Jesus’ image of home is one of refuge, of safety.
For some of you the thought of home is like that, warm and comforting. Perhaps you had a loving, stable family where your needs were met. Perhaps you felt safe, secure, and you could flourish. I’m not talking about perfection, as that doesn’t exist. But I’m talking about a high degree of love where parents raise their children, giving them every opportunity for growth in life. He is caring for their future.
Others of you do not share that thought of home. For you, the idea of home and parents carries a degree of pain, brokenness, irresponsibility and inconsistency. For some of you, when Jesus talks about his father and his father’s house, it’s hard for you to envision how that could be good because your experience was nothing of the sort. We long for a good home.
As I’ve been visiting people in the hospital recently, what I often hear them say is, “I just want to go home.” That can mean one of two things. First, it can mean that they want to get out of the hospital and get back to their own house. Understandably so. Being away from home can be exciting, but we miss the comforts of home, especially when we we’re a place we don’t want to be like the hospital.
When I was in India, I really wanted to be in India, and I loved it. But by the middle of week 3, though, I was thinking, “Okay, I’m ready to go home.” I wasn’t really missing the building that is my house. Maybe I missed it a bit. What I really missed was my bed, the amenities, the food, the language, and most of all the relationships, my family at the top of the list.
The second thing that people mean when they say they want to go home is that they want to go to heaven.
Jesus knows this too. Jesus offers his disciples, and us, a redefinition of home. No matter if you were raised in a very good home, or in a very difficult home, Jesus offers true home, and he describes it with this fascinating image of his father’s house with many rooms.
But here’s why this home is a redefinition of home. It’s not the possibility of a building that Jesus is talking about. He is talking about something much richer, much deeper, something at the core of existence. He is talking about relationship. Specifically, Jesus is saying that this redefinition of home is rooted in the fact that he and his father will be there. Home, Jesus says, is where he is.
Peek ahead at verse 23, which we will talk further about next week, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” It’s another way of saying what Jesus says back in verses 1-4. Jesus wants to make his home with us. He wants to be with us. Next week we’ll talk more about how that relates to the Holy Spirit.
For now, I want us to think about this idea of being at home with God. This is God’s heart’s desire, to be at home with every person. God wants to make his home with you in it. God wants to make his home with you.
Notice also the very active work of God in making his home with us. Jesus prepares the place for us. Jesus comes back to take us there. And as we saw in verse 23, God makes his home with us. God is energetically at work to make his home with us.
Hearing that you might think, “But Joel, that doesn’t seem true in my life. God seems distant. Far away. When I think of God making his home in my life, shouldn’t it be a close relationship? If God is actively making his home in our lives, why doesn’t it feel that way to me?”
I think about that too, and I think Jesus knew that his disciples would be wondering as well. So he says in verse 4, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” In other words, “If you don’t feel like you are at home with God, or that God is at home with you, and you don’t feel that closeness with God, you know the way to get there.”
Immediately Thomas responds in verse 5.
“Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’”
Good question. How will Jesus answer? We’ll find out in the next post.
Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 