Many Rooms: A Vision of Heaven

It is evening, the night before Jesus is to die. He is sitting with his best friends. He has just washed their feet. It is time for Jesus to say whatever he has to say. This is the last night, his last will and testament. And Jesus tries to tell his friends about heaven.

"In my Father's house," he says, "there are many rooms."

My grandmother had a huge house up the Hudson River from New York City. The house had nine bedrooms, which meant that every grandchild could own a room. My cousin Jody and I claimed a small room with two twin beds at the end of a long hallway. The hallway was full of pictures of our family, a gallery of memories: our parents wedding photos, grandparents, great grandparents. The room was ours. My grandmother kept it just the same for us. There was a certain smell. It was ours.

When I was going to have my first baby, we spent months on the nursery. We had Noah's ark theme. People gave us such great Noah's ark gifts. I made sure that the crib was well built for the baby, a great rocking chair, paintings, drapes. I needed to have that nursery ready to welcome my baby. It was my way of making it clear that there was a place in my life for my first child. I would just sit in that nursery and rock in the rocking chair, thinking of my baby and what it would be like to hold him in that room.

Jesus was trying to tell his disciples that God was preparing a place for them in heaven. Each one of them would have a special place, designed just for them. And God does the same thing for us. When we are born into eternal life, we will find that God has a place for us, designed specially for us, in heaven. My heavenly place would certainly look different than yours. God has so many areas that each one of us can be welcomed to a place just our own, lined with our favorite people, our colors, our flowers...a place of rest, refreshment, beauty and peace.

How can heaven have so many different places? Most of us tend to think of heaven as having a uniform quality for all people, a destination without complexity or variety. Most images of heaven in movies or tv show a plain white place, very sparce with little in it. It never looks comfortable or like home at all. I wonder why we are prone to think of heaven in such simple, bland, boring terms. Jesus assures us that there are many places within heaven. It is a complex and multifaceted place, where there is not only room for everyone but also specifically a special place just for you.

Jesus promises that he will come back for us and take us to the place he has prepared for us.

JD and I had been married only two years. I was to graduate Seminary and we planned to move to Connecticut, where we both had jobs. But I had to take some final exams so JD went ahead to find us a house. To this day, I can't believe that I actually bought a house sight unseen but I trusted his taste. We were the kind of couple who registered for wedding gifts with no disagreements. He knew me and what I liked. And I trusted him to buy us a house.

I will never forget first walking into this place that I knew was mine. It was like meeting an old friend. It just felt right. I was home.

Jesus says that he wants to bring us to himself. He goes ahead to get the space ready for us.

When a beloved mother or father is aging and must move into assisted living, often the children will create a new home for them. My friend Ed, after his wife died, had to move to assisted living. So his son had his favorite belongings set up in the new space, compete with his model airplanes and his favorite paintings. His son made a home for him. Ed called it his window to heaven.

Jesus was trying to tell us that heaven will not be some hotel that you don't recognize or some empty space full of white clouds. Heaven will be your true home and no one knows how to get it ready for you better than Jesus. The homes you have here are just reflections, shadows of your true home, where there don't need to be pictures on the walls of the hallways because the people you love will there there themselves, sitting on the sofa, smiling and ready for you to arrive.

In 1989, an earthquake shook the country of Armenia, killing thirty thousand people. Moments after the tremors ceased, a father rushed to the elementary school where his son studied. The school had collapsed. The father kept hearing his own promise to his son ringing in his ears, "No matter what happens, I will always come for you." When all the other parents were weeping and wailing, this father got to work. Using his bare hands, he began to remove the rubble. The other parents told him that it was useless. The children had been crushed. But the father would hear none of it. Without argument or explanation, he continued to dig. Eight hours, sixteen, thirty-two, thirty-six hours. The father's hands were raw and bleeding when he heard a faint voice. He called his son's name, "Arman! Arman!" and a voice answered..."Dad, it's me!" The boy would later explain to his father that he had told the other children not to worry. "I remembered your promise, that you would always come for me," he said.

Jesus has made you a promise. He will come for you. And he is even now preparing a place for you. So if this earthly place falls apart and it feels like the walls are caving in, remember that he goes ahead to prepare a place specially made, just for you.

Showing His Scars

 Happy Easter!

Did you know that the Risen Christ appeared in the dark, at night?

