A Place with God: John 14.1-7
A sermon prepared for Ellenbrook Anglican Church Easter Day 12th April 2020
This is David Seccombe, with Lorraine, “at home” at Island View Cottage in the bush behind Lancelin, bringing you an Easter greeting and an Easter message. We are together “in spirit” with all our friends this Easter morning, in the presence of the Lord Jesus, sitting under his word.
‘The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!’
For millennia Christians have been greeting each other with these words.
The questions raised whenever we speak this way are, ‘Is it is true?’ and ‘What does it mean?’ Many know to be true. Something actually happened in the reign of Caesar Tiberius that changed everything – and continues to change everything! This Easter 2020 I want us to consider that as settled. Jesus is alive, and near, and with us. If you are unsure … you could try reading the first chapters of my book, The King of God’s Kingdom, where I review the evidence. We should thank him for making salvation available to us, ask him to help us in the present crisis, and help us understand his word this Easter Day.
Father, thank you for raising your Son to life. Thank you that he promised to be with us wherever two or three are gathered together. Open our minds to understand your word this morning. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen
So, what about the meaning? Jesus’ resurrection means many things. The first is that death is not a dead end. Someone faced it and got through it. Every night on our TV screens we get the latest numbers on how many people have now died of the Covid-19 virus. The world is going through a severe trial. To know that death is not necessarily the end of the line is something everyone needs to know. This morning I want to look at something Jesus said the night before he died.
John 14.1-7
“Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, and believe in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Jesus says, “Don’t let your heart be disturbed (tarassestho).” The basic meaning of the word tarasso is about water swirling around. Our heart is our mind. Mind disturbance was of great concern to the ancients. Ataraxia was highly prized. Ataraxia is the mindset that is not disturbed by what is going on around you, the calm confidence in the midst of a storm. Jesus’ words fit our situation well. In the midst of the turmoil of our world, when the shadow of death hangs over us all, many minds are swirling around. Jesus says to us. ‘Don’t let your heart be disturbed?’
These were words they needed to hear. Their world was about to break apart, and they were feeling it. They have lived for three years with this man, and are now totally convinced that he is the promised King. And to them that means one thing, revolution. They were right about that, but it would not be the kind of revolution they imagined. They had arrived in Jerusalem a week ago, excited out of their minds that Jesus was ready to make his move. He was a wanted man in that city with a price on his head. And now he was coming. But his disciples knew he had power. Surely he would topple the government and establish the kingdom he was proclaiming. In a very short time he would be in charge, and they would be at his right and left hand, holding positions in his new government.
But as they sit together in the upper room Jesus talks about suffering. Peter says he is willing to fight and if needs be die for Jesus. Jesus says, ‘No, you will deny me.’ It is becoming clearer that he is not about to launch a coup. The authorities are closing in, and he is not even preparing to run. One of his disciples has decided to get out while he can. Their world is about to explode; they simply do not understand what is going on. It is on the eve of all this that Jesus says to them, ‘Don’t let your minds be troubled. Believe in God, and believe in me.’
So, let us take this to heart today that whether we understand the reason or not, we must not become overly dismayed or panicky or despairing with what is going on around us. We may be at the start of a great cataclysm, or God may stay his hand. My greatest worry is for the townships of Africa. Australia has acted quickly and may have stopped the spread of the virus before it gets a strong hold. We know what it can look like for countries that delay: Italy, Spain, the US. But drive through an African township – I am picturing one near Strand, outside Cape Town, where one of my graduates has planted a church. In every street there are people, especially children, day and night. If you pushed them into their homes – makeshift tin shacks – there would be overcrowding like you cannot imagine. If the virus takes hold in these townships isolating people will be impossible. There are over a million people in a few square kilometres in Khayelitsha, a nearby township, and even with Groote Schuur Hospital bracing for it, the situation will be impossible. Hundreds of thousands could die. It will be survival of the fittest, literally, and I fear for many of my former students who will be called to lead their congregations through the holocaust. Yet even there, in the midst of fears for ourselves, and our children and our children’s children, and congregations, we should not let our minds swirl about like a storm-tossed sea. What must we do? ‘Believe in God and believe in me!’
