“There’s no place like home.”
Who said it?
Right … Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
Why is that line so iconic? As soon as you hear it, you see Dorothy … aka Judy Garland … holding Toto, clicking the heels of her ruby red slippers three times, and uttering the words … “There’s no place like home” ... almost like a prayer.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this but at the beginning of the book and the movie, when Dorothy runs away from home, everything is dull and gray. And yet … after landing in the colorful and exotic Land of Oz and all the crazy adventures she goes through … in the end she discovers that as gray and as bleak as Kansas may be, there is no place like home.
I love to travel, see new places. I’ve been to Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland. I love seeing new places, new people, new cultures … but I also love coming home. I love coming back to my home country, to familiar landmarks and sights, to shared customs and language, to my home, to my own bed, my own refrigerator, TV. You know what I mean?
You don’t have to leave the country or even the state or county to know that I’m talking about. Just coming home after spending a week with relatives or even just coming home at the end of the day … you come around the corner or you pull into the street and see the place where you live. You walk into the house and immediately settle into a routine … the dog greets you at the door or your cat saunters in and give you that “Oh, you’re home” look before it rubs against your leg and attempts to lead you to their food bowl … you drop or hang your keys in their designated spot so that you can find them again … open the frig or pick up the remote control … plug your phone into the charger … change into your most comfortable lounge wear … and you can feel the weight of the day just leave you. Your whole body relaxes as you plop down on the sofa or your favorite chair and begin surfing channels.
That’s how we should feel on Sunday mornings … at home. We pull into the church parking lot and we look to see who’s here and who’s not here. We recognize cars and faces and it makes us feel, well, happy, I hope, amen? We come up to the door and we greet and hug each other as we catch up with each other before the service begins. We find our pew and look through the bulletin, maybe mark the hymns, look for news of what’s happening in the church. Then the music starts and we settle in for the service and it feels … right … comfortable … peaceful … calm … and we leave here rested, inspired, and ready, I hope, to face the week ahead.
I don’t have to tell you that the world out there is a pretty crazy place right now, amen? But if you think about it, it’s always a pretty crazy place, am I right? We need … we value … our safe places … our oasis or islands of peace and calm in the raging rush of life, amen? I pray that your home or that this church is such a place for you. But there is another place where you can have peace and calm in the midst of the storms of life … your heart.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus tells His disciples. A rather curious thing for Jesus to say given everything that’s about to happen to Him. As Jesus gets closer and closer to Jerusalem, He begins to speak more and more about being arrested, tortured, and executed … which naturally causes the Disciples and His followers to get more and more frightened and stressed. When Jesus answers Mary and Martha’s summons to come to Bethany to help their sick brother, Lazarus, the Disciples warn Jesus that it’s not safe. “Rabbi,” they pleaded, “the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” (John 11:8). After raising Lazarus from the dead, John tells us that Jesus “no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from [Bethany] to a town called Ephraim … and he remained there with the Disciples” (John 11:54). Not only is Jesus’ heart troubled, so is His soul. So how, with the horrors He’s about to face and His death looming larger and larger on the horizon, how could He tell His Disciples and His followers: “Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:1)?
He give them the answer: “ Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1). Somewhere along the line, we’ve kind of created this picture of “Jesus, Meek and Mild” … a peace-loving-turn-the-other-cheek hippie in Birkenstocks. Not the case at all. The one telling them to believe in God is, in fact, God Himself telling them to not let their hearts be troubled. The One who is telling them to not worry is the One who “gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle,” who “put the deeps in storehouses” (Psalm 33:7), who “brings the counsel of the nations to nothing” (v. 10), whose counsel stands forever and “the thoughts of His heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11), who is our light and our salvation, who is “our help and shield” (v.20). “Believe in God,” says Jesus, “believe also in Me” (John 14:1). “If the divine nature of Jesus is difficult to understand,” says one Bible scholar, “you can imagine how the disciples would have struggled to wrap their minds around such an idea” (Jeremiah, D. Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World. Nashville: W Publishing Group; 2009; p. 7). Jesus is asking His followers to expand their faith in their heavenly father to include His Son. “Believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1). “To believe in what I say,” Jesus is saying, “you must believe in who I am.”
Imagine for just a moment that Jesus were just a man. His words would bring small comfort don’t you think? But when you hear the Great I AM speaking these words, they can be a source of great comfort, amen? As the Apostle Paul explains, Jesus “though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
Can you imagine what it was like for God to pour Himself out, to “empty” Himself, to take on the form of a human? Well, actually we can’t, can we? To confine Himself to these frail, limited, weak bodies? Can you imagine what it was like for God to leave Heaven and have to live on this earth? Again, I doubt we can. This would be like Dorothy having to leave the Land of Oz to come live on a farm in black-and-white Kansas … only a billion times worse.