A few nights ago, JD heard that a man had tried to kill a police officer and was now on the loose in Jacksonville.  We locked all the doors to our house and let our black lab loose because she is great at barking when strangers come to the door. I wasnt really scared but I was a bit nervous.

That's what we do at night.  We shut our doors, lock them and then turn on inside lights. We try to shove away the darkness or sleep through it. 

The disciples locked the doors of the house where they were staying in Jerusalem because they were afraid that the Jews might just come by and arrest them. They were truly scared.  Jesus had been arrested at night and look what had happened to him.  Doors locked, check.

Then the Risen Christ appeared.  He couldn't be kept out. Christ does not let shut doors stop him. Nothing that we say or do can stop the Risen Christ from coming to us if he wants to. I think that he comes to us all the time.

When the Risen Christ appears, the first thing he does is say, "Peace be with you." Another way of saying this is "Don't be afraid," for peace is the opposite of fear.  He wanted us to be at peace the way we were once in Eden, at peace and not afraid.  He wanted us to not need to hide any longer.

And then, to help us not be afraid, Jesus did something so intimate and so odd.  He showed the disciples his hands and his side.  These were the places where he had been hurt.  Nails had been hammered through his hands. His side had been pierced with a sword.  And the first thing he did was to show the disciples his wounds.

As many of you know, I grew up in an old New England family where the common practice was to recount your accomplishments every year at the family reunion.  My grandmother would ask, without flinching, "What have you done this year, dearies?"  We were expected to recount degrees, awards, jobs, travel and other impressive activities.  It was like a competition.  The one who gets into the most prestigious college wins.  The one with the most money wins.  The one with the most accolades wins.  It was a boasting fest, but underneath it all was this terrible insecurity that comes from not really knowing if you are truly loved.

When I was thirteen, I was invited to a Christian retreat for all ages.  It took place at a boarding school in New England.  People came from all over the country and met in small groups called families.  And something happened in those family groups that I had never experienced before. Instead of telling each other how great we were, we talked about our pain.  And this was with grown ups.  A man in his twenties (who seemed old at the time to me) cried because he was afraid to go back to graduate school and all he wanted to do was to become a teacher. A woman was struggling with depression and could not stop crying.  

In the course of one week, I felt that I knew these people in ways that I had never known another human being before. They opened their hearts to each other and to me.  I found them beautiful and complex and full of wonder.  And, best of all, I began to understand that my own struggles and insecurities were not crazy at all, they were what made me who I am.

There is a scene in the movie About Time when a mother meets her son's new love.  Instead of trying to impress each other, the mother asks the young woman, "What are your worst faults?"  At first, the young lady looks started, but she answers with candor. She says, "I can be incredibly insecure...." The mother smiles and says, "Yes, cant we all?" 

She says, "I have a terrible temper at times."

The mother says, "Well, how else can we get them to do what we want?"

The young woman says, "I have a weakness for your son."

And the mother says, "So do I, but lets not tell him..." And she smiles.

In just five minutes, these two women not only met but began to love each other.  Because they shared their wounds.

We all want so badly to be happy and to have it all together, but it is our pain that marks us.  It is our struggles that shape us into the people we are.  When Christ came back, he wanted us to no longer be afraid.  He wanted us to trust him and so he showed us his wounds.

And the most incredible thing to me is that Jesus brought his wounds with him into the resurrection life.  The scars, which can be so ugly, were not covered over or erased in heaven.  They were marks of his own identity.  He brought himself to resurrection.  That is how Thomas knows him, by his wounds.

Don't shut your doors to one another.  Don't pretend that you have it all together, that you are happy all the time and never struggle.  We scare one another when we pretend like that.  Instead, open the doors to your heart and share with others who you truly are, your struggles as well as your joy. Tell them about your grief, your loneliness, your wish that things could have turned out differently.  We cannot see Christ in one another if we are always pretending to be perfect.  The Risen Christ did not return perfect.  He returned scarred.  And he was so beautiful.

Easter and the Heart of a Child

My son Max has fears at night.  I talked to him about mentioning his fears to you this morning.  I told him that I didnt have to share them with you. "Will it only be at the six o'clock service?" he asked.  "Yes," I answered.  "Well, that is OK," he said. "It will be mostly grown-ups and they must be really nice and really believe in God if they get up so early, so they wont make fun of me."

