Getting Ready for Our Eternal Home

May 14, 2017–– 5th Sunday in Easter

Acts 6:1–7 / Psalm 33 / 1 Peter 2:4–9 / John 14:1–12

Getting Ready for Our Eternal Home

Many non-Catholic Christians think that Catholics diminish the importance of the Bible. Catholics who know better can point to the prominence of Scripture readings in the Liturgy. Over the three-year cycle of the lectionary, a majority of the Bible is read aloud. Hearing the Scriptures is vitally important in Catholic life. One of my goals in a homily is to make the readings we hear more understandable, and in understanding to embrace what God is telling us.

In the second reading Peter challenges us: let yourselves be built into a spiritual house….  C.S. Lewis extends this:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of— throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but He is building up a palace.  He intends to come and live in it himself (C. S. Lewis,  Mere Christianity).

This is a wonderful personal application, but the context is not merely our personal lives. Christian Faith is far bigger than that. While our tendency is to focus on ourselves as a “house,” Jesus gives a much broader perspective: In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. Maybe it’s best to think of this as one house…. many rooms. Or, to use another image, there is one edifice with many stones.

Today’s Gospel is a favorite for funerals, and rightly so. It is a promise from Jesus that there is a place for us after this life. Jesus himself goes ahead of us, through death and resurrection, so that we can know the way. Jesus himself is the way and the truth and the life. As we follow Jesus, we will arrive at just the right place.

But to “follow Jesus” we face all kinds of obstacles. It is not surprising that Thomas asked, how can we know the way?

Many Christians assume the early Church was almost perfect. Some Protestant sects seek to be “restorationist” movements trying to recover some ideal that never actually existed. The Church has been in process since the beginning. Our Lord, the Head of the Church, has been leading his Body to “grow up” into the fulness of what it means to be the “House of God” since he gave these words to his disciples on that night before he went to the cross.

The first reading tells us there was tension between the early Jewish and non-Jewish Christians (the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews…). So even back then there were feelings that some people received special attention and treatment above others. Many of the letters (Epistles) deal with problems the early Church was having (it has been noted that if the early churches did not have those problems, the written record which became our New Testament would be much shorter!).

All of this is to say that the Church exists in a broken world and we need the spiritual healing that Jesus came to bring. Too often we assume that everything is fine except those times when something painful and disturbing comes too close to us personally. The reality is that every day there is catastrophe and pain and despair going on around us. Every day we deal with disappointment and, if we are honest, wish that others understood us better. From the little hurts to the huge pains, we need the healing that Jesus brings.

This is one reason it is important to get a vision of our calling to grow up into the beautiful house that God is making. Each one of us is meant to be a living stone; each of us is to make our own contribution to that spiritual house built on the cornerstone (who is Christ Jesus).

For that to happen, we need the Church. It was out of the early tension about the Hellenist widows that the Apostles initiated the diaconate. I am here in a line that goes back to Stephen and Philip and the others who are named. As we gather, the Church is here in all its parts to help us heal and be beautiful stones in the edifice of God’s “house”.

This brings our personal lives back into focus. We each need to be responding every day to the grace of God that is at work for our healing and ultimate salvation. We seek what Jesus promised the disciples: so that where I am you also may be.

So we open ourselves to be remade…. to be a living stone…. to be a dwelling place for God himself. This week, while you are getting dressed, look at yourself in the mirror. Look yourself in the eyes and into your soul. Then affirm your faith in Jesus and tell yourself: "the risen Son of God lives in me.... I am a living stone in God’s house!” As you do that, God will show something of himself through your life. And some day, you will be with Jesus in the Father’s house.