us no matter where we are or when we are.
In God you will always have a home. Jesus has prepared a place for you. Your sinful past cannot keep you out. Jesus has prepared a place for you. Your rejection by others is not shared by God. Jesus has prepared a place for you. You have a home in God because Jesus made a space for you to be a part of God’s family. In God you will always have a home.
“This is heaven!” the young man said. He had a huge smile on his face while he sat at the table in his new church, a plate piled full of food sitting in front of him.
“Eating all this food is heaven?” the pastor asked, to the chuckles of the people gathered with them at the table.
“The young man giggled for a full fifteen seconds and then said, “No!” Then he typed something onto his electronic tablet. You see, the young man had a disability that did not allow him to speak clearly. The disability made life very lonely for the young man because few people were willing to take the time to learn to understand him. They were too embarrassed that they could not understand what he said, he guessed. He did not hold it against them, but it still made him a very lonely individual.
Then a member of his future new church sat down with him at a community meal in the local fire hall. When she could not understand him, rather than cutting the conversation short, she got out her electronic tablet and told him to type what he wanted to say. And, that is how they got to know each other for the next hour, him typing his life into the tablet so that she could learn about him and understand. At the end of the meal, she said to the young man, “This was a wonderful conversation, why don’t you keep the tablet, so that we can talk again this Sunday at my church.”
Months later, with a pile of food in front of him at the church the young man giggled when the pastor asked, “Eating this food is heaven?”
The young man said, “No!” and then typed something into the tablet, the woman who gave him the tablet among those gathered with him at the table, smiling.
He showed the tablet to the people at the table. It read, “Being with all of you is heaven.”
That is the way of God family. It is a household of those gathered by Jesus, forgiven, saved, and restored to live this life with one another. It is heaven, right here on earth, where all are gathered by Jesus to live in God’s ways of love.
“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes [who trusts] in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father,” Jesus said. And, the followers of Jesus Christ do. The followers of Jesus Christ, as the body of Christ sent down to this earth, have gathered more people into the forgiveness, love, and life of Jesus Christ than Jesus himself could have ever done while walking this earth. The followers of Jesus Christ desire to be what God made them to be, a household where Jesus has made space for everyone to live.
“In my Father’s household, there are many abiding places.”
“In my Father’s family there is space for you to live and grow.
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