First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Exodus 37 and John 14

“Not Just Any Kind of Tent”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

April 20, 2008

It takes 26 hours to drive from Seattle to San Diego. I have made the trip a number of times. Generally the time was spent driving a 15-passenger van filled with teens heading to build houses in Mexico. It is two hard days of driving.

The midway point is Redding, California. You know another part of life has been revealed when Redding is a really welcome sight. First Pres Redding always put us up for the night asking only for a small donation. From there you head through the central valley of California, and then over the Grapevine or foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. Finally there is a hair-raising, breath-holding drive through LA and then a decompressing hour as you arrive in San Diego.

It’s a hard drive, but for all intents and purposes I like it. I don’t like to drive five minutes, but five hours sign me up. Driving the length of California is an experience as you pass through so many different worlds all in one.

In 1999 I set out on this trip as a co-leader. My partner was the associate of a very large Presbyterian church just south of us. We were both looking to take a group to Mexico to build houses so we teamed up. On the whole it wasn’t a bad partnership. But needless to say this was the last time I co-led a group.

When it was all said and done the group built 5 houses in Tecate and then watched a dozen kids get third degree sunburns at Manhattan Beach. There were some really funny moments of this trip but what really sticks with me is a not so funny one. We were driving in a caravan, a bus and two vans. We had just finished lunch in Bakersfield and were heading into the Grapevine. We were in the lead but after a few miles I noticed the bus was not behind us. I phoned the other pastor to find out what was wrong. He said it was something with the bus, but not a problem. This had happened before they would be right along.

In short order we were in the mountains and thus out of cell phone range. It was two hours before we were able to be in contact. They hadn’t left Bakersfield yet. But they were just about to leave. Two hours more and they still hadn’t left Bakersfield, but the local Presbyterian Church had rounded them up, took them swimming, and were feeding them dinner. If they didn’t get it fixed in an hour they were going to stay the night at Bakersfield. We will drive back was my declaration. No. Don’t drive back was the response. We’re fine.

I knew they were fine; I knew it would be all right. They were three hours away being fed and housed and were even lounging poolside not stranded roadside. I knew it but it didn’t sit right. I wasn’t at peace. And then my phone rang. It was one of the parents of a youth on our trip. “Why have you abandoned our kids he said? My daughter has just called to say you took off and left them on the side of the road and no one knows where you are. What kind of pastor are you?”

Now while it was true I wasn’t there, abandoned was a bit much. And it wasn’t just his kid, but my kid was on the bus too. And after I listened to his rant I called one of our adult leaders who was riding the bus and had him call to assure him that his daughter was not stranded in the desert but actually swimming in the pool of a very nice home in Bakersfield.

By the end of the trip the man’s daughter had a lovely time and her parents thought it was a great experience and never spoke of abandonment again, but I wasn’t surprised when they left the church a few years later. It’s an impression, something that lingers.

There is a moment in the movie Top Gun where the instructor berates a fighter pilot student for leaving formation and thus making his partner vulnerable: “Never leave your wingman” he tells the student with mantra like precision. Never leave your wingman. I will always remember hearing those words as I sat in LA while the bus was fixed in Bakersfield. That is exactly what I did.

I have never had much success stepping away from the church ever since. Is it logical, sensible, rational? No. It’s a kind of panic, a kind of dread. Again, I know the church is going to be fine, carry on, be better off even, but it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t sit well.

Over the course of the last six months I have had a few panic attacks. It generally starts when something happens here and I think boy am I glad I was here and then I think what if this happens when I am gone? Again, all the voices are there: the church will be fine, the church is not you, you are not an essential part of life. For many centuries the sun has risen and fallen before there was you and the earth will continue to spin after you’re gone. But fear is never assuaged by such assurances.

Going to Africa for three months to learn how to abide with my family has enough elements of risk involved already. There is the reality of malaria- no matter how much drugs you take; there is the reality that Malawi is a land of extreme poverty where our white skin announces to all: here is money. And perhaps the greatest risk, what will the world look like after being immersed in the day to day of Mchengatuba? I know how bent my head and heart become after two weeks, what will it look like after ten?

Turning to John was helpful this week. I have been rumbling around John’s Gospel and his epistles for months now trying to understand abiding, or better put, discovering how little my preconceptions of abiding match with what Scripture describes. I thought abiding would mean digging in, long haul, permanent type of living- everything I’ve never done. Much to my chagrin abiding is about lingering, not staying; to abide is coming to rest for a while not a tenure of decades. This is not what I expected.

