Home Without Walls

John 14:23-29; Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

Central Baptist Church, Lowesville, VA

13 May 2007

We set today aside to remember the joys, blessings, and meaning of motherhood. As a society we cherish our mothers. We value motherhood amid a conflicting interest to liberate women from the confines of a household. We cherish their value and contribution beyond their roles in family life. While traditional concepts of family are still in flux, our mobile families struggle to extend concepts of home and motherhood beyond the walls of a house. As families remain family beyond the limits of our walls, can we learn to avoid confining God to the time we spend inside our sanctuary walls?

In our talking about God, we do pretty well speaking of obedience. We know about divine rules and regulations, even if we disagree about what the rules are. Legalism seems deeply ingrained in our living, doing, and thinking. It is the second part of Jesus’ message here in John 14 we don’t quite grasp. Jesus speaks of obedience, but also of God making a home within our very lives. Not only are we to obey, but we are to live in direct fellowship with God.

There is more reason for Jesus speaking about God’s love and loving God than eternal redemption from hell. It has to do with the picture of fellowship and communing with God. We enjoy spending time among those we love and love us. Jesus uses the intimacy of home as a figure for our relationship with God. While we are to serve and obey, much more so are we to live as friends and family of God.

Jesus promised that, as we come under God’s love, God transforms our lives into God’s homeplace. No walls are required for this home. There are no confines of space to worry us. There is no more question of living apart from God or in isolation. Within the innermost sanctum of our lives, God comes in to make a home without walls, a place where God’s breathes freely, sharing our joys, struggles, concerns, and sorrows. Do we have the courage to make God a participant in all we do?

In Brasil and Mexico, it was very common for middle and upper class to have household help in their homes. The business of running a household consumed a lot of time and energy. There were clear roles and expectations to distinguish family from servants. Servants did not sit at the family table, often not eating until the family was finished with a meal. We were often uncomfortable with that, for we are used to people in our home entering as friends or family, sharing our meals in fellowship. For some who helped us with household chores, it was difficult to negotiate being equally servant and friend, employee and part of the family. We have the same difficulty in relating to God as both Lord and friend. Do we invite God to participate fully in our home, work, and recreation?

Following God’s call to Philippi, Paul and company entered the city, seeking the Jews’ place of gathering. Philippi apparently did not have a synagogue. Perhaps there were not enough Jewish men in the area, or they had not yet been able to construct one. As there was no synagogue, they went to the waterfront, where Jews would otherwise gather. They located the prayer group at the water’s edge. Among them was a Gentile woman, who came alongside the Jews to worship God.

It was not wholly uncommon for Gentiles to participate on the fringes of Jewish worship. Lydia, however, was not satisfied with keeping God at arm’s length. She did not want to keep God at a distance. As a way to invite God to closer participation in her life, she invited the gospel messengers to her home. She wanted them and the God they represented to participate in all her living. Do our lives express desire to share our all with Christ Jesus?

I was at the hospital yesterday to interpret for a young mother-to-be. We watched a tiny heartbeat on the screen during the sonogram. We saw tiny feet and hands appear on the screen, as well as a head, spine, and so on. The young woman who had been worried about losing her first baby was transformed into an excited girl, looking at the wonder of the life growing and developing inside her. The baby on the way has already changed her mindset on life. She is making plans to care for the new one, trying to decide how her eating and living might need to change to protect the three-inch-long baby inside her. She will prepare a new space in her home, activities, and life for this new member of the family to flourish. The joy of watching this developing life transformed not only her facial expressions, but also her plans for life. Will we likewise allow God access to the whole of our living, allowing God’s presence to interrupt and redirect our priorities?

We have inherited long-standing traditions that speak of temples and sanctuaries as appropriate places of God’s presence. We think of church buildings as God’s homes. The Tabernacle in the desert wandering was seen as just such a place where Yahweh dwelt among and interacted with the people. In Jerusalem, Solomon built a fabulous temple for Yahweh as the supreme manifestation of God’s presence among the people of Israel. On return from exile, Herod built a new temple for Yahweh on the same temple mount.

It was from the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies that God was deemed to rule and interact with the people on earth. When the Roman General Titus marched into Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to sacrifice a pig on that very place of God’s presence, the Jews considered the temple too filthy for Yahweh to remain present. They torched the temple and Jerusalem in protest of the Roman sacrifice they considered to be an abomination. The once sacred walls became to them useless piles of stones.

Jesus had looked upon the temple in a similar way. To the Samaritan woman at the well, God was more interested in the character of one’s worship than its location. To the disciples, Jesus announced that Herod’s temple would be razed but that his own body would be God’s living temple. He spoke of God making home within those who would accept God’s grace and love.

So John in Revelation describes a wholly new reality for the Jerusalem of God’s eternal presence. In John’s day, there was no longer a temple in Jerusalem, nor does John see the need for one. They new Jerusalem coming out of heaven has neither a temple, nor the need for one. It is the whole of this Jerusalem that God inhabits. God’s presence is not limited by temple or sanctuary walls, nor by curtains that would separate off a Holy of Holies. This Jerusalem John’s describes proclaims complete access to God by believers, as well as God’s full access to our living. It is the reality of being at home with God and in God, and God being at home within us.

Are we preparing to experience the fullness of God’s eternal presence as John describes this heavenly vision? We accept our mothers as mothers, regardless of the walls that may or may not surround us. We rejoice in their participation in the fullness of our living. Are we as willing to invite God to become the center of our existence, centering our lives wholly in God for eternity? Such is the invitation of love—that we might be at home with God forever.

—©2007 Christopher B. Harbin