"Living with a place prepared" - Sermon for Easter 5, May 14th 2017
Sermon:
Text:
Grace and Peace to you from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who is our way.
There
are some texts that get connected to certain days or events. Some are pretty
clear why such as Christmas and Jesus’ birth story, Easter and the texts of his
death and resurrection. You can’t really take them away from the day, because
it’s the text that gives rise to the day. The Story of Jesus’ birth gives us
Christmas and so forth.
There
are also texts that we tend to always read on certain days of the year, but
they don’t really connect to them, you can read them out of that day’s context
and don’t have to talk about what’s going on on that day. Psalm 46 or Romans 8
are always read on Reformation Sunday, but we don’t have to talk about the rest
of Reformation when we look at them. We always read Matthew 6 on Ash Wednesday,
where Jesus talks about not praying on street corners just so people can see
you, but pray in private. But, if you read that text at a different time you
don’t immediately think of Ash Wednesday.
There
are some texts though that have become almost solely identified with events even
though they don’t necessarily talk about that event, or tell of it. It has
become nearly impossible to not think about the event when those texts are
read. 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or
boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not
irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in
the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.” When do we read
that? Weddings! That’s the wedding text isn’t it. It really has nothing to do
with weddings, but it’s hard to read that text without weddings being the
focus.
Today’s
text from John is another of these texts. It is one of 2 or 3 readings that I
consider the funeral texts. For nearly 90% of the funerals I have done one of
them has been used.
It’s
for good reason of course, this text is indeed about eternal life, which is a
big focus of funerals. Christ’s promise that we are welcome to rooms prepared
for us by God is powerful in the midst of grief. Rooms prepared that Jesus will
bring us to. We need not fear for our loved ones, Jesus has wrapped them in
love and brought them into loving care. In the midst of grief we need to hear
this confident word from Jesus that our loved ones are watched over and taken
care of.
So,
I have no problems with reading it at funerals, it is indeed one of great
comfort and meaning in that moment. However, we also need to read it outside of
that context, we need to ingrain this text into our daily lives. Because this
text helps us see eternal life with God, but it also helps us to see how we
live our daily lives in the here and now in response to knowing of the promise
of eternal life with God.
Our
text talks about Jesus being the way. There are lots of thoughts about that.
Many want to put it as, you have to follow all the rules, check all the boxes,
make sure you do all the right things. But, in the grace filled thought of
Luther that doesn’t work, it’s not up to our works, it’s up to the grace found
in the love of Christ on the cross. Nor does it work in the midst of this very
text. That room is already prepared for you. Your faith in Christ has ensured
that, Christ’s death on the cross already bought the ticket.
And so Jesus
as the way is not about the journey, but the destination.
Which I
have to admit is a little confusing to me, I had a hard time wrapping my head around
it. But, then at text study this week, Pastor Steve from Brule Creek and
Dalesburg used this analogy. Let’s use a different idea of destination instead
of heaven, because we get too distracted by theology things then. Let’s say instead
that we’re heading to the Black Hills. You have a bunch of choices. You could
take the really easy way and speed there on the interstate and miss everything
on the way, you could just care about yourself and do no stopping or helping
and just get there. Or you could take the roundabout way, you could take the
side roads. You could stop when you see people in need, you could go through the
difficult places, go through Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations, you could go
work with the poorest of poor in not just our state but the country. You get to
the same place either path, but what impact did you make on the journey. The
way to heaven is through Christ, but what path do you take as you live your
life in response to what Christ did in preparing that room for you.
There
is a very popular poem written by Linda Ellis called the Dash. I’m guessing
many of you have heard of it, in the poem she speaks of a man speaking at a
funeral, he talks about the things engraved on gravestones, the birthdate and
the death date, and then there is a dash between them. The dash is everything
that happened in your life, all the ups and downs. It ends with a call to live
your life in a way that makes your dash impactful and meaningful. “So, when
your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash… would you be
proud of the things they say about how you spent YOUR dash?”
In
many ways, our text today could be seen as Jesus’ version of the dash. There is
a place prepared for you. How are you going to live your life with that in
mind?
Are
you going to go the way of cheap grace? Of thinking about yourself only? Or are
you go the way of Christ and think about the other first, just as Christ did in
dying for us. Are you going to live hurrying for the destination, or are you
going to live in gratitude for the journey?
Let
us pray,
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Lord, we thank you for preparing a
room for us. Help us to live our lives in gratitude for that fact, in taking
the scenic drive, in giving of our selves through our time, our possessions and
in giving our financial gifts to the church, so that through that work, all may
live in peace as they journey to you.
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