Join us as we unveil Boone's new mission statement...
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Over the past three weeks, we’ve covered a lot of important ground in Boone’s new Mission Statement: we discussed who we ARE (a safe space for all), what we BELIEVE (Christ commands us to love), and what we DO (create change through worship, learning, and service). All of these are the sorts of things that define us as a community; they’re the sorts of things that someone looking for a new church home might be curious about. But as informative as all this is, it’s also important for us to recognize the goals that we AREN’T quite achieving yet, to name the aspirational aspects of our mission. And so, the last part of the ABCs of Boone outlines what we, as a community, DREAM of being and doing.
At Boone, we DREAM of being a home for the lonely – and reaching out to all who are looking for a place to belong. While we self-identify as a safe space in the very beginning of our new mission statement, this final section recognizes that there’s still more we can do. It acknowledges that we’re still not done working towards God’s kindom. If we want to answer God’s call to deep transformation of hearts and lives, we not only have to be a safe space for all, but we also need to work towards being a HOME to all.[1]
While the two feelings are related, I think we can all agree that a sense of safety and a sense of home are two very different things. Back when Nick and I were first discussing the possibility of moving in together, I felt strongly that I didn’t want to move into his apartment. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t feel SAFE there – it was actually in a much nicer part of town than my apartment was, and I obviously trusted him. The reason I didn’t want to move into his place is because no matter how safe I might have felt there, it wasn’t MY home – it was his.
I knew that it would take a lot of work and time to make it feel like home to me. Even with the best of intentions on his part, I’d still need to figure out how to fit myself into the home that he’d already created – I’d have to find space for my clothes, my books, my toothbrush, and even my dog within a pre-existing organizational system set up for one person. I’d need to disrupt his settled patterns of life in order to make room for mine. If, on the other hand, we both moved into a whole new place, we’d be doing the same work at the same time to make it home TOGETHER. Neither of us would have a claim to seniority, and both of us would have equal say in how the new home would work.
Those of us who have felt “at home” with God for years or even decades tend not to realize exactly how much our church community reflects our own spiritual needs and preferences. Our home is already established, but we expect other people who join us to make their sense of home fit around ours. We surround ourselves with objects and traditions that WE find comforting, we create house rules that make sense to US, and we never really consider alternatives to our way of “being the church”. Of course, others are welcome to visit, to admire what we’ve done with the place, and even to participate in our home life, but the unspoken assumption is that it has to be on our terms.
At least some of that has to do with this passage from John’s gospel. We usually hear it outside of its surrounding context, with John 14:2 often translated as something like, “My Father’s house has many rooms.” Without the larger setting of this text, we tend to subconsciously apply our own frame of reference in an effort to make sense out of it. Now, I don’t know what YOUR father’s house was like when you were a kid, but no matter how many rooms were in MY father’s (and mother’s) house, it was definitely a finite number. We didn’t keep extra rooms empty “just in case”. My parents bought a house based on the needs of their immediate family.
From the perspective of this frame of reference, it’s easy for us to hear Jesus’ speech as being directed towards just his “immediate family” – “Don’t worry; each of you kids will get your own room, and you can even have friends over to visit once in a while!” Even recognizing that this house is a metaphor referring more to a relationship than to a physical location, we derive a sense of personal ownership when we hear the passage this way. We are the ones with the right to feel at home, because we are the ones for whom the house was built. Everyone else is a guest, an afterthought – a beloved afterthought, but an afterthought, nonetheless.
But believe it or not, John didn’t have your childhood home in mind when he wrote this gospel. If we step back to take a broader view of John, we don’t see a pattern of putting “me first”, but rather one of self-sacrifice. Just before today’s reading, in chapter 13, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and gives them a new commandment: to love each other the way he loved them. Then, immediately after he finishes talking in chapter 16, he leaves to face death for the sake of others. And later, in a post-resurrection encounter, Jesus instructs Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep”. And these are just the events towards the end of the gospel. Jesus is obviously far more concerned with others than with himself, and he expects his disciples to follow his example.
In light of all this, it seems like describing God’s house as having “many rooms” is probably an understatement. Given Jesus’ emphasis on care for others (and his commandment that we do the same), it seems virtually impossible that “My Father’s House” would be meant only Jesus’ “inner circle”. Maybe they’d be the first to find it, but they were never intended to be the last. In my opinion, the CEB conveys this better than other translations: there’s room to spare – not just plenty for us, but more than enough for EVERYONE! You can bring your friends home with you, and they can move right in! Yes, it’s your home, but it’s meant to be their home, too.
As those who were “here first”, we can’t faithfully declare the things that make US comfortable as the Church’s default. We may already feel at home here, but it’s God’s house at the end of the day, and Jesus says that there’s (metaphorical) room to spare. It’s our responsibility to make sure that others don’t have to tiptoe around our sense of home in order to find their own. We don’t have the option of moving into a brand-new space together (nor do I think we’d want to), but that just means it’ll take more deliberate work to make sure that everyone walking through the doors of this building shares the sense of comfort and belonging that we each cherish. And it’s not their responsibility to do this work – it’s ours.
The work isn’t done just by opening the door to newcomers. We can’t just speak words of welcome and assume that’s enough. It’s not good enough to offer a separate space for others to make their home – maybe an earlier worship service or that empty pew at the front that nobody actually ever wants to sit in. It can’t be THEIR home if it’s on OUR terms. It only counts if we step back to make room for their desires, their preferences, their needs, even if they appear to challenge ours – ideally, before they even ask us to, but at the very least, as soon as we become aware of them.
I’m fortunate that, while Nick didn’t quite understand why I wanted to start our shared household from scratch, he was willing to go along with it because it was so important to me. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, his cooperation has had a far-reaching impact on our relationship. Through this choice to prioritize my sense of home over his comfort or convenience early on, he clearly communicated his love to me in a way that’s been hard to forget over the years. Of course, we’ve had plenty of arguments since then, but none of them have been able to upset the unshakeable foundation of love on which our shared household was built.
When we demonstrate that someone else’s sense of belonging matters just as much to us as our own, we’re telling them simply but powerfully that we love them. Even if we don’t understand it, even if we’re perfectly comfortable the way things are, the moment that we go out of our way to accommodate another person, the moment we let them know that this is THEIR home as much as ours, is the moment that they know, beyond doubt, that we love them.
That’s what Jesus spent his whole life, death, and resurrection trying to show us, and the very last teaching that he gave to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” No matter what anyone may try to tell you, keeping Christ’s commandments is, and always has been, about love. Loving others is directly connected to loving Jesus, and loving Jesus is directly tied to a relationship with God. So, it turns out that our own sense of home – REAL home, eternal home, home in a deep, spiritual sense – actually relies on the work we do to create home for others. It’s all connected.
God’s house has room to spare – so maybe it’s time for those of us who’ve been around for the longest to stop taking up so much of it. Besides, if we let someone else make our home into theirs, we could learn a new way of encountering God that we’d never thought of before. That’s the beauty of sharing a home with another person: the chance of building something better together than you ever could on your own. That’s what wound up happening for me and Nick, and I imagine for many of you with your partners or spouses – I can only imagine what will happen when Christ’s church finally figures it out. At least we can try to do our part. Together, with those here now and anticipating those to come, let’s build a home not just for some, but for all, exactly the way Jesus envisioned it. Amen.
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[1] I should note that being a home for all cannot come AT THE EXPENSE of being a safe space for all. There are certain behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives that cannot be tolerated because they make a space UNsafe for others, including anything that challenges or denies the humanity and imago dei of an individual or group of people.
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