Not a Place, A Person

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Just after Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, he begins to say farewell to them. The God who wept for Lazarus speaks to his fearful followers, already grieving his absence, of the place he goes to prepare for them:

“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 there myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

When Jesus got up from the table in the Upper Room, removed his outer robe, and stooped down on his knees before them like a slave, Peter had protested. “You’ll never wash my feet,” “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me,” Jesus had replied. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,” Jesus elaborates, but one who has been bathed is entirely clean.”

Jesus wasn’t talking about feet. He was talking about baptism. He was talking about the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection. If you’ve been baptized by me, baptized into me, you are entirely clean, Jesus promises. It’s what we pray over the water, “Pour out your Holy Spirit, Lord, to bless this gift of water and ____ who receives it, to wash away his sin and clothe him in Christ’s righteousness; so that, dying and rising in the waters of baptism, John may share in Christ’s final victory.”

Wash away sin and clothe him in Christ’s righteousness— that’s everything.

That’s all any of us will ever need before a Holy God.

That’s enough.

That’s your enoughness.

Baptism saves.

Or rather, through baptism into Christ, God saves you.

Faith clings to baptism, Martin Luther taught. Whenever doubt or despair attacked him, Luther said he could always return to the fact of his baptism and take comfort. No matter what’s going on inside you, Luther taught that you can always point outside of you to your baptism and know that, by virtue of your baptism, you are in Jesus Christ.

Whenever the valley of the shadow of death casts its pall over you, you can cling to your baptism and know that everything you need to enter the Father’s house was already gifted to you by Christ through water and the Word. Speaking of the Father’s house, after making this promise about the power of baptism not simply to cover all our sins, but to clothe us in Christ’s own perfect righteousness, Jesus makes this other promise about going to prepare a place for us in his father’s house.

Jesus isn’t giving blueprints of heaven.

Jesus is talking about a wedding.

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In first century Jewish weddings, when a bridegroom betrothed himself to a bride, before the wedding ceremony, he would first go to his father’s house and build an addition onto the family home. Only after the bridegroom had prepared a place for his bride at his father’s house would the bridegroom return, make his promise of forever to his bride, and then take her to the place he had prepared for them.

This promise at the Last Supper— it’s not about a place.

It’s about a person.

Jesus is promising to make good on the betrothal he pledges to us at our baptism. He’s promising that you, who are in Christ by baptism, will be with Christ eternally.

In Jewish weddings, it’s the bridegroom who does all the work to prepare the bride’s home with him. And when his work is done, he gifts it to his bride. In this case, the work that prepares our home with him is Christ’s own work of death, resurrection, and ascension. This is why, when Thomas asked, "Lord, how can we find the way?" Jesus doesn't give a list of directions, does he? No, Jesus tells them, "I am the way, I am the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father, except through me."

Christians often use that verse as a bludgeon, but it’s meant to be immense comfort as you face the dark hours of your life.  When Jesus says, "I am the way," what He is saying is, He is the one who stands uniquely in the gap between a Holy God and sinful humanity. “You came to show us the way,” the praise chorus sings.

Actually, Jesus comes to be the way, reconciling a fallen world and fallen humanity to the Father. And because Jesus is the way, Jesus is not a truth among many truths. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the truth that speaks to the lie that God’s love must be earned or deserved. Jesus is the truth that speaks to the lie that it’s your faith that justifies you before God rather than Christ’s faithfulness gifted to you as your own.

Jesus is the truth that speaks to the lie that what you do or leave undone can undo what he has done for you. Jesus is the truth that speaks to the lie that there is any way to his Father’s house other than in him.

The outrageous Gospel promise of baptism is that, by grace, you were irrevocably incorporated into Jesus Christ, and in him, who has already born all our sins in his body upon a tree, you will be carried across the threshold into the place Christ has prepared for you— a place for which the blueprints were drawn up prior to Creation itself.

When it comes to what happens when we die and where we go after life, the promise isn’t so much about an abstract place as it is about a specific person, Jesus Christ has betrothed Himself to you by his blood and baptism.

And, this is why when Jesus tells his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled, it’s not a request or an encouragement.

It’s a command.

He’s commanding them not to let their hearts be troubled, because their destiny beyond death is not a place they can hardly imagine, but a person they’ve already met in the flesh.

It’s not a departure so much as a reunion.

So do not let your hearts be troubled. No matter your past, whatever your sins or regrets, regardless of your doubts or your failures to live up to his commands, Jesus has gone the way of death and resurrection for you. He’s done all the work already. And he applies that work to us at our baptism.

Therefore, you have a place, you have a home. And in Jesus Christ, you are never lost, but you're always found. In Christ Jesus, you are never dead, but always alive, for He is the way, the truth and the life, He and no other.

Put your faith not in your faith but in your baptism, for there Christ gifts to us everything that belongs to him, including— especially— a place in his Father’s house.

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