Easter 6C, 22 May 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 16:9-15.  Come and stay at my home.
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God.
John 14:23-29. We will come to them and make our home with them.

O God of love, 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.

Most times, when I begin to write a sermon for a Sunday morning at Emmanuel, I look at the liturgical calendar and the parish calendar and I think, “well we have a lot going on!” And today is no different. On the 6th Sunday of Eastertide, we’re at the last Sunday of our glorious cantata season, we have a brilliant new motet written by Omar Najmi, we are nearing the end of the Bach Institute May Intensive course, and celebrating the baptism of Michael Paul Weis, III! Our texts are from Acts of the Apostles, The Revelation to John, The Gospel of John, with additional words of Walt Whitman and BWV 37, which is a reflection on Mark 16:16.

We hear about 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, all are visions of home. They remind me of how I 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 literal sense, is a place where the residents (who are not necessarily related) share their meals and rest together.

I particularly want to say some words to you about the Gospel lesson because its patriarchal language for the Holy One is a stumbling block for me and I know for many of you. I’m also irritated at the edge that this reading has that I think has to do with the competitive rhetoric the early church adopted when it felt threatened from inside and outside their growing communities. Even the earliest gatherings of Jesus followers couldn’t seem to take in Jesus’ peace. They couldn’t or didn’t hear Jesus’ words about not being troubled or afraid. I get that when I’m stumbling and irritated, it’s hard for me to notice the part where Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you.” That’s a sign for me of how troubled I am about the rhetoric and practices of exclusivity in the Church and how much harm they do. It’s especially terrible when it comes to the withholding of the sacraments. It’s hard to hear the promise of peace; or the reassurance of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Defender, who Jesus says will teach us everything we need to know and remind us of everything he said.

Just before this passage, another Judas (not Iscariot) asks Jesus how is it that he will be revealed to his followers, but not to the world. This is Jesus’ response: “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.” Episcopalians don’t think often about God or Jesus making a home with us. It occurs to us to think of church or temple as a House of God – as God’s home – but not to think of our homes as God’s home. I mean, at our house, we say grace before meals and say our prayers – and I’ve got walls of bookshelves full of what my family calls “God books” but God’s home? The mere idea makes me want to get back there right now and clean!

Jesus’ answer to the question of how he will be revealed to them and not to the world, is that when they love one another, he and God make a home in them. 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 in a place dedicated for worship, 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 everyone whose actions are loving.

Jesus is saying, those who love him will live it out by loving one another – following the example he gave of washing one another’s dirty feet — and God and Jesus will stay beside them. That’s a literal translation of home: a place for staying beside. It actually doesn’t have as much to do with a house – 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. And it’s not so much conditional as in prerequisite (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 and serving 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, as New Testament commentator Gail O’Day writes, “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.” [1] And his commandments are all about demonstrating love for one another.

American author Dwight Young says this about home: “home is … an emotion, a deep-rooted sense of welcome and permanence and belonging. It’s the safe, intensely personal realm where you can permit yourself to throw off everything that isn’t fundamentally, essentially you. It’s a complex, messy stew of throat-catching slants of light, kitchen smells, and déjà vu. If you’re lucky and the place has been around for a while, it can connect you – with people you never knew. Some people have a home from childhood; others spend a lifetime looking for it. Once you recognize it, you’re bound to it forever – even if it sits in an extreme locale. Even if it disappears.” 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? 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.

I did a dive into the Mark 16:16 text for my conversation about translation with Pamela Dellal last week for the Bach Institute, Pamela’s translation of Bach’s German text (from Martin Luther’s translation of the passage) is: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be blessed.” That is what Bach’s scripture text says. But translation is always simplification, and belief and baptism mean so much more than what we think they mean in the 21st century, and even so much more than they seem to have meant for Luther. Without getting completely into the weeds, I think it’s important to know that Luther chose to emphasize “believing” over trusting. The word that gets translated “believe” does not mean thinking something to be true. It means giving one’s heart over in trust. Luther also chose a particular word for a Christian ceremony of baptism rather than a more literal translation for immersed or sunk. To baptize in Jesus’ time was literally to dunk in water, and figuratively, to immerse in a spirit of repentance. Over the centuries, baptism has become a ceremony of initiation into the Christian family, with particular and differing practices and expectations for eligibility, and it has also become a badge of belonging or a ticket to heaven, lorded over those who have not participated in the ceremony by chance or by choice. That seems like an utter corruption of the original intention of being immersed in repentance which is all about continually rearranging one’s mind, heart, and body, one’s thinking, feeling, and being to forsake whatever turns us from love of God and neighbor. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuva, is from the root word for return. Repentance is turning around toward God, toward home. So when we participate in the ritual today, baptizing Michael, and renew vows we are being called to turn again and again toward a vision of home with the Holy One. What does an infant know about the need for repentance? Nothing yet. His parents and godparents are promising to teach him when he needs to know.

Jesus’ promise is that we don’t have to figure this out alone and we don’t already know everything there is to know. The spirit of God 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 nudge us, tutor us, challenge us to remember that actions born of love, not fear, are what God wants for God’s people. Love, not fear, is what will allow God to make the most generous home out of our lives. Let’s encourage one another to love. So welcome, Michael, into this household, this home that you will help us make.