Sermon for 10.05.20: Dwelling-places

By The Revd Preb. Marjorie Brown

If all goes well, this is likely to be the last time that the Sunday eucharist is celebrated from my vicarage hearth. The Bishop of London has now given permission for clergy to stream or record services from inside churches, and so from next week you will be able to join a service celebrated in St Mary’s once again. I know this is a joyful change for many people.

While we know that God is present everywhere, it seems natural to feel a special atmosphere in a place where our community has celebrated the sacraments for 150 years. The church building has been the scene of joys and sorrows, tears and laughter. In it we have welcomed new life, commended those who have died, witnessed vows of love, received the forgiveness of sins, met with the risen Christ in the eucharist, and offered countless prayers for ourselves and others.

So going back inside the building, even if only through a camera lens for now, is a significant step in our current situation. But before we take that step, I want to reflect today on a word that is significant in today’s gospel, a word that has taken on special meaning for me during the past seven weeks of worshipping in and from home. I want to celebrate one of the blessings that I will be taking out of this otherwise frustrating experience of lockdown.

That word is “dwell” or “dwelling”, deriving from the Greek verb menein. The word can be translated as stay, abide or remain. A variation of menein appears five times in John chapter 14, twice in today’s passage, and it becomes a major theme of chapter 15. First of all Jesus says to his disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places.” And in verse 10 he replies to Philip’s request to “show us the Father” by saying, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

So dwelling seems to apply both to us, who are promised a dwelling-place in the Father’s house, and also to God, who dwells in Christ. It’s a mutual indwelling. The wonderful promise in John’s gospel is that it is not only Christ where God makes a dwelling-place, but each one of us who come to know the Father through the Son. There are many dwelling-places for the Father – there is one in your home and at your hearth, as there is in mine. The glory of God doesn’t rest only in sacred buildings but in the heart of each person who comes to know and love God.

And here I need to say something about a verse in this reading that troubles many people. Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is one of those frequent I AM sayings in John’s gospel, a form of words that associates Jesus with God. I AM is the divine name. So first of all Jesus is claiming divinity for himself. But does he then say that only Christians can have eternal life?

He doesn’t say this at all. He doesn’t even say, No one comes to God except through me. What he does say is, No one comes to the FATHER except through me. It is only by knowing Jesus Christ that we share his family relationship with God the Father. It is only by praying alongside him, Our Father in heaven, that we learn to call God Abba rather than Mighty Lord and King. What Jesus offers isn’t the only way to know God, but a unique relationship, as a child with her parent.

We can learn from other faiths many truths that they have discovered in their walk with God. But Jesus gives us something special, a mutual indwelling, a share in the love between Father and Son, mediated by the Spirit. That is what we need to share when we talk about the good news of Christ.

God comes to dwell in us through the action of the Holy Spirit. We are carried into the heart of the Father’s love through our union with Jesus Christ, when we are baptized into his death and resurrection. This chapter of John and the following three are an extended teaching and prayer that Jesus leaves with his disciples, explaining how he will continue to be completely united with them in the Father’s love. Where Jesus is, there we will be, and that means resting in God, dwelling with him forever. That is where we belong. That is what we were created for.

This idea comes up in the psalms, those prayers that Jesus knew by heart and used constantly. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” are the last words of the 23rd Psalm. One of the psalms set for Compline, the office said just before bedtime, is 91, which begins: “Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” and the psalm goes on to speak words of great comfort about the protective parental love of God towards us.

So this language of dwelling with God came naturally to Jesus. The further idea that God the Father dwells or remains in Jesus and therefore in us, his sisters and brothers, is a working out of the discovery that Jesus shows us the Father. That was the truth that Philip needed to be reassured about. We don’t need to go looking for God in difficult and inaccessible places. We don’t even need to go to church to find God. The Father dwells in Christ, and we are drawn into that circle of love. Wherever we are, we are safe in our dwelling with God. 

So may I end today with inviting you to think about our dwelling-places – our actual physical homes, where we have been sheltering these past seven weeks, alone or with the members of our hearthhold. What have we learned about the Father’s love in this time of anxiety? Have we grown at all in our sense of trust? Have we relaxed into our identity as beloved children of God? Has the comfort and safety of our home given us a glimpse of what it might be like to abide under the shadow of the Almighty?

I hope that, whatever the frustrations and fears these weeks have brought, there has also been for you an experience of the peace that a beloved child knows in the arms of an unconditionally loving parent. We have had to give up our busy schedules and all our plans for the foreseeable future. There has been nothing for it but to relax into the peace of the present moment and to live life in the Now that is God’s gift to us.

When we are able to start venturing out again, when we get busy again, and when services begin to be celebrated in church again, even without a congregation, I hope that we will not forget that God dwells right here in us, in our hearts and our hearthholds. Whatever happens in a COVID epidemic or any other crisis, our true home is with Jesus forever in the heart of God.