It was a crisp and a cold and a sunny day in the middle of a Pretoria winter. It was the beginning of June, and in the southern hemisphere the beginning of winter and many of us were not prepared for the chill of the day. On the High Veldt temperatures could drop very quickly, and that morning it was cold. Along with many thousands of others, I was there for a Christian conference, where Christians from all over southern Africa gather. We were going to be treated to a real feast by the local congregations in the city, who had gone out of their way to get buses to bring us from where we were at the conference center to their respective congregations. As we waited for our bus to arrive – there were twenty of us in my group – we had no idea where we were going to end up. Maybe it would be one of the grand cathedrals of Pretoria, maybe it would be one of the great kirks, who knew?!
We got on the bus and began what seemed like an interminable drive through the center of the city, out through the suburbs, and beyond. As we approached our destination, a sign said, “Alexandria – 3 kms.” Alexandria was the largest of the squatter camps and migrant labour areas on the outskirts of Pretoria. There was a haze in the air as we approached it, travelling down the dirt roads and past houses that had corrugated steel roofs and tar paper on the side and wooden posts holding up most of the buildings. People were cooking their breakfast in great big tins outside on the streets, causing the air to fill with smoke. We kept driving, and finally we came to a church, a magnificent white building, a Nederland Gereformeerde Kerk, Reformed Church, that stood out against the darkness of the shacks around it. We went in, and were greeted by hundreds of people, with children lining one side of it to the other. It was plain, but it was beautiful!
The preacher got up to preach from the text that was before him. I have never forgotten it: “In my vadershuis is daar Baie kamers” (“In my Father’s house there are many mansions”). I looked around, and wondered if anyone else was struck by the pathos of it all. We got back into the bus after a marvellous sermon about the Resurrection of Jesus and the life to come, paved by Jesus himself. As we drove back out through the streets, the air had started to clear, and you could see the houses and realize there was maybe one room, or at most two, for an entire family. I started to feel strange. I thought of the message that had been preached – “In my Father’s house are many mansions” – and all those people who had espoused the teachings of Karl Marx when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” There was something so profoundly striking about the comparison between the notion of a mansion and what we was driving through.
We returned to the Christian conference and I wasn’t alone in my thoughts. Virtually all twenty of us read the passage from John 14 again. We were confused, but as we delved into it more, it became clear that there wasn’t an anomaly between what was preached that day in that church and what was going on. On the contrary, there was something profound. This was part of Jesus’ final discourse with his disciples. John 14 and all the verses around it preceded the events of the Crucifixion and the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. Jesus, in an intimate and a personal moment, was sitting his disciples down and he understood what was in their hearts. He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” In other words he was saying, “In the days ahead, there are many things that you are going to witness, including my own suffering, and you are going to be terrified because I am leaving you.”
Jesus knew that he was speaking to them in a moment of great confusion and anxiety, yet he offers them hope. “Do not be terrified. Believe in God; believe also in me.” Then he goes on to show the relationship that exists between him and the Father. It is the language of abiding. Earlier on in John’s Gospel, he talks about the disciples abiding in him, as he abides with the Father. That is why I like the way that our translation today put it: it is an abiding place. The word “mansions” is taken from a Greek word monai, and monai means, a big house. But, it is only in The King James Version that it is translated as a “mansion” for that was the language of the time, but really it means an abiding place, a place where you live. “In my Father’s house there are many places where you can live and where you can abide.” When I grasped that, and really looked at the original language of the text, I also realized that Jesus was talking in the context of the Jewish tradition that those disciples would have understood.
You see, 180 years before the birth of Jesus, there had been an event known as the Maccabean Revolt. This was when Jewish leaders stood up and many of them were murdered. It was a revolt that was ultimately put down. Since that time, Jews have been asking themselves, “What ultimately happens to those who die for a righteous cause? Is it simply a grave waiting for them, or is there something more?” Similarly, there were scholars and rabbis who speculated that maybe the eternal life was one of stages that one goes through, that it is a dynamic thing, and in that process, after you die, you get closer to God. Some were even speculating that it was an open door, particularly for those for whom life had been a closed door. So, when Jesus started talking about abiding places, and mansions, he is speaking a language they understand. There was even a book called, The Secrets of Enoch, which suggested that the righteous lived in mansions in the heavens, hence the language that was being used at the time of Jesus. Jesus is reflecting back to the disciples many of the deep discussions that were going on within Judaism at the time, but he personalizes it.
