Jesus on the Sofa--November 14, 2019

Jesus on the Sofa--November 14, 2019

[Jesus said:] "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." [John 14:23]

Jesus makes a surprising promise we don't often think about: he says he's coming to crash on our couches and sleep on our sofas.  

That sounds a little bit backwards--and maybe a little undignified--for the eternal Son of God, doesn't it?  We are used to hearing the promise of Christianity phrased in the other direction, aren't we?  You know, the bit about us going to be where Jesus is?  The promise of a heavenly dwelling, because "in my Father's house are many mansions" and all that?  Isn't that in the Bible, too?

Well, yes, of course.  In fact, it's just a few short paragraphs before this sentence on Jesus' lips about him coming over to dwell where we are.  And while some translations may go for the more accurate (but less-glamorous-sounding) "many dwelling places" or "many rooms" instead of "mansions," either way, we are probably pretty used to the idea of "going to heaven" in order to be with God, not that God would come and stay with us.  And yet, here it is, right out of Jesus' mouth: he's coming to stay at your place... and he's bringing his Dad, too.

So much of the way Christianity has been packaged and marketed (I'm sorry to use those words, but that's how we've treated it) is to sell the gospel as a "ticket to heaven," as though the primary promise of Jesus is that after we die he will take us Somewhere Else to be with God.  But Jesus himself in John's Gospel doesn't seem satisfied with only a post-mortem relocation project for us.  He is insistent that even here and now, he is here among us, and that both he and the Father are making their home where we are.  Yeah--right in the messy kitchens, cluttered floors, disheveled bedrooms, and blanket-strewn sofas of your house and mine.  And God doesn't seem to blush at the idea of crashing at your place or mine.  Jesus seems to think this is the most natural thing in the world to expect from a God who loves us with reckless abandon.

To be honest, I think a lot of folks who seem uninterested in Christianity have been soured on the Gospel because somewhere along the way, someone framed it for them only in terms of what happens after death.  I remember years ago, there was a billboard on the road I took to our church body's synod office, proudly declaring that "Jesus is your ticket to heaven" and that you didn't want to die without him, or else you wouldn't get into the club.  And again, while it's true that Jesus does promise his followers that we'll be welcome to move into his "Father's house" where there are many rooms, Jesus has also been clear that he has more in mind than just waiting for us to die so he can scoop us up.  

I think we are so used to the idea that the gospel is only about us going "up to heaven" because we imagine that God is too holy to reside among us here in the nastiness, sinfulness, and crookedness of where we live.  We assume God can't--or won't--come and crash on our sofas because it is not a respectable place for a deity to be. We figure that God should be, you know, somewhere full of golden light and angelic choirs, rather than the dismal greys of our November skies and the loud sound of talking heads on TV shouting at each other in shirts and ties.  

Or maybe we squirm over the idea of Jesus crashing at our place because it seems to make him so... helpless... so needy.  And we don't like the idea of a God who chooses to come as the vulnerable one seeking shelter, or the one asking for a room for the night.  We have a hard time admitting that God often chooses to appear as the one at the door dependent, as the old movie line goes, "on the kindness of strangers."  But that is exactly how Jesus talks here, isn't it?  God isn't just the dignified host, opening the doors of heaven to us... but God is the guest who shows up at your door asking to sleep on the couch.  God is the friend who comes over to stay with you in order to be with you for whatever challenge you are dealing with.  God is the one who comes over to your house in order to drive you to the hospital for your surgery, or who sits at your side to wait with you for the terrible phone call you are expecting.  

We have a way of picturing God as the gatekeeper, stopping us at some heavenly checkpoint to see if we have merited a spot inside the Heavenly Country by carrying our Jesus paperwork.  But here Jesus turns it all around and says that he and the Father are crashing at your place tonight.  

What will that do to your way of seeing the world today? What will that do to the way you see your life, your house, and the path you take today?  These are the places where God chooses to be found.  Jesus says he's coming to make his home with you today, to face the struggles of this life with you and me here and now. 

We better get our futons ready, I guess.

Lord Jesus, come and dwell with us.  Make your home among us, and make us no longer afraid to let you into this mess of our daily lives.