Riddikulus!

The Holy Gospel According to St. John the 14^th Chapter

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 

And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 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.

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes 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. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. 

Over the years I’ve preached on this text more than 30 times.  Only six of those have been on a Sunday morning like this.  The rest have been for funerals.  One of those funerals, I can’t remember where any more, I showed the family the bulletin and after a minute I could see that one of the family members from out of town was suddenly devastated!  Not just sad that their family member had died, but he was devastated by something he had read in the bulletin.  

Eventually I figured out that he had just discovered that sometime between the last time he had heard this gospel lesson and this time, the promise of eternal life had been significantly downgraded.  Because the promise that he clearly remembered was for a “mansion” but somewhere along the way, apparently, the promise had been reduced.  Now, it was just a “dwelling place.”  

So, I told him yes, not enough people go to church anymore so they’ve wrecked it for everyone, and God’s downgraded all of heaven from mansions to dwelling places.  Thanks a lot!  No, I didn’t really say that but clearly the last time he’d been in church, the readings were from the King James Version!  

I didn’t do THAT, but I did try… unsuccessfully to undo the picture in his head of a promised giant estate, that we would have in heaven after we died.  Telling him the Olde English word “mansion” meant any sort of dwelling place back in the day, so even Olde King James himself wouldn’t have thought of this as a mansion the way we think of mansions today… none of it worked.  Trying to tell him NOT to think of this as a giant, million square foot, estate didn’t work either.  In fact it worked just as well as me telling you to NOT think about a purple unicorn for the next ten seconds!  

You’re thinking about a purple unicorn right now, aren’t you?  Now, whatever you do, don’t think about adding wings to the purple unicorn you’re not supposed to be thinking about.  You just did it!  Didn’t you? You added wings!  Even though I told you not to!  Well, I never!  

Actually, the truth of the matter is that the human brain doesn’t mentally un-think things very well.  It can mentally ADD stuff like big elephant-style ears to a purple unicorn with wings without even hardly trying… see you just did that too didn’t you?  But just try and STOP thinking about it for even a few seconds… well, there’s just really not a very good reverse gear in there. 

Smarter people than me call this “framing.”  We humans can easily add a new “frame” to the pictures in our minds.  In fact we can do it as fast as a cartoon character riding a toy train can add tracks in front of them.  

But once a frame is there, it’s nearly impossible to take it out.  That’s why when something bad happens and someone says, “Just forget it!”  It NEVER works.  That’s why when people say, “Let’s not talk about that terrible time and maybe it will go away!”  It NEVER goes away!  Instead, by doing that you’ve actually added a “guilty of thinking about it” frame as well.  Not that helpful.  

The thing the human brain DOES do well, is to add new frames which opens the possibility of making old frames take on a new shape and a new meaning.  In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin teaches his class how to fight a magical creature called a bogart.  A bogart is a shape shifter and they take on the shape of the thing you fear the most.  The way to fight a bogart is NOT to try to stop thinking about what you fear.  Instead, the way you fight a bogart is to imagine the thing you fear in a new, humorous way.  One of the student's greatest fears was another professor, professor Snape, so he imagined Snape in his grandmother’s clothes. Another student's greatest fear was spiders, so when the bogart turned into a giant spider, he imagined it with roller skates on each of it’s eight legs.  

Jesus did just that in this lesson.  He added new frames, one after the other like little stepping stones to get the disciples to take the things that seemed to them to be an unavoidable and tragic end, and begin to see in those things new possibilities, in a new light, with brand new frames.  What Jesus was telling the disciples in this lesson happened in that upper room on the night of the Last Supper.  Jesus had just washed their feet, predicted Judas would betray him, given them the new commandment to “love one another” and then told Peter that he would deny even knowing Jesus three times.  

Jesus didn’t ask the disciples to stop thinking about his impending death.  That would have been impossible. Instead he added new frames to his death, to begin to give his death new meaning.  With those new frames, he began to show them that somehow his death would prepare a place for everyone.  Worried that they would get lost trying to find this new, literal, physical, destination, Jesus doesn’t tell them to STOP thinking about it that way.  Instead he adds yet another frame, telling them that they won’t have to find it on their own, but that Jesus will return to lead them there himself.  STILL worried that they would never be able to make it to that promised mansion or even a downgraded dwelling place, Jesus adds yet another frame, asking them simply to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, on taking one Jesus-like step and then another, always toward the truth, just as Jesus did throughout his ministry.  Then, step after step after step they would eventually discover, not in the end after death, but NOW as they walked along the way, that they ALREADY had a place in God’s heart.  Even before death, walking this walk along the Jesus way would reveal to them the truth that they already were living an abundant, eternal life.  

Being transformed from a disciple who feels scared, alone, and unsure of the future, into a disciple that feels safely gathered into the eternal care of God’s tender embrace, is not something that can only happen after our physical deaths.  It turns out that all of us disciples have a place that has been prepared for us by Jesus’ life, death and resurrection deep within God’s loving and compassionate heart RIGHT NOW!  It’s a place that Jesus prepared for us.  We didn’t create it.  Nor CAN we create it.  But Jesus has already formed it for you and me and all of creation.  It's been made for us… not just after death, but for us to live in, in peace right now and it’s a gift we already possess!  We have, in fact already been placed there in our Baptisms… it’s a place we already live… the only question is whether or not we realize it.  

You and I can help one another realize that truth, that we all already rest, safe in God’s embrace, by walking together in the world along the Jesus way.  Taking a step together to love one another.  Taking a step together to show compassion to the world.  Taking a step together to care for the least and the lost and the last.  Taking a step together to come to the table and be fed along the way.  When the world feels hard and cold and final, it's impossible to tune it out, but it's easy to add a frame and love one another.  When life closes in with darkness, it's impossible to forget the darkness, but it's easy to add a frame that shines God's light into the darkness.  When the future looks grim, add a frame and together fall more deeply into God’s eternal care.  Amen.