‘God is in control, and so am I,’ says Jesus. ‘I know what I am doing.’ They were confused; he wasn’t. As far as his mission went, everything was on track. He was in control and things were going to plan.
But that was then! Can we apply these words to our present crisis? I think we can – we must. We don’t know what God is doing, but he is doing something big. ‘Not a sparrow falls to the ground outside of my Father’s plan,’ Jesus said. If that is so for sparrows, and Jesus sits at God’s right hand and directs the course of history; we know he does – Christ is risen – then he knows what he is doing now, and where it is all heading. History is not directionless; Jesus is building his kingdom – a good kingdom! We do not need to be disturbed to distraction. We can trust God and trust him.
But what about this kingdom? What is Jesus building? This is a big question with a big answer. But I want us to stay with John 14 and explore what Jesus said in the upper room that night before he died. It will give us an insight.
‘In my Father’s house there are many rooms.’ ‘Many mansions,’ the King James Version reads.’ Many of our forefathers lived in very basic dwellings; many of our brothers and sisters still do. When this passage was read, as it often was at funerals, they probably dreamed of something more substantial. It looks like Jesus is reassuring us that there is a good place waiting for us when we die. This is a favourite reading at funerals. But observe that he is not addressing the bereaved here, or those about to die. He is the one who is about to die. He is speaking to his followers who would go on living, to prepare them, not for death, but for life in his absence. He spoke these words the evening before his death; in less than twenty four hours he would be dead, but they would go on living.
‘In my Father’s house there are many rooms (monai).’ Actually, the word monai is difficult to translate. It comes from the Greek verb, meno, which means to remain, or stay. Monai are simply ‘remaining places’, but we don’t have an equivalent word in English. It doesn’t mean a room; it doesn’t mean a mansion; it doesn’t suggest rest. It simply means a space, or a place. ‘In my Father’s house there are many places,’ gets close to it. There is lots of room!
Jesus is staring down the barrel of a gun. The great trial of strength for him will be whether he is prepared to go through the ordeal that will begin late that very evening. These are the last words of a dying man, reminding himself why he is about to die. One New Testament writer says of this moment, ‘For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, contemptuous of the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God.’ (Hebrews 12.2)
What was this joy that Jesus saw, which steeled him to face the cross? ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms,’ he says ‘If it were not so, I would not have told you I am going to prepare a place for you.’ Jesus saw his disciples’ need, and yours and mine. He saw our need of a place in his Father’s house. He saw that only by facing the cross could he secure it for us.
Also, in his mind’s eye, he saw the temple. It was difficult not to. They had passed it on their way here this afternoon. It covered nearly thirty hectares of the mountain top, close to the upper room in which they were dining. It was an immense complex of magnificent buildings made of white marble and roofed with gold. It was one of the wonders of the ancient world. It stood for permanence and beauty. It was the house of God, the meeting place of God and men, and it was full of rooms. For as well as being the focus of worship of the world-wide Jewish community it also housed Israel’s public service. What a privilege it must have been to have an office there. There was nothing like it, not even in Rome. And Jesus sees it as a picture – which is what it always was: a shadow, a symbol – of the true meeting place of God and human beings, which Jesus will die to make possible. ‘In my Father’s house there are lots of rooms – what I am about to do is make a place for you.’
That word, monai: ‘remaining places’, is a very ordinary word, not very descriptive, just a remaining place. But perhaps there is one thing we can say about it. It speaks of remaining places, and that is just what we do not have in this world. We study and get a job, and rent for a while. Perhaps we go through the trauma of being evicted. We save and finally buy a house, and then at last we have a place where we can stay and not be turned out – so long as we have our job, and keep up the repayments. But even if we succeed, time marches on; we get old, and our children see we are no longer able to live there safely, and they move us into care. What we do not have in this world is a remaining place. As the old prayer says, ‘Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and withers. He passes like a shadow and does not stay.’ But Jesus says he is going to prepare a remaining place for us: a permanent abode.
‘Otherwise,’ says Jesus, I would not have said I am going to prepare a place for you.’ ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am you may be too.’
