Did you hear about the preacher and the New York cab driver? They both die about the same time and find themselves at the pearly gates of Heaven. St. Peter sees the cabbie first and says, “God has a mansion prepared for you, come on in.” Meanwhile the preacher stands outside the gates patiently waiting his turn. He can see between the bars on the gates where the cabbie is going. It looks like one of those neighborhoods that popped up like dandelions. In California we referred to them as “McMansions” or “starter palaces.” That’s where the cabbie gets to spend eternity.
Two commercial kitchens, flat panel televisions everywhere, awesome pool, cabana, hot tub, exquisite landscaping, six car garage, beautiful decorating – nothing like the squalor of the Bronx apartment he left behind. The cabbie is so thrilled he can hardly wait for his friends to pass so they can party with him.
St. Peter returns to the gate and ushers the preacher to his mansion. It is a dark, musty, cramped concrete cell with a bare light bulb, writing desk, and an old army cot. The preacher is shocked. He finally musters the courage to tell St. Peter there must be some kind of mistake. “I have devoted my life to God and this is where you have me spend eternity?” St. Peter shakes his head and says, “No mistake here. … when you preached they slept. When the cabbie drove they prayed.”
The first half of this text from John is often selected for funerals. It is a comfort to those grieving to hear that “in my father’s house there are many mansions.” Actually “rooms” would be a better translation than “mansions”, but the King James Version dies hard.
We want our place in heaven to be well appointed in the same way we shopped for our last house or selected our casket. We carry this real estate notion with us beyond death into heaven. We think somehow that it is OUR house that we have earned because of our good behavior or because we said a bunch of words about Jesus as a personal lord and savior.
Whether you look at it in English or Greek, John very clearly says right up front, “In my Father’s house.” In other words, it is God’s house, not yours.
Several years ago author Phyllis Trible wrote a book about certain Biblical passages titled “Texts of Terror.” She tackled all the uglier pieces of the Old and New Testament; things about mayhem, violence, murder, rape, incest, war etc. But in some ways we could nominate portions of John’s Gospel as terror texts.
When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, some people take this statement as legitimizing only their interpretation of the Bible. Whole Christian denominations exclude one another from God’s Grace because some people believe that ONLY their interpretation is the correct one. What passes for Christianity for the next two thousand years uses this exclusive claim to subjugate or eliminate people of other faiths. The five dollar term for this is “Christian supercessionism.” Violence used to forcibly convert people, or the more pernicious form of oppressing other religions as inferior (think of the Crusades or the Holocaust) continues to cause enormous suffering in the name of Jesus.
Christians do it to each other. Christians do it to Jews and Muslims. Muslims do it to other people. Orthodox Jews do it to all the others. Hindus do it to the Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims in their countries. And in Muskogee we have people preaching and teaching how other Christian denominations are invalid or inferior or incorrect. What arrogance our religious leaders show when they try to claim it is “my way or the highway.” No wonder the modern world rejects religions of all kinds, preferring instead to stay home and try to lead a quiet, decent, righteous life.
Do we think that God, the creator of the universe, cares whether people on this tiny planet choose to see the face of the resurrected Christ in a blond haired, blue-eyed upper middle class male driving a BMW instead of a dark haired, dark eyed Hindu woman selling tea in Madagascar? Or could it be that when we persecute others who are not like us in the name of some religious interpretation, the creator of the universe sheds a tear? Yes, God suffers with us and cries in anguish because after thousands of years of human history, we just don’t seem to get the message.
Religious violence is just the handmaid of religious superiority. Now I can give you all kinds of historical, social, and political reasons why John’s Gospel is unique in the Bible in terms of its exclusion of others, animosity towards Jews, and its offer of salvation in exchange for belief. To learn more about that you should come to adult ed because we are looking at just those topics for the next few weeks.
Humans have a propensity towards making outrageous claims, persecuting others and circling the wagons in the name of something we don’t understand. This is why I get nervous when people interpret the Bible as if it were listing a set of exclusive benefits for a group called “Christians.” “In my Father’s house there are many mansions” is not an invitation to join an exclusive eternity club by muttering a few words or doing a good deed. It is a statement of fact.
The creator of this enormous expanding universe loves each tiny person on this little chunk of rock in space. We are loved so much that there is a place for each one of us – Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, atheist, Baha’i, Shinto, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, able bodied, disabled, gay, straight, Christian, even Episcopalian. God has prepared a place for each one of us. All that is asked of us is that we be humble not arrogant, that we live decent righteous lives, and that we work to make the world better for other people.