One of the best examples of this is in our passage today. Jesus says in my father’s house are many dwelling places. Most of know this passage from funerals and from its more famous version in the King James, in my father’s house are many mansions. Yet, the word for “dwellings” in Greek is menein, which is the noun form of the verb meno, to abide. So what Jesus literally said, was that in my father’s house are many abodes and I am going ahead of you to prepare a place, literally to pitch a tent.

Again, this is the opposite of what I would have expected. Heavenly places made for us to dwell: mansions, streets of gold, gates of pearl; lots of clouds maybe, but no wind to blow them around. Heaven is a sense of permanence not transience. Yet, transience is just what Jesus says, I am going to put together a place for you to rest for awhile; menein is not a place you live forever like a house, let alone a mansion.

What’s more is that Jesus says, I am going, and I am coming back. He is foretelling his death and resurrection to them, but in this context it’s not a kind of eternal kingdom with thrones and halls, eternally fixed like some sort piece of art without change or loss. In this context heaven is like a stop over, a kind of place to catch your breath, get out of the storm, rest for the next leg of the journey. That’s the basic meaning of dwelling place, not a home but a tent.

Gregory of Nyssa conveyed this when he commented on Exodus. Gregory believed Moses was taken up into heaven when he prayed on Mt. Horeb. Once in heaven Moses saw what was what and then returned to the people with some construction plans. Moses came back with dreams of a tent and a box you could carry: the tabernacle and the ark. Moses’ vision of heaven was a tent not a temple, the place that holds the word of God was not a cathedral or shrine carved in stone, but a box you can carry because you are on the move.

In our reading from Exodus we get a glimpse of what Moses told the craftsmen to construct. After all the pieces and parts where put together, ultimately, what he called for was something they could carry around. The tabernacle was portable. Imagine what this church would look like if we need to carry it around. That is what the tabernacle was meant to be. Remember it wasn’t God’s idea to build a temple it was Solomon’s. God said, the tent is fine for me. Imagine our faith if it had no home, no building, no place that was permanent. Imagine if we had to move every five years. I hate to say it Carl, but you might want to look into an accordion, as that pipe organ would be a beast to haul around.

Churches don’t do this, but pastors do. I picked abiding as a theme for my sabbatical hoping to find the secrets to remaining, to staying put. I still want these secrets, but I have already figured out that abiding holds none of these secrets. There are secrets but not these.

Abiding is not about seeing life as fixed, but as fluid; abiding is not about permanence, but transience. Jesus says, I am going to heaven to pitch a tent so you can be there for a time and rest before you set out on another journey. That is what an abode is meant to convey. In the same spirit he says, I am the way. He doesn’t say I am the spot, I am the place, I am this land or this people. He says, “I am the way.” What could be more transient than a way that leads to a tent where you then set out again?

After many months of reflection I am coming to see that John in his Gospel is railing against the emergence of factions and frictions in the church that were digging in, making demands on one another and seeking to define their ways. And these ways were more than a little exclusive. And we do this, you do this, I do this. I want a routine, an order, a definition. I want a sense of not only direction but of concrete goals that I can measure on a quarterly basis to determine my success and failure as compared to the last five years of data. And I want my faith to be sharp, like a two-edged sword that’s filled with conviction and clarity and determination.

And to this desire for direction and definition Jesus says, I am the way to a tent, and, by the way, that tent is the place that is eternal. Eternal motion, eternal journey, eternal travel? That’s not my picture of heaven. But it is the one we have in John 14 and if we believe Gregory of Nyssa it is pretty much the one the ancient Israelites saw in the tabernacle- heaven as motion.

John 14 was supposed to be words of comfort Jesus offered to his disciples. I am not taking a whole lot of comfort in this. I am not sure what this passage will look like over the course of the summer. Abiding in a land that is a very new nation in a land where the only thing that stays the same is suffering, I am not sure what John’s image of heaven will reveal. I do know he is telling me: take heart, be of the same mind, know that my church is ever in my hands no matter what continent you are on. I hear this; I just don’t like it.

Something an elder said this week helped me with this. I was expressing my fears to him and he said, “We will be fine. And after you’re back and discovered 100 more ways we can help the Malawians the church will be blessed.” The more I considered this the more I wondered if what I am being called to do is not abide, but to make a place to abide. I am going on ahead of you, to prepare a place, pitch a tent for you to come and rest someday soon.

Boy, Africa never turns out the way I plan. I haven’t even left and the plan I started with is already the opposite of what I had intended. I can’t imagine how it will change over the course of ten weeks. But abiding is all about change. It changes even in heaven. Who would have thought? Amen.