My first sermon -- John 14:1-14 (Easter 5A)

During the Spring 2008 semester, I took the Preparing to Preach class at United Theological Seminary. As the main part of that course, I wrote and preached two sermons to develop my homiletical abilities.

I intended my first sermon for St. George's Episcopal Church, Dayton, Ohio, for the fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A). I preached the essence of this sermon at the Cornerstone service on 19 April 2008. The primary text is John 14:1-14.

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When I was a child, my mom sent me to church as a way to get me out of the house for a few hours. I attended Sunday school, but I was taught about Jesus only through activities that emphasized memorizing Bible verses. Finding meaning was irrelevant. And I’m fairly sure one of those Bible verses wasn’t this week’s gospel reading.

At about age 12, I had a run-in with an overzealous Sunday school teacher. I’m sure she meant well enough, but her brand of faith didn’t feel right for me. Instead, it made me want to leave. When I had the opportunity, I ran out the door.

And I didn’t stop there. I left the church entirely. And I kept running.

In the eighteen years since that time, I entered a church but one time, and only because it was required of me.

As I grew up, I felt a tug at my soul now and again. It grew into a longing that I couldn’t identify, let alone satisfy. God was calling, but I didn’t recognize the sound of the phone. So how could I possibly answer it?

What I hadn’t understood as a child—or as a young man—was exactly what Jesus says to his followers in John’s gospel for this week.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms.”

C. S. Lewis paraphrases this in the preface to his book, Mere Christianity, that Christianity is a house with many rooms, and each person is suited for a particular room.

The trick is finding that room.

By the time I became an adult, I’d stopped running, but I was lost on a dark and foggy road. Like someone driving in the fog, I didn’t really know where I was. Even worse, I didn’t have a clue what my life meant…or what that ringing sound was in the back of my soul.

During that period spent outside the church, I tried to satisfy my longing by reading about other religions and philosophies. In other words, I tried to find myself. Many of us have an idea how well that normally works. I was still lost in the fog.

When I began graduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas, I made some new friends. Among those new friends were Mark and Abby, a married couple with whom I became very close. We all worked away the days and nights in our physics classes. And they were quite happy. While I didn’t have too much difficulty with the class work, or the spent days and nights, I wasn’t quite so happy.

And, as always, there was that phone ringing in the back of my soul.

But there was a ray of hope. As it turns out, Mark and Abby are members of the Episcopal Church. Through them I finally recognized the sound of a phone. I respected them and the lives they led. And I respected them more that they weren’t the same overzealous people I’d fled so long ago.

I still didn’t know if I’d like their church, so I planned a visit while they were out of town so there wasn’t any pressure on either side. Imagine my surprise to find that God was leading me, through them, back to the same church. Of course it wasn’t the same physical building, but it was the same household of God that I’d fled as a child. I kept going in, but I found myself being led to a different door. This new door led me into the Episcopal Church. By the end of the service, I knew that God had called me home, and I was baptized at the very next Easter Vigil, with Mark and Abby as my godparents.

As Episcopalians, we live in one room in the Father’s house. And the Father’s house includes the entire Christian community.

In this passage from John, I have found words for God’s call to me. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” These are the words I hear when I finally pick up the ringing phone in the back of my soul.

As a child, I fled one such room that didn’t fit my soul, and I ended up running away from the Father’s house entirely. I’ve since found my way back to the house, and I’ve found my dwelling place. But what about those who haven’t found their dwelling places? What about those who wander in the darkness outside the household of God?

In John’s gospel, Christ promises that he goes to prepare a place for each of us. We receive the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples receive the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathes on them after the resurrection. In receiving the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, we enter the Father’s house, and become members of the household of God.

As Jesus promised his disciples, so he promises us, he has gone to prepare a place for us, and he has come again to take us to himself. When Jesus tells his disciples about his Father’s house, he’s not talking about an earthly house. Maybe he’s not even talking about a house as a physical structure, but rather, he’s talking about a social structure—the Father’s home, or the Father’s family, as one might refer to a house of nobility.

Wes Howard-Brook writes that the house of God “is not a building but a relationship among those who hear God and do God’s will.”

The Father’s house is the “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” as we say each week when we recite the Nicene Creed. It represents not just our church, but every church, the whole of the Christian community.

Just as Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Father’s house is the House of Houses.

The single point that both Thomas and Philip miss in this passage from John’s gospel is: How do we enter a relationship with God? Or, how do we enter the Father’s house?

As Jesus responds to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” This is not a statement that any particular church is the right way to God. Rather, it is a statement of Jesus’ status in the Father’s house. Jesus is the only Son of God and therefore acts on behalf of the Father and the Father’s house, much as would the eldest son of any family in Jesus’ time.

As with any family or household from Jesus’ time to the present day, being a member of the household of God, or living in the Father’s house, is a commitment that brings both obligation and benefit. And we can ask for Jesus to do things on our behalf. We bear obligation in Jesus’ words that, “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” We gain benefit as well. As Jesus promises, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

We are called to perform Jesus’ work. In our Baptismal Covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self. Jesus calls us all into the Father’s house. But God’s call isn’t a one-size-fits-all form of generic spirit. The Holy Spirit gives different forms of nourishment to different people because that’s what we need. So we can’t assume everyone will fit in the same room in the Father’s house. But, even though we have differences, we are many faiths living in one house—the Father’s house.

Having been the person alone in the dark, I find that part of the promise I’ve made in my own Baptismal Covenant is to try to help people to find their own dwelling places. My promise is threefold:

• First, I’ve promised to be a butler, so to speak, to greet those entering the house, to help them find their own dwelling places.
• Second, I’ve promised to help those fleeing wrong rooms, so that—with God’s help—they don’t flee the Father’s house entirely.
• Third, I’ve promised to be a guide, to go back outside, back into the darkness, to help the lost find their way toward the house of God.

This time, even going back into the darkness and fog, I’m not lost any more.

Amen.