It is not for Jesus a speculation of what the home is like or what the abiding place is like; Jesus tells us something profound. It is told in the context of their fears. Basically, he was saying, “You don’t have to fear in this life” and fear was a characteristic of the disciples. He even goes on to say, “As a result of all of this, you will do greater things than I. You will grow as a result of my suffering, death and Resurrection.” It is a promise that there is no need for them to fear – “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
There is a very famous story about the explorer Mallory, who in the 1920s tried to “conquer Everest” as was the language used at the time. On the first occasion, Mallory and his team failed. On the second, they tried and failed. And on the third, there was an avalanche and Mallory and many of the other climbers were killed. When the survivors returned to the United Kingdom there was an event to celebrate their attempts in London. There, on the wall, was a massive picture of Everest just sticking up beyond the clouds and a picture of Mallory and those that had climbed with him who had not made it back. One of the people who had made it got up and gave a famous speech. He addressed the painting of Mount Everest, and said, “Mount Everest, you have conquered us once. You have conquered us twice. You have conquered us three times. But Everest, I am going to tell you this: we will eventually defeat you, because you will never be able to get bigger than you are, but we can.” In the face of the seemingly insurmountable problems that the disciples faced, especially at the foot of the Cross, it must have felt like Everest had won, that death had won, that Jesus had lost, but that wasn’t the case. They had been told to have courage, and have courage they should. It also gave them great significance. The disciples are people who we now remember three thousand years later. It was their witness that points to the life of Jesus. Without their witness, we have no record of Christ’s life that is meaningful. Their significance is rooted in that speech when Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
We have often believed that it is sometimes those who are the most comfortable in life that look down with disdain on the simple faith of those who believe there is a life to come, for it seems that there is no value in the life to come when the life that is here treats you so well. But it is not just a salve for those who are hurting. It is not just a gift for those who are broken. That is unfair! The reality is that life itself can be very unjust, and there are people who feel that the afterlife is going to be a reflection of the life here now. I don’t know if any of you have been watching, as I have, the television program Wolf Hall on PBS, and the story of Thomas Cromwell. It is a chilling series about Cromwell’s influence on Henry VIII. There is a moment in one of the episodes where Anne Boleyn is singled out and a charge laid against her, and she is beheaded. It is brutal! I couldn’t help but think how even in the highest places life is sometimes treated with little or no significance.
The life to come, what is it in the light of this? Well, Jesus makes the case that there is to be no fear in death either. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” There is a sense in which the life that we live here, as Philip Yancey said, is limited by time and space. It is limited by how long we live, and where we live. The rooms that we are given in this life can be rooms that are incredibly small, or abiding places that can be numerous and large, but what I love, as Philip Yancey says about Jesus and in his words to the disciples is that the limitations of time and space are gone: “In my Father’s house are many room.” There is openness and expansiveness of time and of space. This is about a welcome. This is about an opening of the doors to something great and marvellous. So many of the things that get us down in this life do so because of human behavior, our injustices, our biases, our hatreds, and our inequality, and all those things that so often constitute how we limit the time and space of other people. Not so in God’s abiding place! Oh, no! Not where God lives! There is no limit to time; no limit to space. It is where God is!
One of the greatest poems that I have ever read, and I was reminded of it at a lunch that I had with somebody last week who was planning a funeral for a loved one, and she said to me, “Do you think, Dr. Stirling, you could read John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud? I hadn’t read it for years. In 1633 John Donne had a terrible illness, and this great Anglican writer wrote these few words in a sonnet. It is magnificent!
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than they stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
The abiding place of Jesus is a place where death reigns no more. Whatever privileges or graces we are given in this life, whatever honours are bestowed, whatever beauty our eyes can see, whatever music our lips can make, they find no comparison to the open house of the Lord, Our God.
I know there are some who look at this text and think, “But Jesus being the way? Doesn’t it sound so exclusive?” I am not sure Jesus was really thinking along those terms at all when he was crucified between two thieves. Do you? I don’t think when he laid down his life for his friends he was thinking about himself. Do you? I don’t think the disciples, when they followed him, in some cases to a similar fate, they were thinking about that. Do you? In fact, I love an African story that sums up Jesus being the way like none have ever heard. Bob VanRynaveld a friend of mine, with a group of friends travelled to the very famous Kalahari Desert, which has some the greatest sand dunes in Africa. They are orange in colour. They went with a guide one day and stood at the side of these dunes, which all looked alike. They had absolutely no idea how to get through this incredible desert. They said to the guide, “There is no road here. How are we supposed to know the way through the desert?” The guide just simply said, “I am your road. You just follow me.”
When Jesus stood before his disciples, he is saying, “I am the road. Follow me. My Father’s house has many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you.” All our homes and all our families ultimately dwell under the grace of a loving god. It kind of makes sense of that sermon in Pretoria! Amen.