Prior to this weeks reflection, we listened to a song by North American Singer Songwriter, Rich Mullins: from his Jesus Project, his last studio album, released posthumously on July 21, 1998, ten months after his death in a car accident.  the song we listened to was recorded on September 10, 1997, nine days before his death.

Rich Mullins was a singer song writer who had the gospel in his heart: he was one of those people who was like John the Baptist: central to the story but fringe to the religion.  Gifted with music and a storytelling heart, he lived his faith as so many other prophets of the faith: rejecting the trappings of comfort and living without a place to call his own.  Nine days before Rich Mullins was killed in a car accident, he had been working on his next project in an abandoned Church. A cassette tape recording of his ‘10 songs about Jesus’ was found: and this song is one of them.  Even all these years later, I still get caught in my throat at speaking about his untimely and tragic death.  His faith and artistry have travelled with me: and so many of his songs have ‘saved’ my life in my university years.  I miss him, and I never met him.

Rich Mullins’ work is legacy of a man convicted by Christ: who used his gifts to share the Good News: even if he wasn’t gifted with a particularly large vocal range or sweet tone.  He sang flat and rough: and he sang the melodies he could hear ringing his mind: and he always sang full of heart.

The words of the song, are words attributed to Jesus from John’s Gospel; and they are imaginative and comforting.  We hear this reading so often at Christian Funerals, because the picture painted is so helpful.  The modern translations describing an after life as ‘dwelling places’ is both corrective and enabling.  As a child I listened to “My Father’s house having many rooms”: but now we hear “My Father’s house has many dwelling places” – a more helpful translation: and takes our imaginations out of nicely folded down sheets, mini-soaps and chocolates on the pillow! 

Very carefully the Uniting Church funeral liturgy describes our impending deaths in the profound mystery it remains: and helpfully clarifies for us, that “death marks a new beginning in our relationship with God.”

But what is this reading doing for us in this Easter season?  What is it doing for us in these Easter weeks, as we continue to understand the Resurrection of Jesus?  Is this a reading about a so-called ‘heaven’?  And if so, why is is here in the post resurrection readings? Bible nerds, like myself, want ponder the original Greek verbs & nouns: and hope we can gain better insight, so we’re going to jump into ‘many rooms’, ‘dwelling places’, ‘staying’, ‘remaining’, ‘abiding’.  Are you ready to indulge in Bible Nerd things?

The Greek verb pointing to these ‘dwelling places’ is meno: and it is a key word in all of John’s gospel, appearing 69 times out of 120 total in the New Testament. (there’s a fun fact!)  The noun form of the word is mone, and it occurs only twice in the NT;  here in our reading, John 14:2, “In my Fathers house there are many dwelling places” and also at John 14: 23.  And this verb/noun word has special meaning in the Gospel of John, because it is describing a particular relationship of us to Jesus & God. (There’s the answer as to why the lectionary includes it in the easter readings)

The straight-forward meaning of meno: means to “stay,” “remain,” “abide,” “dwell”.   In John’s gospel, the whole book is loaded with “abiding”.  It starts in Chapter 1 where the first words spoken to Jesus from two disciples asking, “Where are you staying?” (Jn 1:38) and Jesus’ reply, “Come and see!”  The author will develop the theme in today’s reading and the chapter after it, where metaphor of the Vine and Branches (Ch 15) where this indwelling word is used 10 times in the span of 7 verses.  And in the long, and many farewell discourses that are a feature of John’s gospel that intimate relationship Jesus speaks of with God, is emphasised an intimate indwelling: and Jesus invites his followers into the same intimacy: to abide in him and he in us.

“Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home (monē) with them” (14:23).  God, Christ, Spirit, making HOME, making DWELLING place with us: you, me: individually and communally.

Jesus is may be talking about going to prepare places for us in heaven: but more accurately, Jesus is moving us.  Heaven is not his Father’s house. Jesus shifts the location of his Father’s house from the Temple to the Body of Christ — Jesus first, and then we disciples to follow. The ‘many dwelling’ places in God’s house are us. The image of us and God as Vine and Branches in the next chapter brings it into focus. Jesus abides in the God and the God in him. Jesus abides in us, and we in him. It’s this abiding in “life in God’s new age”, which is the here and now.  Abiding is now.  This is life eternal.

Now you know by now that I can be a little sentimental.  You saw how the emotion grabbed me when I talk of my ‘friend’ Rich Mullins.  And I don’t want to pull down or discard aspects of our tradition that have been helpful.  And I’m not doing that with this reflection.  Rather, I’m deepening the reading’s possibilities for us.  Because the death of a child, partner, lover or friend is an impossible place.  Some of you know worse versions of it than I do.  Any deaths described as marking a new beginning in our relationship with God is helpful: the idea and imagining of ‘Many Dwelling places” is helpful and comforting… those things help us in the devastation, sadness and loss.  After all, Jesus’ wept as we do at the loss of his friend Lazarus.  But the emptiness, the sadness, the grief: and these comforting things only go so far…  This reading offers us more: more than imagining a place, or location or a platitude: it takes us the to heart of Jesus’ experience.  Indwelling.  Intimacy with God.  

Sally Douglas, in her book “Jesus Sophia: Returning to Woman Wisdom in the Bible, Practice and Prayer” – the book we studied over Lent, confronts us chapter by chapter with this intimacy, which is unique to Christian understanding of the Divine.  And the book, in some ways, culminates with Chapter Four: “Breastfeeding from Christ”, which is today’s reading from 1 Peter 2.  Now, I can’t unpack it all now: but the invocation “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” is an intimate call to relationship with Jesus.  Feeding upon him.  Being nourished, comforted, sustained. protected.

When Rich Mullins wanted to dwell together with his God, he found an abandoned church (a place where mission had ended); and with his guitar, a mirco-cassette recorder, a bible, pen and book, he sang to himself, he sang to his Jesus; and we are blessed to be the ones who overhear that Dwelling Place, roughly recorded, that calls us beyond first readings of ancient texts: that calls is deeply into relationship with Jesus.  

Will you this week, do likewise?  Make space to dwell?  Make space to be nourished?  Make space to be sustained?  Make space for the sweaty, salty, light filled One who dwells and dining tables, by the lilies of the fields, in lonely places, and walking the road with us: will you make that space you; for others; for all you do and are and are being?