So please consider yourselves among the select few that Max has allowed to know about his fears. 

Max is nine. He alone of my three boys gets afraid at night. He hates to be alone in the dark.  We have tried everything: lighting candles, handling rosaries, singing songs and praying, but when he is alone in the dark, he gets really and truly afraid.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked.

"I am not sure...monsters...maybe...I dont know..." His fears are so primal, so serious and old that he cannot even verbalize them. The only thing that seems to help is when I come and sleep under his bunk bed. 

Do you remember the song The Servant Song?  There is this beautiful verse that reads, "I will hold the Christ light for you, in the night-time of your fear."

The resurrection is something that cannot be explained with rational words. So for thousands of years, Christians have reinacted this ancient service called the Easter Vigil as a way of showing what resurrection is.  The Easter Vigil used to go on all night.  It begins in the dark, in the place of all of our fears.  And in that darkness, a fire is kindled. Light comes out of the darkness, out of nothing itself, just like it did at the very beginning of creation when God said, "Let there be light."

Resurrection is light coming into the darkness. It happened when all was lost and Jesus was dead. He came back to us from out of nowhere. And he told us that there is light at the end of the dark tunnel of death, that the sun will rise again even after we die, that life cannot and will not be extinguished for those who believe.

I will hold the Christ-light for your in the night-time of your fear.

In his book, The Logic of Eternal Joy, Jerry Walls argues that the notion of heaven is dying in American culture today. Both heaven and hell are becoming obselete, he claims. No one believes in heaven anymore. We think that its a childish notion. Something that may exist but can never be rationally explained.  There is no need to prepare for something so amorphous. He writes that Americans don't believe in heaven because we are afraid that it will be boring. "Our ancestors were afraid of Hell; we are afraid of Heaven. We think it will be boring."

How could there be life after death?  How could we just go on existing?  The notion overwhelms us.  Will we sit on clouds in boring stagnation? How could God possibly make the light continue without it getting stale, old, boring?

It is true that heaven is a childish notion. It comes from the very heart of a child.  Jesus tells us that we must be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.  For the child who is having a great time, there is no boredom in repetition. It is like the little boy, who, when bouncing on his daddy's knee, says, "Do it again! Do it again!" That is what God is like.  Every morning, when the sun rises, God says, "Do it again! Do it again!" to the sun. And every evening, God says, "Do it again! Do it again!" to the moon.  G.K. Chesterton writes, "It may be that God has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." God is never bored, but eternally playful, eternally joyful.

Today we will baptize a man named Peter. For decades, Peter, who was a non-practicing Jew, has been wondering about baptism. For decades, he has thought about it. And on this morning, as the sun begins to rise, we will begin a new life for Peter, a new relationship with God.

Peter, this is quite literally the most radical thing you have ever done or will ever do.  A life begins today that is beyond all of our comprehending, a life that is anything but boring. And all you need to do is trust in it.  You enter heaven today.  Open your heart to the possibility that God waits for you, playfully waiting to dance with you in heaven.  The dance begins now, Peter, at this baptism.  So keep awake. Watch for signs of God's love, signs of the dance. The sun is rising and you are about to experience something totally new. This is just the beginning.

When you celebrate Easter, don't think so much about eggs or bunnies, think about the fire that is kindled in darkness, the light that comes out of nowhere.  Think about the fact that you need never be afraid again. Think of that verse, "I will hold the Christ-light for you, in the night-time of your fears."

Jesus is taking my place under Max's bunk bed, slowly but surely.  Max is realizing that Jesus is all he needs to chase away the darkness.  In fact, he has been there all along.

Hard Core Love: A Palm Sunday Sermon

Last week, I went to Richmond, Virginia to preach at St. Stephens Church.  A beautiful church, it is located in a historic neighborhood full of gorgeous homes.  The azalea bushes were just blooming and the weather was perfect. The congregation is huge, about double our size at least.  They have six services on Sunday and five full-time priests. The people are successful, hard-working, well-educated Episcopalians.  Discussion at both my Saturday workshop and Sunday forum was rich and engaging.  I could tell that they listened to my sermons.  And yet, there was something missing for me.  I missed you.  I missed my home. I missed the Cathedral.