Listen closely to what Jesus says next. “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” (John 14:2-3). “If I go.” Go where? Go to where He came from. When John is given a glimpse of Heaven, He saw Jesus “clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across His chest. His head and His hair were white as white wool, white as snow; His eyes were like a flame of fire, His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters” (Revelation 1:13-15). “There in Heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! (Revelation 4:2). Seated on the throne was one who looked like jasper and carnelian (Revelation 4:3). Coming from the throne were flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder” (Revelation 4:5). Around His throne were four divine creatures who worshipped Him and then around them were 24 other thrones. Seated on those thrones were 24 elders dressed in white robes and wearing golden crowns who fell before the one who was seated on the throne and they laid their crowns before the throne, singing praises to the Lamb who had been slaughtered (Revelation 4:10). And then John says that he saw “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). What John saw was merely a tiny glimpse into God’s throne room.
When Jesus speaks to His Disciples about being killed and then rising on the third day … where do you think He went? He went “home.” He went back to His Father’s House … His Father’s Palace … Paradise … Heaven. This earth was not His home. He had a mission. He had a reason for being here. And once His purpose was accomplished, He left this tiny little speck in the universe to go home and preside over the universe. And He told us that this place was not our home either … that He went to prepare a place for us … a place where He is … and that place is with Him in His Father’s House … His Father’s Palace … Paradise … Heaven.
Now … this is a popular scripture for funerals. We preach it because it understandably gives us hope. When Jesus’ is done preparing our loved one’s “room” or “mansion,” He comes and immediately takes them to be with Him in Heaven … and that may be what happens … and it gives us hope that they are in Heaven with Jesus and that we will one day get to see them again and be with them when Jesus is done preparing our room or our mansion. On the other hand, it may not be so immediate. The Bible also speaks of a time when Jesus will come back to earth again to judge the living and the dead. Jesus gave us a glimpse of that day:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:31-34).
Perhaps that means when His Father’s House is ready, when the time for us to come home arrives, we will be taken to where He is … the New Jerusalem.
Poor John was given the monumental task of trying to describe this “New Jerusalem”:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:1-2). … The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and [the angel] measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, one hundred forty-four cubits by human measurements, which the angel was using. The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel (vv. 16-19). … And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass (v. 21). I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. … Its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life (vv. 22-27). Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever ever” (Revelation 22:1-5).
Jesus said that in His Father’s house there are many dwelling places or rooms or mansions … depending on your translation. Well, let’s talk about the size of the New Jerusalem, shall we? John said the city of God is a cube … 1,500 miles wide, 1,500 miles long, and 1,500 miles tall with walls that are 144 cubits or roughly 204 to 252 feet thick (www.biblestudy.org/prophecy/the-new-jerusalem.html). Fifteen hundred miles by 1,500 miles by 1,500 miles equals …are you ready for this? Three billion, three hundred and seventy-five million square miles. Let me say that again: three billion … with “b” … three hundred and seventy-five milliion square miles … miles … not feet. To help you visualize how big that is, the surface of the earth is about 197 million square miles (Ibid.) … so 17 earths could fit inside God’s City. One estimate of the total number of people that have ever lived on this planet is around 106.5 billion. For the sake of argument, let’s say that each and every person born … remember, not everyone is going to get to live in the New Jerusalem … only those whose names are written Jesus’ book of life … but, for the sake of argument … let’s say that every person ever born will get a room or a “dwelling place” or a “mansion” in the New Jerusalem … every person would get … are you ready for this? All 106.5 billion would get a house or dwelling that is 1,500 feet by 1,500 feet … or a home that is 2.25 million square feet and 150 stories tall. If everyone got the space equal to the size of a standard prison cell, six feet by eight feet, God’s city could hold one quintillion souls. That’s one billion billion or a 1 with 18 zeros after it (Fedena, P. The Immensity of the New Jerusalem; www.pastor paulfedena.weebly.com). Remember … there won’t be 106.5 billion souls living there … so our dwelling places will probably be much, much bigger than 2.25 million square feet, amen? Biltmore House has 250 rooms, including 35 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms and contains 178,926 square feet (https://findanyanswer.com). Our “mansion” in Heaven will be 12 and half times larger than the size of Biltmore House.
