St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Easter 5; April 20, 2008

John 14:1-14

GOD'S HOMECOMING

How Our Missionary (God) Enters the world

with Compassion On us,

Meeting us in every way, Inviting us Nearer God

Sometimes I think religion becomes too stifling. And it becomes too stifling fairly routinely. There is always a time when ideas become doctrine; and doctrine is enforced. And then instead of an idea to think about that guides you, you have a doctrine to tell you what to do.

Practices that help you experience closeness with God and closeness with one another, become rituals that exclude those who don't practice them, and that imprison those who do.

Religion becomes institution. And institutions do not always free people. They can trap and suffocate them – even those, like us, who join willingly and even become leaders in them.

When this happens, God comes. God becomes his own missionary, jumping the fence of the institution in order to be out with the people; parachuting out of heaven in order to be with whomever he wants to be with – behind enemy lines, or in the officers' club.

God knows no boundaries and he does not respect ours. He breaks them and crosses them all the time, even the boundaries that, perhaps, he himself once helped start. But they have become too strong, and instead of teaching us who we are, they have also begun to teach us who we are not, who we don't like, who we exclude.

So God comes to all people, enters our world to be with all people, all his beloved children.

He does this out of compassion. And compassion is the thread that runs throughout the Bible. And if you see something about God that does not in some way show compassion in some bigger or smaller picture, then it probably is not true.

Even this teaching we see here today, begins with compassion. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” he says. “Believe in God” - trust in God, which means the same thing. “Believe also in me.” Trust also in me.

They have just been at the Last Supper. Peter has just said he will never abandon Jesus. Jesus says: before the cock crows, you will abandon me three times – in the horror and the sadness of that night before their abandonment.

And then, immediately after that statement of Peter's denial, he says: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me.”

It'll be all right. Don't worry. At that moment, Jesus is concerned with them, not about himself.

At all our moments – of sadness or despair or bewilderment or confusion – God is concerned about us and not about himself.

He does not say – are you believing all the right things? Are you practicing all the right rituals? Are you avoiding all the behavior that will get you punished?

Not – why are you worried; don't worry; have faith or else, because if you don't believe in me I won't help you.

But - “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Before going any further with any doctrine or practice of his own - “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus' first concern is with our troubled hearts. Only after dealing with that, and blessing us in the midst of our trouble, does he get to doctrine.

Only one. Only one doctrine – well, two.

Believe, or trust, in God. Believe, or trust, in Me. And then he proceeds to show how that's one doctrine by responding to Philip's question, and saying: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father . . . Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

God is staring you in the face, he seems to say to Philip. And nothing you have done or not done will change that. And nothing you have believed or not believed will change that – and clearly at this moment Philip does not believe or he would not have asked the question and Jesus would not have been exasperated at his lack of faith yet again.

So if you lack faith or have questions, you are in good company, the company of all Jesus' disciples and of Jesus himself for he hangs around – a long time – to answer your questions about him; if you at least ask them of him, like Philip did, instead of keeping them to yourself.

Jesus is here to answer questions. Jesus is here to love. Jesus is here out of compassion. Jesus is here.

That is the heart and soul of Christianity, that Jesus is here, and God has come into the world to have a relationship with each and every one of us regardless of doctrine or ritual or institution.

He is his own missionary.

We are here simply to talk about his presence, and to point to how and where he may have entered people's lives and world, when people think – as they do today – that he could only have come in certain miraculous ways and if those ways are not here, then he is not here either.

Jesus gives Philip several non-miraculous options.

“The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

So wherever you hear those words like those used by Jesus in the Bible – words like justice, peace, love, mercy – and you see them working and being effective; there God is present, making them effective when people dare to use them.

“Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

If you see these words being manifested in works – works of justice, peace, mercy, love – why there God is present, especially when these works are effective because someone has tried them and lived them out and not listened to the drumbeat of the world that says it can't be done and that its stupid and naïve to try it.

God is present in the world with us. Why is it stupid and naïve to try things his way, and to do things in partnership with the Soul and the Creator of the Universe. With his power working through you, it just might work.

“Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” - it says on our sign over by the kitchen, taken from Ephesians.

Of course someone has to do something, and allow God's power to work through our hands. He can't do it, he can't live through us and love through us, without us.

He is here, instantly and constantly available to all, with or without religion, in word or work or miracle or whichever way he communicates with you, for he wants to communicate with you.

Often it is said that all the different denominations and all the different religions are different ways for different people to communicate with God. I think they are different ways that God chooses to communicate with different people. Such is his compassion on troubled hearts. He'll do anything, communicate in any way, invent any religion, to get to us.

Christianity, at its very core, is about the personal presence of God in the world because he loved the world so much that he came as his only begotten son, and lived here with us. He wanted nothing to come between us, not sin, not brokenness, not criminal behavior, not pride or despair, certainly not religion.

What a tragedy it is when religion becomes a prison. So God invents another one, and another one.

Religion, and places of worship, are to gather people together so they can pray, and learn, and teach, and love specific people and help each other on their way. They are not to exclude but to include. But people are different and so they worship in different ways. But if any religious people have any ongoing, vital life to them, it is because they worship the God of life.

But religious people, spiritual people if you will, do not simply encounter God here. We encounter him everywhere – through religious practices or the quest for scientific truth, through words and works and worship – for he comes to us in all those ways in all those places, in every place we find ourself. His desire is to come to us, to find us, and so he searches for us and comes to us in every way we can receive him and perceive his love.

He is the Way – the Road home to him.

He is the Truth – of whatever kind in whatever field all bundled up in one loving human person.

He is the Light – that enlightens all people with all knowledge of whatever kind.

And he loves you, and comes to you – in or out of church or any religion, to clasp you to his heart.

He is the God of all the Universe, in all its multiplicity, who has come close enough to hug, to extend his hand directly to us beyond doctrine or ritual or criminal behavior; and to say: 'Come, follow me.' And then we can extend our hand directly back to the Soul and Creator of all the Universe and say: 'Yes, I come. I follow;' and be invested with his love and power to love all his other people.