“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:1-6 NRSV)

I have turned to this text many times in the past few weeks and months, as I looked at what lay before me; before us, on this road to minister to those incarcerated at MSP. My heart has been troubled, not by the mission itself, but the uncertainty of how it would unfold.

Jesus tells the Disciples, and us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” That is good advice. Don’t let your heart be troubled.  But that isn’t so easy to do. But Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled. It sounds more than a little like the clerk at the store, where we’ve just finished paying for our purchases. “Have a nice day!” we hear them say to us in a cheerful voice.  But Jesus really means it! He doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell us HOW to not let our hearts be troubled, and then he even offers us an explanation of the why of it all.

First he says, “Believe in God, believe also in me.”  Those are really pretty straightforward instructions. He doesn’t say build a powerful empire around you and then you will be able to not have troubled hearts. He doesn’t tell us to gather all the wealth we can accumulate and then we won’t have troubled hearts. He doesn’t even tell us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned, in order to have untroubled hearts. That comes elsewhere, and actually comes from a troubled heart, of sorts, but that is another story.

Jesus doesn’t tell us that we have to do anything at all! Jesus simply tells us to believe in God, and in him. Sounds pretty simple. But like many other things in life, we humans manage to find ways to make it complicated.  We humans have a tendency to believe that God only loves us and offers us salvation if we earn it, like everything else in life. We tend to ignore God’s grace and try to work until we deserve it; until we are GOOD ENOUGH for it.

But Jesus tells us it is simple. Just “believe in God, believe also in me.”  Then he goes on to tell us why we should not let our hearts be troubled.  He says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

The King James Version of the Bible say “mansions” and I guess that image is not a bad one. But the Greek word μονή (monē) is more correctly translated as a “place where one may remain or dwell.” It can mean a physical structure, but its only other use in the New Testament is in John 14:23. “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.” That seems to imply an abiding relationship between people and the Father.

I have lived in MANY dwelling places in my life. And I don’t recall a single one of those places being anything anybody would consider a mansion. To be truthful, I am not so sure that I would have even wanted to live in a mansion. But each place where I lived was a home.

What about those who are imprisoned? They might be in a place that is as big as a mansion, but their individual dwelling place is certainly not a mansion. And I doubt very much that they really mean it when they refer to it as their home, or “house.”  But there is good news about that, too. Throughout the Bible, especially in the Gospels, location is consistently a symbol for relationship. To know where Jesus is from is to know his relationship with God. And Jesus tells us that he has gone ahead to prepare a dwelling place, a home; a place of relationship with God; for each and every one of us.

Like our very life, that dwelling place; that place with God, is a gift from God, given to us only by God’s grace. We can do nothing to earn it, we cannot buy it, and we have all fallen short of being good enough to deserve it. All we can do is accept it and say, “Thanks be to God!”

Grace and Peace † † †

Pastor Rob Nedbalek

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36