Our Many Rooms – Fifth Sunday of Easter

Super Moon at QHP

Exegesis – might sound like an illness worse than coronavirus! – is the careful study of a text in context.  The Holy Writ comes from another time, another place, another world.  It has a Voice all its own.  Sometimes the ragings of a cagey prophet, sometimes the whispers of a lover, buds opening in bloom, the embracing eyes of a knowing friend and it always has something to say – often what we don’t expect.  It’s tempting to echo the familiar voices in our head.  For me, study helps me hear the Voice.  To sit in informed silence, and commune with the ‘still small Voice.’

Exegesis of this Fifth Sunday of Easter can make a difference:  John 14:1-12 proclaims ‘God’s house has many rooms.’ It’s an image of a palatial estate manor in which hundreds of people, families and slaves, often quite racially mixed, lived and worked together:  a sizable, diverse community.  Each person had a place, a role, a purpose, in serving the Master.  The household had to get along, work together, for the welfare of everyone.  Life in the mansion was, in fact, far superior to common peasantry – even for the slaves.  They worked less, ate better, had bigger families….  A beautiful image!

 But then there’s that jarring verse:  I am the only way to God, without Jesus you go to hell! Well, that’s not exactly what it says, but that’s the echo we hear, or to mix metaphors, it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.  John is a subtle writer.  It’s not so much that Jesus is saying “I am the only way to God;” rather, “all the various and diverse ways in which God comes to you are all through me.” 

 God comes to us; to us in flesh, in new birth from above, to live an abundant life.  It’s really not our job to figure out the one and only path to heaven but to open ourself to how God is coming to us.

In daily life, Jesus showed his followers how God comes in more ways than they could imagine:  the Word made flesh, a wedding, re-Birth, a woman drawing water, a blind man seeing, shepherds and sheep….  I think that’s why Jesus got so frustrated with Thomas, and Philip, and especially Peter!  They wanted a theology that neatly defined who’s in and who’s out, what’s in and what’s out…boundaries and rules – echoes.

 Of course, living in an opulent aristocrat’s house had rules and boundaries.  However, one’s personal standing before the Master was always more important.  Life in the Mansion was always personal, relational – always about the Master.

 That’s probably enough exegesis for one day.  This reading is an invitation to see God’s many servants, to observe the Way God comes to each individual, observe how God leads each person in a unique Path, and humble oneself to the Truth of diverse perspectives.  
~~ Prepared by Tim, QHP Core Community ~~