THE PLACE THAT PROVIDES PRESENCE

Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14]

I was twelve years old.  It was the night before my family and I were moving to another city in another state.  My Dad had received a promotion in the corporation he worked for all his life.  The transition’s ambiguity between the familiar to the unclear new created a hard year for all of us.  When my Dad finally settled on one opportunity, it meant that he had immediately to go to work in that new position.  This meant that he was out of town during the week and home on short weekends.

That left my Mom to tend the homefront on her own: functionally a single parent of four boys between the ages of twelve and two.  I now can imagine how hard that must have been on her and on my father.  How did my father work all week at a new job in a different city, in another state and then come home for less-than-two days to attempt to catch up on being a husband, a father, and a person?  How did my mother function as the onsite stability for us boys and be the home maker and house seller?  How did they both deal with being physically and emotionally separated as partners in a time of such upheaval?

I now know the answer to those questions: You don’t catch up.  You just hope that nothing else happens to overwhelm an already brimful situation and that the presence of love transcends the challenges to create a new experience of life that is both stronger and more appreciative.

So, it was in August of that year that this interim arrangement moved on to its next stage.  My parents bought a house in the new place, and a moving date was set.  In this interim time, I remember a letter my Dad sent to me.  It was an acknowledgement that as the oldest son, he knew I was a bit shaky about the move and all the changes it was bringing.  As a way of encouragement, he wrote that, as the first born, he knew that I would help Mom out, and that at the other end of things, our new house (having four bedrooms) would afford me with my own bedroom.  But when the moving truck and crew arrived and packed our belongings away and our house was empty, I was unconvinced about any upside to this change.  The impending absence overwhelmed me.

Since all our belongings (including our beds) were on their way to the new home, we all spent the last night with a neighbor whose house was a few doors up.  The adult neighbors threw a big “goodbye” party for Mom and Dad that last day.  It lasted well into the evening because my folks (having invested their emotional roots deeply in that familiar place) received their peers’ appreciation for the gift and impact of their presence.

For my part, I babysat my brothers, who fortunately slept through the night.  But I was a mess, and my recollection is that I cried, grief-stricken, that whole night.  To this day, I cringe at the prospect of not having a place that is “home”.  Now that I am of an “honorable age”, I also know that there aren’t very many moves left in my future.  A place to call “home”, a place to belong remains deeply rooted in my soul.  So it is that I still don’t respond lightly to moving away in any sense of that term.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many [rooms].  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.[1]

Today, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, followers of Jesus move, not to a new city or to a new job, but we move into the second half of the season of resurrection and, thereby, into another experience of God’s life.  The Good News that this new life contains is that with the Risen One we have a “place” to be deeply at “home”; but the “place” that Jesus speaks to is not so much a specific zip code as it is the reality of God’s life in Christ being present to us and us to God: No separation.  Call it “Communion life”, and “Communion life” is infinitely larger than what occurs (for instance) at the altar rail or in one place or time.

Nonetheless, it is hard for us to comprehend the reality of such complete presence, which is the reality of living in and with and through Jesus.  It is much more satisfying for us to think in terms of a house, with a bedroom for each of us, where we dwell.  Yet, being present (which is what the Sacrament of the Altar is truly about as a foretaste of God’s life) – being present is our new home without walls, if you will.  What I’m getting at is that Easter life is present to us now, but like all the disciples in the post-resurrection events, we find it hard to recognize.  But we have had glimpses and tastes of this “Communion life” before.

For instance, in your life now, who is it that brings this presence to you?  What is life like in the recognition of being with someone where (for moments) time melts and barriers dissolve?  Of course, these experiences of “presence” – of Communion – are momentary in this mortal life, save for the mystics and poets among us.  But this is the Good News of this second part of Eastertide.  Call it “heaven” but don’t locate heaven “up there” or just off an exit on the Mass Pike!  Definitely don’t “postpone” until you die knowing something about “heaven!  The Easter life is now, but it is not completed – not yet.  In God’s abundant grace, time is provided for all God’s people to “move” into this new “house” where we dwell, present to God, to one another, and to ourselves.

St. Augustine speaks to this transition time and its transformational experience.  He says, “Jesus prepares the dwelling place by preparing those who are to dwell in them.”  So, are we ready to “move” – not to a new city but to a new life – the one we see in the Risen Jesus?  The one who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life…

With Thomas, we may cluelessly ask, “what is the way?  And the answer is, Jesus is the “way” – the “way” that leads us through fear and death to God’s abiding, abundant presence.

As we follow Jesus, we also stumble into the “truth”: namely, that life is more than we can make of it: that God’s love is stronger than fear and death and that we are given this love and the life perfect love offers – no matter what.

As the late Frederick Buechner has written, “[a] Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.”  He concludes, “a Christian isn’t necessarily any nicer than anybody else.  Just better informed.”[2]

“Christ is risen!”  And as a result, we have a way home and a new life.  Somehow, gratitude for this is the required receptor.  So, thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] John 14:2-3.

[2] Frederick Buechner. Wishful Thinking. P. 14.