At Home In Your Heart

John 14:23-29

May 16, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I want to ask you to do something with me this morning. I have not done this sort of thing in a sermon since before Christmas, so I think that it will be all right to do it again this morning. This morning, I would like for us to take a little trip to our houses. Here is the catch; if we do this, we will all end up at different houses. And then there is this. The house you choose does not have to be the house that you live in right now.

I was in Conway last Friday to see my parents and to get my car worked on. While I was waiting for the call from the dealership to let us know me know that my Toyota was ready, I spent a little time in my parents’ house. I sat in their den, talked with my father, and watched their television. After a few minutes of doing this, I was thirsty and so I asked my dad if I could get a Coke out of his refrigerator. My father said this to me, “John, I want this house to be like your home.” I know what he was trying to tell me. He was trying to tell me that their new house in their new hometown could be just like the one that I grew up in, in Tennessee. He was trying to tell me that his house was my house, but it is not. It just can’t be. When my parents were moving to Conway from Jackson, they wanted their children to come home and to go through the things that probably would not make the move. Mom and dad wanted us to have these things, if we wanted them. When my mother asked me if there was anything that I wanted, I answered, “Yes, I want the house and I want to pay the same that you did when you bought it back when I was five.” Mom said that they could not do that. Instead, they sold it to David Hays, someone that I went to high school with.

So on this little trip this morning, I think that I would like to go to the house that I grew up in. Would you mind going with me? We will get off the interstate at exit number eighty, drive to North Parkway, turn left on Fieldcrest, then left again on Leslie Drive. At the Smiths’ house, Leslie becomes Laurie Circle. My house is numbered one hundred and seventy-seven. Let’s pull in my driveway. We will use the carport door, because, after all, that is the door that our friends always knew to come to. And all of you, after all, are friends. Would you mind taking the tour? Walking through the carport door will land us in the utility room. When we turn to the right, we will be in my mother’s kitchen, where us Flemings ate hundreds of meals. If we keep going straight, we will come to the living room. I can remember the Christmas dinners and the Thanksgiving meals that we ate in this room. With my dad at the head of the table, he passed the rolls and the other delicious things that my mother cooked. Beside the dining room is the living room. You will need to know this. When I was growing up, this room was usually off limits to me. You will understand if I walk gingerly through the room. You should be careful, too; there are a lot of breakable things in our living room. Come through the double doors at the edge of the living room; here we will have to make a choice. If we go straight, we will be in my house’s den with it’s fireplace, couch, and leather chairs. On the other side of the den is the room that my parents added on once the children moved to college. Does it make sense to you for them to add on after their three children moved out? The room that they added was a sun room and now it is my favorite room in this house. If we had turned right when we came out of the living room, we would have walked down a long hallway to three bedrooms. The one on the right is the guest room. The one on the left is my parents’ room. And the one at the end of the hall is my bedroom. This is the room that I grew up in. It is the one where I did my homework and slept in at night. It is the room that I went to when I wanted to be by myself and when I was sad or mad. Now that I am married to Susie, every once and a while, I long for a room of my own. There is another room or two in our house that we have not seen. We will have to walk back down the hallway. At the intersection of the den and living rooms is a flight of stairs. The room at the top of the stairs is my brother’s room. The room at the end of the hall is the room that my sister took from me when I was not paying attention. I wanted this room, but when I looked away, she moved her things up there. She claimed that it was her right as an older sister.

Thanks for going home with me. If we had the chance and the time, I would like to tour your homes. There is something special about being home. You can be yourself at home. You can kick off your shoes at home. You can yell at the dog and kick the vacuum cleaner at home. You can be you at home and not pretend to be someone else. My mother, the now retired English teacher, tells me that it was the famous novelist from North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote these words, “You can never go home again.” But most of us try to do that. Most of us leave the homes of our youth for unknown places and trying times. After doing this for a time, we want to come back home and so we search for a way to do that. I think that you could say it is the same way in our spiritual journeys. What we try to do is to journey back home, back to the God who gave us birth, through some kind of a wilderness experience, out there to the far country and back. And while we are journeying, we go through difficult times. John Newton, the preacher and hymn writer, puts this kind of thing this way, “Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

Home. That word took up residence in my heart this week as I read our scripture lesson. Writing in his gospel, John has Jesus say these words: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” You have heard me say it and so by now you know that the words found in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of John’s gospel can be described as farewell words of Jesus to his disciples. Jerusalem is before him, but before he goes there, there are some things that Jesus wants his disciples to know. Last week his message to them was to continue his legacy by loving people. This week the lesson for the disciples is different. This week Jesus wants his disciples to know that they will never be. The Holy Spirit, says Jesus, will be with them and will remind them of the things that Jesus taught them.

In seminary, one of the assignments that you have to complete is a thirty page paper about what you believe. The name for the paper is a credo. In it, you have to cover all of the bases. You have to state what you believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and many other important topics. I heard about the student who wrote his paper in the days of typewriters, back before computers. One of the things that he said in his paper was this: “God has taken our guilt away.” Instead of typing a “g” in guilt, he typed a “p” and so it read: “God has taken our quilt away.” His professor noticed the line. He knew it was a typographical error, but still he wrote this in the margin: “Yes, but do not worry; he has sent us a comforter.”

