"god's House"

Acts 7: 55-60; Ps. 31:1-5, 15-16; 1Peter 2: 2-10; John 14:1-14

Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor

April 20, 2008

             “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”

             If I’ve read this passage once, I’ve read it a hundred times—“let not your hearts be troubled.”  Along with Psalm 23, it’s among the most requested.  If families have a favorite they want read, John 14 is usually it.  “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

             It’s not by accident this passage is frequently read.  Jesus is leaving.  He’s saying goodbye to the disciples. And he’s not just leaving them; he’s about to die.

Death ranks right up there with things that make us anxious.  Death is a big deal.

“Let not your hearts be troubled.”

I was not long into ministry when I first heard about stress.  Back in those days, and this is going back twenty-five years, people we’re just beginning to talk about stress.  Today bookshelves are filled with all sorts of advice about stress. Dr. Phil and Oprah regularly dispense heaping spoonfuls of stress management advice as do magazines for women’s and men’s health.  Everybody knows about stress.  That wasn’t always the case.

Of course, stress has always been around but we didn’t talk about like we do today.  I don’t remember my parents ever talking about stress.  They talked about people being nervous.  We’re more likely to talk about anxiety, but it’s the same thing: “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

The word means “stirred up.”  John uses the same word to describe the bubbling waters of Bethzatha, a kind of hot springs, where the lame went for healing. Here, in the 14^th chapter, at the beginning of Jesus’ farewell discourse he uses the word to denote a persistent state of anxiety.

I had been a minister for, oh, I don’t know for exactly how long, maybe four or five years, when I found myself regularly “stirred up” even when I didn’t have anything to be “stirred up” about.  Had I been to a doctor, I suppose my condition might have been labeled “generalized anxiety disorder.”  But I never went to a doctor and probably should have and probably would have gotten better soon but I didn’t.  I thought I had to tough it out, so I did.

I did invite a doctor to the church. I asked him to talk about stress.  It’s funny how when you have a broken arm, you start seeing all sorts of people with broken arms.  Anyway, we had a psychologist come and he spoke about stress.

The doctor asked us to think about driving a car.  You know, you’re driving down the highway not paying a great deal of attention or maybe you are—it doesn’t matter—and a blue light comes on and you see a cop car in your rear view.  You know that feeling you get, the one that jumps up in your chest and makes your heart beat faster and gives you dry mouth—that sensation, the doctor explained, is our fight/flight response and it is triggered by a sudden influx of adrenalin. Our bodies are hardwired that way.

Long ago when we were running through the jungle and a tiger popped out of the woods, that adrenalin rush increased our chances for survival. Think of it like your body on Red Alert. You’re ready to fight or run—the fight or flight response.

Here’s the thing, all of us have this built in fight/flight response.  And it’s a good thing. It helps in emergencies like when your three year old darts into a busy street and you rush after her.  The problem is our fight/flight response can kick in and stays on even when there’s no tiger in the woods.  We can stay stirred up even when there’s nothing to be stirred up about.

Staying stirred up increases health risks and bad habits.  When people stay stirred up they sleep poorly, overeat and self-medicate with alcohol or other mind altering substances and or practices.  Not only that, when we’re stirred up continually, folks around us are generally miserable too.

That we will be anxious from time to time is not at issue. We’re hard-wired for that.  Sometimes anxiety is just what we need. At issue is getting stirred up and staying stirred up when there’s no obvious threat to our well being.

I say “obvious” because some things which stir us most aren’t obvious. They are hidden.  Obvious things like giving a sermon, having a baby, starting a new job, taking a case to trial, going to the dentist, hearing bad news, or trying to keep a four year old still during church, can be heart stirring, other “tigers” are not so obvious. They are just as real, but they’re not obvious. In fact, they may be so real, so large, so fearsome, that we bury them. We don’t want to see them. We don’t want to talk about them.  We’d just as soon they go away and never come back, but they are always there—Will I be accepted? Will I be liked?  Will I be successful? Will I do what’s right? These are some of the tigers we worry about.

Does my life add up? Do I make a difference?  What will happen to me when I get old?  Will I get sick? Will I lose my mind? Will anybody care?  And death.  Will I be ready?  Will my life have mattered?  Where will I go?  Will I have any place?  What is my place?  Do I have a place?

The tigers we worry about most deeply are hidden.  We’d just as soon not think about them.  That doesn’t make them any less real. It only makes them less obvious.

Jesus doesn’t leave us defenseless. He arms us against hidden tigers not the least of which is death, “Let not your hearts be troubled . . . I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

I grew up at 2937 Whitson Road. It’s funny, even after forty years; I still remember my old address.  My parents built that house in 1955 and we lived there for fifteen years until I was seventeen.  When we moved to the neighborhood it was a brand new subdivision.  They were still building roads in other parts which made our neighborhood perfect for playing army.  We were always playing army where they were building new roads, digging ditches and putting in storm water drains.  Dirt clods were allowed.  You could use them for grenades or bullets, but never rocks. Rocks were off limits, not that they were never used.

