Sixth Sunday in Easter, Year C, May 26, 2019.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of Homecoming, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

More visions this week in our scripture readings: today a vision of Paul, another vision of John of Patmos, and more of the vision of John the Evangelist. What strikes me about the three visions last week and this week is that they are visions of home. They’ve reminded me that I really miss the occupation description “homemaker.” I’m sorry that it has become a bad word for progressives and I want to take it back. I also miss the name home economics as a course of study. The root meaning of the word economy is household. A household or home, in this sense, is a place where the residents (who are not necessarily related) share their meals and rest together. There is an economy.

Emmanuel Church, working collaboratively with St. Bartholomew’s Church, Cambridge, the Episcopal-Lutheran Chaplaincy at MIT, and The (Cathedral) Crossing, has fostered two mixed-income, intergenerational groups that create home for people who want to live out their baptismal promises in intentional households, striving to each contribute according to ability, and each receive according to their need. Our Creche House has five members, and our Emmanuel House has five, soon to be six. We have four more potential households in various stages of gestation, at the moment. It’s one of the most exciting and innovative forms of mission that I’ve ever been a part of, although exciting and innovative have always been Emmanuel Church’s middle names when it comes to mission collaborations. Some of the scriptural inspiration for this work, for me, comes directly from our scripture lessons for today.

During the middle of the first century of the common era, the Apostle Paul had a vision that he should head for Europe to help the people in Macedonia. According to Paul’s dream, they needed some good news. Remember, according to the Bible, “good news” means that there is a way of life in which hungry people will get enough to eat, suffering people will be healed, imprisoned people will experience freedom, homeless people will find shelter, and love is stronger than death. Paul traveled to Philippi, along with Silas, and the narrator of The Acts of the Apostles, traditionally called Luke. On the Sabbath day they went down to the river to pray, supposing there would be a gathering of worshipers there. They sat down and spoke to the women who had assembled together.

Lydia was there. She was a worshiper of God, which is a description that means that she was neither Jew nor Pagan, but somewhere in between on her spiritual journey. [1] She was a businesswoman, a dealer of purple goods. This means, not just any kind of businesswoman, but a wealthy, powerful businesswoman, because purple was expensive. Purple dye was a highly prized luxury, worth its weight in gold and silver. Purple dye came from snails – about 8,000 of them to get one gram of dye. Purple was the color of power, the color of clothing for imperial authority and other nobility. Purple clothing got brighter and deeper with wear. So if Lydia was a dealer of purple goods, Lydia had considerable resources and, according to Acts, she was moved by the good news about what kind of fullness of life is possible when resources are shared. 

Lydia’s heart was opened. She was so moved that she wanted to be baptized and she had her whole household baptized. She is not mentioned as the wife or daughter of anyone. Lydia was the head of household. With words of deep humility, Lydia persuaded Paul and his companions to stay at her home. Soon after that Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for freeing a slave-girl and thus disturbing the economy of the city. They were charged with being Jewish and not complying with Roman laws. When an earthquake allowed them to escape prison, they headed right back to Lydia’s household. It was through her household that Lydia helped build the congregation of Jesus followers in Philippi. In her book, The Friendship of Women, Joan Chittister notes that the first Jesus-following congregation in Europe was an assembly of women. [2] Lydia, their leader, was moved by the teachings of Jesus, delivered by Paul, to redistribute her wealth. Paul’s vision and teaching, and Lydia’s actions and leadership made a household, and then a collection of households, where each gave according to their ability and each received according to their needs.

The vision that John of Patmos had of the City of God, is a vision of a whole society of households healed – no dangerous darkness, no security gates, no filth, nothing accursed, no suffering. The gates to this home town are wide open – they will never be shut by day and there will be no night, and people bring into the City of God the glory (meaning the appearance) and the honor of all the nations (not just one nation, or a few nations, but all the nations). This is a very large vision of well-being of the highest order – of shalom: the peace that comes from widespread justice, truth, and mercy.

In the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, the disciples have been asking Jesus a lot of questions in response to his seemingly endless farewell instructions to them that they are to demonstrate their love for one another in direct service. “ Lord, show us God,” they say, “how can we know God?” Just before our Gospel passage appointed for today, Judas (not Iscariot) asks Jesus, “Lord, what has happened, then, that you are about to manifest yourself to us and not to the cosmos? [3]  Jesus answered and said to him, “If someone loves me, [they] will keep my word, and my Father will love [them], and we will come to [them] and make our home with [them].” Jesus responds to a question about the cosmos with an answer about homemaking. The most basic unit of the cosmos is the household.

Here, Jesus is saying, those who love him will live it out by loving one another – and God and Jesus will make a home with them. I’ll tell you, I didn’t grow up thinking about God or Jesus making a home with me. I thought of a church or temple as a House of God – as God’s home – but not my own home as God’s home. Even now, we say grace before meals and say our prayers – and I’ve got walls of bookshelves full of what my kids call “God books” but God’s home? The mere idea makes me want to go home right now and clean! And yet, the literal meaning of the Greek word for home is a place for “staying beside.” It actually doesn’t have as much to do with structure– the rooms, the bookshelves, the kitchen or the bathroom. (So it turns out that cleanliness is not necessarily next to godliness.) It has to do with a place for staying beside.

The keeping of Jesus’ word is not so much a prerequisite condition (you know, ‘if you really love me you will do this or that for me’). It’s not that. It’s more of a description of a condition as in a state of readiness. When (and whenever) we show our love by living in mutual, right relationship, by engaging in justice with compassion, by caring for one another, God’s home is made in us – we are at home in God wherever we are. What Jesus is trying to tell his followers is that “relationship with Jesus does not depend on physical presence, but on the presence of the love of God in the life of the community. And the love of God is present whenever those who love Jesus keep his commandments. [4]  [to serve one another, to live by the truth of love]. In the Gospel of John, in the midst of a very complex set of ideas, in a very long farewell discourse, here is the relatively simple idea of Jesus with God desiring to be homemakers in us.

Jesus’ answer to that last question is that when they serve one another, he and God make a home in them. Referring to God and himself, he says, “we will come to them and make our home with them.” I think it’s such a startling and lovely idea – there’s so much in Christian discourse about our making our home in God – sometimes it’s a house of worship that is referred to as the house of God, sometimes it’s some kind of never-never land heaven where God lives. Here Jesus is explaining that God’s home is not a building – not a house or a church or a temple — and it’s not a place on earth or a place in heaven. God’s home – Jesus’ home – is made in every community whose actions are manifest in loving service. 

The Hebrew word shalom has three primary meanings: it means goodbye; it means hello; and it means deep peace, well-being. Jesus says “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you.…I am going away and I am coming to you.” That is all shalom. This is the reassurance of the spirit of holiness whom Jesus says will teach us everything we need to know and remind us of everything he said. Jesus’ promise is that we don’t have to figure this out alone and he hasn’t already taught us everything there is to know. The spirit of Love will be our advocate – our defender – the spirit that will teach us what we need to know and remind us of the essence of what Jesus taught. The spirit of the Holy One will teach us about homemaking by nudging us, tutoring us, challenging us to remember that actions born of love, not fear, are the Divine yearning for human beings. Love, not fear, is what will allow the Holy One to make the most generous home out of our lives in community. 

I wonder, could we recommit ourselves to creating a space like that for love so that God can make a home in us? Or if we know that God has already made a home in us, I wonder if we can we add on? Can we give God some more room? Imagine God homemaking in you. The bigger the love, the more room in the home! For most of us, it’s a fixer-upper. But God can see the potential. 

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