Life here in the Urban Core is messy.  Just a few days ago, I encountered a young man who for the past year and a half has been telling me he has been given three months to live.  Deeply troubled, he suffers from schizophrenia, is chronically homeless and constantly wants to get on a bus and leave town.  He wanders in the core asking people for money and telling them that he is going to die. He smells bad and always wants to give me a hug. 

Why come here to the Cathedral?  Why come to the heart of a city that is full of homelessness, empty buildings and there isnt even a Starbucks? Why am I drawn here like a magnet?  I came to be your Dean because you were in the urban core.  Maybe its because I grew up in the inner-city of New Haven, where a gang war was going on.  I remember a lady being raped across the street from our house and my dad going out with a baseball bat at night.  I was chased by a homeless man when I was in third grade.  So why do I keep coming back?  And why do you come?

Jesus knew that something terrible would happen in the city.  He knew that his death was approaching. He rode into the city of Jerusalem with the knowledge that there was pain in front of him.  He could have stayed outside the city, roamed the Galilee, played it safe, but he didn't.  He rode into the city publicly, so that everyone could see where he was going.  He chose to come to the urban core to die.

I guess that there are many kinds of love.  There is romantic love.  There is love of life, where you find a beautiful place to live and just relish life and rest and good food.  And then there is this hard core love, the kind that propels you to go where life is hardest and do your best to help.  Mother Theresa had that kind of love when she went to Calcutta to work with the poorest of the poor.  She knew it would be hard.  She knew that she would die doing it.  And she knew, like Jesus did, that resurrection would be found on the other side.

In the Old Testament, cities are hubs of sin and suffering. Adam and Eve were originally created to live in a perfect garden.  But after the fall, after their son Cain murdered his brother Abel the first thing that Cain did was to build a city. The city was the antithesis of Eden, full of sin and darkness.  From that point on, cities are places that anger God. The people of the city of Babel tried to build a tower to touch God and this made God angry so God destroyed that city. Sodom was almost destroyed for its sin.  But Jesus changed everything when he came because he loved the city. He would sit on a hill above walls of Jerusalem and cry for its people.  For Jesus too, the city was a nexus of all that was wrong with humanity, but he chose to enter into it and suffer inside it.  Jesus died in the city for us and that changed everything.

I find it incredibly important that, in the book of Revelation, a picture of heaven itself is painted and heaven does not look like a garden.  Heaven looks like a city, a city perfected and redeemed by God, with streets of gold, where God himself is king.

There is no doubt that, in the Bible, redemption occurs in and through the city. The book of revelation does not talk about the salvation of just one soul.  It is the entire city of Jerusalem that is saved. There is no salvation without the salvation of the city.

 Jesus chose to ride into town and face the music.  He moved through agony itself only to bring us life on the other side. Now that is hard-core love. That is love at the core.  Somehow, the cross has always been most present in the city. And if you are the kind of hard core Christian that does not avoid the cross but understands that Easter can only be found by facing the cross and moving through it, then eventually you too will end up serving God in the urban core. Because here life is hardest.

Who are we?  We are a people who follow Jesus into the heart of the city.  We love at the core. We find that resurrection is only possible when we look at the cross itself, when we follow Jesus into the city and seek to love God there. Thank you for being here with me.

Praying Big

    I got scammed this week. I went online to find out about a summer camp at one of our local universities and the University asked me to complete a survey and I would get a reward. So I filled out the survey about how I was visiting the website and why I logged on, etc. And then my reward popped up.  A free trial of Cellogica Skin care products, a new revolutionary brand of skin care designed to make wrinkles disappear! Cellogica will send me the product for free. I just have to pay shipping and handling.

Well, I am in my forties.  It is a great age for the most part. I am not as naive as I was in my twenties and yet I am still able to do almost anything physically.  The only problem with your forties is that's when the wrinkles start coming. They seem to appear from out of nowhere and there they are, signs of age. And I have always wondered if these really expensive creams work or if its just a hoax. So here it was, my chance to try Cellogica for free! I ordered the stuff.

Luckily, I married a man who is much wiser than I.  When I told him about my "reward," he groaned, and looked up my order.  JD discovered that they planned to charge me $130 a month for the rest of my life! "Call them tomorrow to cancel the order" was his advice. So I did. And I found out that if I did not return the skin care product within forteen days, that they would charge me $150. The "free"trial really meant that I didnt have to pay for fourteen days. 