My parents built a ranch style house in that neighborhood along with hundreds just like it. I was second oldest in my family and shared a room with my sister.  My older sister had her own room.  I shared a room with my sister who was four years younger and then, when the baby was born and outgrew the crib in mama and daddy’s room, a room was built for me in the basement and I had my own room.  The girls were all upstairs.  I had a room to myself, which was fine by me, since I had my own exit, though in high school I was expected to use the front door for nightly inspections.

When I finished high school everything changed. Our family moved to a new town. I went off to college. And my parents built a new house. Actually the house was under construction when I went off to college and it seems like the first time I ever saw it was when I came home from college in a snow storm or that’s how I remember it.

I went to school in the mountains of North Carolina and I guess it must have been sometime in January, mid-winter anyway, when I had to take my mother’s car home. It was a ’68 GTO.  My mother called it “peppy” and it was.  Anyway, I got out of class around noon one Friday and it was already snowing—not just a little snow, not flurries, but a for real mountain snow storm. And I, being the discerning 18 year old I was, got in my mother’s ’68 GTO and headed down the mountain.

Ordinarily, the drive home on a sunny day or even an overcast or slightly rainy day was two hours.  That day it took me eight.  I mean there were cars everywhere. They were in ditches. They were stuck on hillsides.   And you couldn’t see. It was snowing so hard I could hardly see. But I kept going.  In some places I had to wait and make sure the car in front of me made it up the oncoming hill because if it ever stopped then I knew I would stop and get stuck.

By the time I got down the mountain into the rolling piedmont, it was well into late afternoon and was still snowing hard as ever but I at least was half way home.  Toward dark I finally made it to the outskirts of Winston Salem and when I got on the Interstate, the snow had let up but there was still slush everywhere. But more than anything, I was worn out.  I thought I’d never get home. And was I ever happy to see home.  I didn’t even mind that my new room was upstairs.  It was the same old bed I’d always slept in and the same chest of drawers.  The carpet was new and the paneling was new but I was home.  I was safe.

“I go to prepare a place for you.”

The Bible calls it God’s House.  Jesus prepares a place for us in his Father’s House.  I don’t know where this house is. I only know that getting there or having a place there is not something you or I or anyone else can do by them selves.  The toughest places I’ve ever been in life are like that.  What I mean, we fight and scrape to put together a life.  We work hard. We go to school, we get a job. We try to do our best. We prepare. We try to take care of ourselves and the people we love.  We are responsible. We take hold of life and shake it for all its worth.  We fret and worry and care and stew.  We do all of that and then when it comes to the really big stuff, well, responsibility is taken out of our hands.

And by big stuff, I mean first of all, whether or not we are loved.  Oh, we can’t be slick. We can be clever, charming, gracious, endearing, all of that, but when it comes right down to it, love is a gift.  True love, which is the only love worth having in the first place, is sheer gift.  And the only way to have that gift is for somebody to give it to you.  You can’t force somebody to love. Love comes only as a gift, which, when you think about it is like life itself.  We don’t ask to be born. We’re not self-made.  Life, like love, is pure gift.  Likewise, the place Jesus gives us in God’s house is pure gift.

I try to take care of my body, at least most of the time.  It’s the only one I’ve got. Yet, no matter what I do, however much I eat right and exercise, one day I will be kaput.  I hope that day comes later than sooner, but when it comes I’m not going to have any choice about it—some one or some thing is going to take me where I don’t want to go. Death, like birth, is out of our hands, which is another way of saying that the place Jesus gives us in God’s house is pure gift. We can’t do anything to create it.  Jesus must prepare that place. We can’t prepare it ourselves. We’re not up to it.  We don’t have it within our power, not even close.  “I go to prepare a place for you.”

The place Jesus prepares is sheer gift.  We can’t bargain for, buy it, trade for it, weasel, plead, borrow, or otherwise gain it.  There is only one way to our place in God’s house, which is why Jesus says, “no one comes to the Father except through me.”  We can’t get to the Father’s House on our own.  We can only go through Jesus. And thank God for that.  ‘Cause the pressure is off.  We can stop sweating it: “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

If the two biggest things that ever happen to us—our birth and our place in God’s house—are gifts of the Father’s love, then maybe, just maybe, we can know that all of the other stuff in between is gift too, which means that just as we don’t need to sweat the big stuff so we don’t need to sweat the small stuff. And if we do that we will not only love this life but we will also enjoy God a whole lot more.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Jesus prepares a place in God’s house. Like birth, our place in God’s house is sheer gift. “Let not your hearts be troubled.”  Receive the gift and live with joy.”  Amen.