“I will make all things new,” says Jesus, including our bodies. As the Apostle Paul points out, we don’t know what these “new bodies” will look like or be like, but we do know what they won’t look like or be like:
“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as He has chosen. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your sting?’ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1st Corinthians35-38b, 42b-44, 54-55, 57).
This was not Jesus’ home and this earth, as beautiful as it is, is just our temporary home. And these bodies … fearfully and wonderfully made as they are … are also just temporary homes for our souls. And do you think that we will miss this earth or these bodies when Jesus comes to take us home … our new home, our eternal home, with Him and with the Father? I doubt it, don’t you?
“You know the way to the place that I am going,” Jesus told His Disciples. Thomas asks: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus respond: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:5-6). Remember what I said about the number of people who will get to dwell in the new Jerusalem. Not everyone will get to go there but I first want you to think of what Jesus is saying. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He didn’t say “I am a way, and a truth.” He said He is “the” way and “the” truth.” He is not one of many ways to get to Heaven. “No one,” said Jesus, “can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Sadly, this view is not considered “PC” or “politically correct” these days … even among many Christians. Seventy percent of Americans think that some non-Christian religions provide paths to salvation and, according to a Pew Research poll, “fifty-seven precent of evangelicals said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life” and “nearly half of American evangelicals were left in the category of believing Jesus is not the exclusive way to heaven” (Jeremiah, D. Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World. Nashville: W Publishing Group; 2009; p. 16). Christianity Today magazine reported that 41 percent of people who identify themselves as Christians believe that there is more than one way to get to heaven (Christianity Poll, March 27, 2009; www.christianitytoday ).
Here’s why I believe that Jesus is THE way. How can a sinner like myself stand in the presence of a Holy God? Buddhism and contemplative disciples say that your can achieve nirvana or bliss in this life but don’t really address the after life very much. Hinduism believes that we are constantly being reborn until we get it right. Muslims believe in an afterlife but believe that they can act their way into Heaven by strictly adhering to the law or by doing enough good deeds. Most Jews don’t believe in an afterlife but a life with God here on earth, who will establish another earthly Jerusalem.
Jesus said that He was “preparing a place for us” and the only way that He could go and prepare us a place was through His death on the cross. He could have told His Disciples that His ministry was done here on earth, said good-bye, and simply disappeared or ascended into Heaven … as He does at the end of Luke and Mark’s gospels … thankfully only after He accomplished His mission and atoned for our sins on the cross (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50). But if He simply went home and by-passed the cross altogether we would be in the same situation as we were before He came … unable to save ourselves, unable to live sinless lives, and therefore unable to stand in the Presence of a Holy God, let alone live with Him eternally in His Holy City, amen? He went to prepare a place for us because He paid the price. His sacrifice on the cross opened the way for us to be with Him forever in His Father’s house, understand? Why, as Jesus points out, would He go to prepare a place for us if, in fact, we couldn’t be with Him? The only reason we can go to Heaven … the only reason that we can be with Him … is because He paid the price. He is the only way. Jesus wants us to be with Him … so much so that He paid the ultimate price to make that happen. He invites us to come to Him – to be saved by grace, received through our faith as it responds to Him. “He demands no sacrifice, no achievement, nothing other than a sincere yes from the human will” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 18). Then He wants to enter our hearts and give us joy and wisdom for the rest of this life so that we can be with Him forever in the next glorious and eternal life.
Heaven is real, my friends. We are not in heaven … not yet … but the cross is a promise of our reservation in Heaven. And it is the cross and the promise of a life after this one that makes this world, with all its ups and down, with all its sorrow, with all its conflicts and challenges all that much more bearable when we know that all of this is just temporary. It gives us hope to keep going day after day as we realize that each passing day brings us closer to our true home. “It guides our aspiration. It soothes our hearts when we lose a loved one. And when we think of its eventuality, we realize there is nothing mundane or insignificant about any of us – we are children of the Kingdom; we are bound for heaven! It is real and it is home” (Jeremiah, Ibid., pp. 8-9). This world is a wonderful, beautiful, crazy place but I’m glad that I’m only passing through … and when I get home and arrive at my dwelling place, a mansion prepared for me by Jesus … I will no doubt get down on my hands and knees, kiss the ground, praise the Lord, and leave this world behind, amen?
There’s no place like home, my friend.
Say it with me: There’s no place like home.
We’re not there … yet. So long as we are still in this body, says the Apostle Paul, we are away from the Lord. “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (2nd Corinthians 5:6-10).