So I found myself driving to the post office, where the man behind the counter laughed at me and told me about goats milk cream. 

The internet is full of scams.  Companies don't tell the whole truth or they don't tell the truth at all. When I tried to argue, the man at Cellogica said that it was all there in the fine print, at about 5 point font. I would need a microscope to read it.

Today, we encounter the longest recorded conversation that Jesus had with any one human being. The person to whom he spoke was as surprising as the conversation itself. She was not Jewish. She was not married. She was a SHE. 

Men were not supposed to talk to women except their wives and relatives in Jesus' day. Women were called "GeNay" which meant, literally, Womb. They were seen not as human beings but as walking wombs, sources of potential sons, an investment, a piece of property.  So it was extraordinary that Jesus, sitting at Jacob's well, asked this woman for a drink of water. And even more astonishing is her bold question in reply, "Why do you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?"  In other words, "Why in the world are you talking to me?  Are you trying to get something from me? What is it that you want?"

This woman wants the truth. And it is only the truth that can enable you to see God, for God does not lie and God does not scam.

Jesus answers her, "If you knew who I really was, you would be asking me for another kind of product, something much better than normal water, you would be asking me for living water, water so incredible that you will never be thirsty again..."

The woman likes the idea of never being thirsty, but she does not comprehend the fullness of what Jesus is saying. She thinks about how hot she gets every day going to the well at noon, during the worst heat of the day. She had to go at noon because no one else was there at that time, when the sun beat down so severely as to kill a man. She had to come at that time because this woman was an outcast.  Not only was she a woman and a Samartian and not married, but she had been married five times before.  Whether her husbands had died or kicked her out for asking too many questions, we will never know. But a woman who had had five husbands was scandalous. She was a social praia, a monster.

All this woman wants is to be heard, to not have to be alone. But what Jesus is offering her is so much more than that, it is a love that extends far beyond her understanding and life that lasts forever.

When Jesus tells her that he knows of her husbands, she is so impressed that she cant shut up. She runs into the village and tells everyone that he is the Messiah.  And, for the first time perhaps, they listen to her. She is heard.

What was the woman looking for?  She wanted a chance to become part of the community again, to not have to walk to the well alone.  She wanted to be seen as a person and not a monster.  But Jesus wanted so much more for her.  Jesus wanted her to go down in history as the one who spoke to him the longest, the brave woman who heard him at the well.  Jesus wanted her to learn to love God so that her life would extend far beyond the first and physical world into eternal life.  Jesus was offering her the Universe and all she wanted was a little respect and a glass of water.

Often our greatest failure in our relationship with God is that we don't ask for enough. We want to not be alone and God reveals the Messiah to us.  We want some extra money and God offers us the treasures of heaven.  We want someone to hold and God wants us to have love eternal.  We want to get rid of wrinkles and God wants to give us heaven itself.

Sometimes our greatest sin is our incapacity to dream big enough for God's great goodness.

In a few weeks, on Palm Sunday, something is happening downtown in Jacksonville. For five years, I have been praying that this downtown core would ignite, that this city would begin to focus our efforts on caring for and nurturing the city's heart.  And, after almost five years, something is finally happening. We are on the brink of something new.

A fire is being ignited downtown. It began as an event last year called OneSpark.  This year, OneSpark has grown.  Last year, over one hundred thousand people attended OneSpark.  This year, more are predicted to come and walk the streets of downtown, where small businesses, entrepreneurs and artists will present new ideas and projects. And this all falls on Palm Sunday Weekend, the one holy day when churches traditionally walk out of their sanctuaries and into the streets.

Could it be that God may be answering our prayers about this Urban core in ways that surpass our very asking? There is no other church downtown that has claimed a voice, no spiritual presence at OneSpark. 

When the Samaritan woman realized who Jesus was, she dropped her water jar (an expensive thing by the way) and ran to the city.  She ran into the city to tell everybody about the man she met, the man who surpassed her every expectation.

Walk with me into the heart of the city.  Pray with me about Palm Sunday and OneSpark. And lets not make the age old mistake of praying for too little. Instead, lets dream boldly and open our hearts to the One who never scams us but instead always gives us more than we could ever even begin to imagine.