What is Jesus talking about here? Is he going to heaven to get ready to receive us when we die? Or is he talking about coming back to the world at the end of time to carry us into his Father’s presence? Or could he be talking about his resurrection? Because, in point of fact, he did return – three days after his death – and was reunited with his disciples. He did not stay with them for long physically. He left them, but not like orphans, he said; he left them with the promise of his presence, until the end of the age.
His mission, you see, was to establish the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the new age, the new heavens and new earth, where God will dwell with his people: ‘I will be your God, and you will be my people:’ the fulfilment of his promise to Abraham. A new world of men and women and children reconnected with God, where there will be no more crying, no more pain, no more pandemics, no more getting old and no more death. To achieve this Jesus was about to mount a frontal attack on the kingdom of evil – by dying on a cross: our King, taking on his own shoulders our guilt and the guilt of the human race. And he was victorious. Death lost out; God raised him up, and he was reunited with his disciples. The kingdom came on that first Easter morning, not in full, but its beginning. Death was put on notice.
But what about the many rooms in his Father’s house? The great news of Easter is that Jesus secured our salvation. This means not only that he was reunited with his friends, but he reunited them with the Father. Reconciliation has been achieved through the cross. They now have a remaining place in the Father’s house, that will never be taken from them; it is a remaining place. Jesus will leave them again, of course. This evil age must run its course – the New Testament makes that clear – with wars and rumours of wars and epidemics, and the shadow of death over everything. But Jesus lit a great light, and it has not been extinguished. The kingdom of heaven is open to receive its citizens. There is plenty of space; room for you, and for everyone who wishes to come. At the end he will come again, and will be with us for ever. He also waits for his servants when they die. And then too there is room in his Father’s house. But this passage teaches more. It tells us that now, because of his death and resurrection, we can come into residence ahead of time, before ever we die, or Jesus comes again.
Later in this chapter Jesus will say that although the world will not see him they will. Thomas then asks how that will be, and Jesus answers with these words: ‘If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home (monen) with him.’ (John 14.23) It is the same word he used at the beginning of the chapter. Even as we go on living in this troubled world, Jesus and his Father come to live in us through the Holy Spirit. We are in that place now, that remaining place in the Father’s house.
‘I am going to prepare a place for you,’ Jesus said, ‘And you know the way,’ But they didn’t, or they thought they didn’t. ‘We haven’t got a clue where you are going, how can we know the way,’ says Thomas. The way, explains Jesus, is the way to my Father. Because that is the only place in the universe that remains and does not pass away. That is because there is one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, the giver of life, without whom there can be no life. ‘And you know this way, because you have been on it. these last three years. You have been with me, and that is what my mission has been about. I am the way to the Father, the only way – and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’
I don’t know when you came to know Jesus, or even if you have yet. If you haven’t yet given your heart to King Jesus, this Easter, when the minds of many are in turmoil, would be a very good time for you to come home to the Father’s house. And if you already have, then that is how long you have been in relationship with the Father. For the time that you have known Jesus you have been safe in God’s house, in that remaining-place that Jesus died to open up for you.
In recent days we have heard many Australians pleading to be brought home. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that people love to get away from home, to have a holiday, to go on a cruise; but when things go pear-shaped, you just want to be at home. Leighton Ford came to Perth in 1981. Many of the churches participated in his ‘crusade’ and followed up those who made a decision to follow Jesus. I spoke to one young woman who had responded to Leighton’s invitation. I asked her what it was like. She said, ‘It is just like coming home.’ That’s what it is. Finding your place in the Father’s house is coming home to the God, who gave you life, and has protected you to this day – though you may not have known it.
You know the way. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.’ ‘Believe in God and believe in me.’ If you do believe, then you know the truth of those words of the resurrected Jesus, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me…’ (Revelation 3.2). Thank God and thank Jesus who through his death and resurrection has opened up this way to the Father, and this home which remains, and this life which nothing will ever destroy.
Father, thank you for sending a Saviour who died to secure a permanent place for us with you. Thank you that he promises to take us to that place. Thank you for his promise to receive all who come to him in faith, and to refuse none who seek forgiveness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen