Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way.” John 14.1-4)
Nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1984, the movie “Places in the Heart” that stars Sally Fields who won the Best Actress Award for the film, tells the story of Edna Spalding, a young widow living in Waxahachie, Texas with her three children who tries to eke out a livelihood off of her forty acre farm during the dried-up years of the Great Depression. Assisted by a black man named Moses and a blind man named Will, she forestalls foreclosure of her farm by the local bank that holds a note on it.
The movie chronicles the daily grind that Edna faces, not only with getting her cotton crop in the ground, but also in trying to raise her three children single-handedly. If that were not enough, she faces the criticism of the townspeople for taking in a black man as a hired hand who, in the end, is severely beaten by the Klan, forcing him to leave the farm if he does not want to face death.
While the movie easily fits into the genre of true grit, offering the message that perseverance pays off, regardless of the obstacles a person finds in the path, the thing that sets the movie apart from others of the type is the final scene that takes place during the Sunday service in the local church, the small choir singing the words of the hymn ‘In the Garden” while the communion service is underway. At first, we find ourselves believing it is just another ordinary Sunday service.
It takes a moment for the viewer to realize that something is off about the scene, particularly as the camera scans the people in the pew who pass the communion plate from one to the other, many of the faces familiar from the previous scenes, but others out of place because they are supposed to be dead, such as Edna’s husband and the young black man that shot him while in a drunken stupor and who was subsequently lynched, his body hung from the branch of a tree. Clearly, we have left the harsh realism of the storyline and have entered into a spiritual realm where living and dead co-exist side by side. We are confused, at least for a few moments.
As the communion plate is passed from person to person, each speaks to the other the words, “Peace of God,” the words expressing the hope of the movie, that the day will come when there is a place where all can live in peace, white and black, rich and poor, saint and sinner, a place of redemption and forgiveness. And while some may see that place as a possibility only in the hereafter, the movie also argues that it is possible in the here and now if we allow such places in our hearts.
Our scripture passage today has Rabbi Jesus tell his disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself.” This passage is part of that section of John’s gospel that is known as “the Farewell Discourse,” the name coming from the fact that Rabbi Jesus is in the Upper Room with his followers, his execution soon to take place, his final words offered to them while at table with them, breaking bread together for the last time.
A few verses before these that we hear today, Rabbi Jesus has already laid out the dangers lurking in the shadows: Peter will deny him three times, Judas will betray him for cash in his pocket, and the others will run for the hills. Without a doubt, the times are dark and the future is dim. Everything appears lost, the hopes for a better tomorrow crushed beneath a world weighed down by wrongs.
Yet, it is at that very point that Rabbi Jesus offers his followers hope for a better future, a future that transcends the present moment with its many trials and promises a place where wrongs will be righted, where weapons of war will be laid down, and where peace will flow like a river. In many ways, it is the same future that the movie “Places in the Heart” promises.
“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” Rightly, many people choose to interpret these words of Rabbi Jesus’ to refer to heaven, seeing the words “my Father’s house” as a synonym for the heavenly abode.
And while that interpretation is a valid one, we may not want to limit ourselves to it. There is a simple reason. Throughout this gospel, location has never been presented only as a geographical place. It always carries with it the connotation of a relationship. Relationship is the fundamental theme of this gospel: the relationship of Rabbi Jesus to his Father; the relationship of the disciples to Rabbi Jesus; the relationship of his followers with each other.
So, for example, when Rabbi Jesus meets the woman at Jacob’s well, the location only serves to initiate the relationship that Rabbi Jesus offers the woman if she is willing to believe that he is the water that quenches her inner thirst. Or, when Rabbi Jesus attends the wedding at Cana, the place drifts into the background as the Rabbi changes the water into wine, a sign of the relationship that he has with his Heavenly Father.
Given the fact that relationship is always front and center in this gospel, then it is no stretch to see that heaven is to be understood not so much as a location, but as a relationship with God. If we are in the right relationship with God, then we have found heaven, not only in some far away place, but in the here and now. So, when Rabbi Jesus speaks of “my Father’s house,” he speaks not of a physical location, but of a loving relationship with his Father. He is “at home” with his Father and he wants his followers to be “at home” with his Father, at home an expression of a relationship.
And how do we find “a dwelling place” with the Father? We find it through a right relationship with Rabbi Jesus who says as much when he tells his followers that he is “the way and the truth and the life.” When we pattern our lives after the life of Rabbi Jesus, truly living as if he is the way and the truth and the life, then we will be in the same relationship with the Father that Rabbi Jesus has with his Father because, as he said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”
When that happens, we find ourselves “at home” with the Father, our relationship with the Father mirroring the relationship that Rabbi Jesus had with his Father. Of course, when we mirror the ways and works of Rabbi Jesus, it entails our seeking a right relationship with one another, living together in the world as brothers and sisters, seeking to have a shared bond with one and all, regardless of color, creed, or culture.
If and when we achieve that way of life, we will find ourselves dwelling in the Father’s house, at home with God because we are at home with one another, living together in harmony, not in hatred; lifting up one another, not putting down each other; and searching out the lost and the rejected, not pushing them out of sight. In that future moment, however near or far it is from us, we will have found the place that Rabbi Jesus has prepared for us.
It is not mere coincidence that the word for home in Greek is the noun form of the verb that is translated as “to abide.” In other words, to be “at home” simply means “to abide” with someone. Again, it forces us to see home not so much as a location, but as a relationship, a concept that is not all that difficult for us to understand once we reflect on our own lives. When we speak of our home, we really mean our relationships with the people we love who happen to live in that place. Without the people with whom we share our home, there is no home per se, only a location.
In this so-called Final Discourse, Rabbi Jesus is urging his followers to find their way home. And he points the way, promising them that so long as they follow in his footsteps, finding in him the way, the truth, and the life, then they will arrive at his Father’s house where, as he says, there are many homes because there are many relationships. Or, stated another way, the Father has many places in the heart.
Again, relationships are the key, beginning with a relationship with Rabbi Jesus, the same one shared by his first followers. When we live our lives in imitation of his life, we find ourselves abiding with him, that is, at home with him, and we find ourselves also abiding with his Father, at home with the Heavenly Father because Rabbi Jesus and the Heavenly Father are at home with each other.
When reading John’s gospel, we always find a rich and multi-layered message buried beneath the surface. The same is true in the short passage that we have put before us today. While it may look as if he is only talking about some location where the Father dwells, a location where we hope to arrive someday, in fact, he is actually talking about a relationship with the Father and how we can arrive at that relationship, sharing an intimacy with the Father that feels as if we are finally at home.
It makes sense, then, that Rabbi Jesus should begin his message to his followers with the words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Here, the word troubled means agitated, stirred up, or disturbed. Rabbi Jesus tells us that there is no need for our hearts to be troubled because, as his followers, we dwell with the Father and the Father dwells with us. That intimate relationship will see us through the trials and the tribulations of this world. We are at peace because we are already in God’s house.
As we have seen, the movie “Places in the Heart” ends with a meal, that of a communion service in a church where bread is passed from one to the other regardless of rank or riches. But it also began with a meal where Edna’s family sits around the family table at home while her husband Royce offers this prayer, “Our Heavenly Father, bless this meal and all those who are about to receive it. Make us thankful for your generous bounty and your unceasing love. Please remind us in these hard times to be grateful for what we have been given and not to ask for what we cannot have. And make us mindful of those less fortunate among us as we sit at this table with all of thy bounty.” It is a good prayer. And it is a prayer that stresses relationships, a relationship with God, a relationship with those at table with us, a relationship with others who are in need.
As Rabbi Jesus sat down at table with his followers for a last meal before he was taken from them and crucified, he told them that they should not let their hearts be troubled because there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house. He then asks them to find places in their hearts for him, for his Father, and for others, promising them that if they make room for others in their hearts, the Father will have a room for them in his dwelling place.
It is really all that simple. When we put people first, when we focus on our relationship with others in the same way that Rabbi Jesus did, we will find ourselves at home with his Heavenly Father, even if we’re very much right here on earth.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 