There are so many things in this text to wrestle with, and so many things that are of issue to my faith and to my theology. But those things aside, there is a message here that has been gnaws at my very bones: In my Father’s house there are many rooms.
For years this passage has been translated to mean that there is a big heavenly mansion for each believer. The King James Version translates the passage as “In my father’s house there are many mansions” and there is a persistent belief that Jesus is goin’ up to heaven to build mansions for all the believers that will follow. This is not the case. The description of a house with many rooms is a metaphor and one that is used often in the New Testament and in the gospel of John. Now, there are lots of word studies and scholarly works out there regarding this passage. But those things aside, what does this phrase mean?
The word used here for “rooms” is best translated as “dwelling place” or “abode” and actually comes from a verb meaning “to remain.” So perhaps a better translation would be… within God there are many ways to remain… or there are many ways to abide.
This is relational imagery…this is about the mutuality between God and Jesus and between God and us. In this way of thinking, this “house” is the mutual abode of God and God’s people. I think this is Jesus saying that there are many ways to have a deep and abiding relationship with God, there are many ways to dwell in this abode with God and Jesus is an example of one of those ways.
Jesus says that he is making room…preparing space for those who believe. He is making room for people to dwell with God by providing an example and by showing what such a relationship might look like.
The thing that keeps resonating is this notion of there being many dwelling places in God and the importance of making room. Jesus speaks of preparing a place…of making room. In so doing he gives an example of the ministry of hospitality. He models what it means to make room in the dwelling for others.
This passage, in my opinion, is about hospitality. It is about making sure there is enough room for everyone to dwell within God, even if their way of dwelling is not the same as our way of dwelling. It isn’t about conforming people to fit the dwelling place…its about making room for them to abide with God.
What does it mean, then, to make room?
When I moved back from California after a bitter divorce, my friend Amy took me in. She made room for me in her house. I had a room to stay in, a place to store my things, a dog to borrow. But more than that, she provided groceries, and structure, and a sense of home. She made me feel like I was welcome, and she gave me a space to heal. Amy showed me the definition of hospitality.
For the church, the hospitality can be practiced in many ways, but I think the most important places for making room are in:
Our language for God and humanity
Our understanding of community
Our celebration of communion.
We show hospitality in our language for God and humanity. Its so important that we use inclusive language for God and humanity, and we know that the words we choose teach both conscious and subconscious messages. But what is more important than the words we choose is our willingness to accept other persons names for God. We need to be able to stand side by side, one person calling God mother, another calling God Father, and still others calling God by the multitude of names we can assign.
Hospitality is more than choosing our words carefully, its honoring other people’s understandings and making room for their language as well as our own. Just because I see God as a mother doesn’t negate someone else’s right to see God as a father. The act of hospitality though insists that we not assign more worth to our own beliefs than those of another. When we make room for other systems of belief and other understandings of God, we are practicing hospitality. We make room when we acknowledge and honor the many names we use for God, even the ones that challenge us personally.
We can make room in our understanding of community. Letty Russell says that “hospitality is an expression of unity without uniformity. Through hospitality, community is built out of difference not sameness.” The best illustration of this understanding of community comes from the movie Lilo and Stitch.
In the movie, we meet Lilo, a strange little orphan girl who feels friendless, and we meet stitch, a blue alien monster who is bent on destroying everything in his path. The two are joined when Lilo adopts Stitch as her dog and finds in him someone to talk to, someone to share things with and confide in, and someone who relieves the pain and loneliness she feels. And Stitch, in the care of Lilo, realizes his own aloneness, and his need for love and acceptance. A word that keeps getting repeated in the movie is, to me, the definition of hospitality in Christian community. OHANA…Ohana means family, family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.
Making room means that we ensure that no one is left behind or forgotten. It means that we struggle to work through differences without demeaning those we strive to include. We must value diversity of perspective because unity doesn’t mean that we agree on everything. It does mean that everyone is invited to share and that no one is left behind or forgotten.
The celebration of communion is the place where this “making room” can be most visible. I believe God’s love becomes tangible when the community gathers around the table. It is through communion that we can truly experience the love of God as revealed in Christ. God calls us to live in a spirit of love, but that love must be without boundaries of age, sex, or baptism or any other human-made border.
Because God’s love is borderless love and it rejects the often artificial limits imposed by our world. At the table we can put aside all of the human made divisions and celebrate together in ways that affirm our own faith tradition and our own beliefs.
It is no coincidence that communion and community share the same root—communis—which means mutual participation. It is mutual participation that honors the differences we bring to the table.
When we practice hospitality at the table, we learn how to practice hospitality in community. When we make room at the table, we celebrate the diversity that each person brings to the community and we make room for everyone to abide in God.
We are in a constant practice of making room. Making God’s rooms for each other here on earth until we can be in God’s rooms after we pass on. The more we practice making room, celebrating each other, and honoring everyone’s place, the more we will be prepared for the rooms we will eventually inhabit. By practicing hospitality, we are practicing God’s work on earth.