What Jesus is saying here, friends, is that when he leaves, the disciples will not be alone. He will return, or his spirit will return and will be mysteriously with them. Jesus says that his presence will be like a counselor or a comforter. You know the sequence of the last days of Jesus’ life and the first few days of his resurrected life. He went to Jerusalem, was arrested and then crucified. He rose on the third day and for forty days after that, he walked the streets of Jerusalem and made appearances to the disciples. When those forty days were over, he ascended to be with God. But before he left, Jesus told his disciples that he would return. So they began to look for his second coming. They looked for it with great anticipation and with hope. When will it be? When will he return? That was their big question.

Since then, two answers have been given to the question. The more popular one is the high dollar word, apocalypse. The Bible is full of apocalyptic literature, whose idea is that some day, at the end of history, there will be a great war between good and evil. We are finishing up this year’s Disciple class. This year we have been studying wisdom literature, the gospel of John, and the Revelation to John. Most of the class is ready to get through Revelation and to be done with it. My experience with this book is that people either love it or are scared to death of it. It is full of images of seven headed beasts and serpents. Near the end of it, God pulls back the curtain and allows John to see the new Jerusalem, a place where death and pain and crying are no more. My guess is that we do not like apocalyptic literature because we do not understand it. It is written for people who are oppressed and persecuted. It is written to those who have abandoned hope and who are now waiting for God to intervene. The church tried to say that when the end comes, Jesus will play the part of the hero. When he comes, said the early church, he will reign forever. The problem is that it did not happen. They waited for it, they prayed for it, but it did not happen. They prayed, “Come quickly, Lord.” But He did not come quickly as a warrior of a cloud or any other way.

That is the first answer given to the question: “When will he return?” The second answer is less dramatic. Instead of the battle, John gives us the comforter. Listen again to what he has Jesus saying, “I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another comforter, to be with you.” You need to remember this. John’s gospel was the last written, around 100 A.D. What that means is that the gospel was written to a people who had been waiting over seventy years for Jesus to return. It was becoming clear that Jesus was not coming back, at least not anytime soon. What these Christians were realizing is that they had to now cope day by day with all of the dangers and difficulties of life. How does Jesus put this, “Do not let your hearts be troubled? Do not let them be afraid?” How can our hearts not be troubled in the world we live in? How can they not be afraid? That is my question. In John’s day, it was no longer appropriate to say, “Hang on. Jesus is coming.” He was not coming, at least not for a while, it seemed. Jesus told his disciples and us, that the hour of the return could not be known, that it was only something that God knows. Then John remembered some of the other things that Jesus said. He said that He would send someone to be with us forever. Maybe it would be like the ending of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew’s last words have Jesus giving the charge to preach, teach, baptize, and then the promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Perhaps it was like what happened near the end of Luke’s gospel. In the middle of the twenty-fourth chapter, Luke tells about two despondent followers of Jesus who trek from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They have lost their spirit when a stranger appears to them. He stops and eats with them, and when the bread is broken, they exclaim, “It is the Lord. He is with us!”

He will come to you. He will not leave you desolate. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. So the Christians began to think, “Maybe we are not supposed to wait for someone to come and rescue us. Maybe we are supposed to keep on going. And maybe, when we do, we will discover that there is someone who walks with us and lives inside of us, not to rescue us, but to guide us. Not to save us, but to strengthen us and to give us peace.” Notice how it will happen. “The world will not see him” John writes. That means that there will not be fireworks or trumpets. It is not going to happen that way. It is going to happen quietly. He dwells inside of us; he will be with us. The testimony of Christians for two thousand years is that Jesus is with us.

Robert Drake is a Tennessean who writes stories about growing up there a generation ago. He told a story about Miss Carolyn Walker, who was a music teacher. She had been doing it for as long as anyone could remember, and so she was something of a legend. She had two goals in teaching. One was to teach her girls to be ladies. The other was to teach them to play the piano. She taught them to play one piece perfectly for the May recital. She rehearsed them and drilled them all year long to play that one piece perfectly. The night of the recital came. Ten pupils of Miss Caroline’s were there waiting for their turn. Ann Louise’s turn came. She was terrified. She thought that she was going to faint. She knew she would never make it, but it was her turn, so she moved forward to the wings where Miss Caroline was waiting for her. Miss Caroline could see how nervous Ann Louise was. Her body was stiff and rigid. Miss Caroline put her hand on Ann Louise’s shoulders, bent down, and whispered into her ear, “You have worked hard. You know this piece. You have nothing to fear. And remember, I am counting with you all the way.” With a gentle shove, she pushed Ann Louise onto the stage, where, all of a sudden, she was facing the crowd of everyone’s relatives, including her own. She sat on the piano bench and she noticed that she was calmer than she thought she would be. She noticed that Miss Caroline was still there in the wings. She remembered the last words that she said to her: “I am counting with you all the way.” Miss Caroline did not say, “I am counting on you.” She said, “I am counting with you.” Drake wrote this, “She felt that they were held together by something beyond either of them alone. Teacher and disciple were as one. She realized that it was this that she had been preparing for all year long, this test. And the music, at her command, came cascading out of the baby grand into the darkened auditorium full of joy and full of life, right on cue. I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. So let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Go home with this question on your hearts, “What would life really be like if I believed that God has taken us residence in our hearts. Let us pray.