Abiding Love

5th Sunday Easter  – Abiding Love

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, to be honest. Nothing to worry about (truly), and I’m not offering this news seeking pity or to alarm you. We’ve all had periods like this: times when things aren’t going our way, or we have tough decisions to make, or exhaustion and daily demands just start adding up. Life can be hard sometimes.

That’s why I take comfort in Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, at least on a certain level: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” In other words, we are being reminded by the Lord: “Be still. I’ve got you.”

It’s hard, though, to cling to this maxim when faith seems shaky or nearly non-existent, doesn’t it? Because let’s be honest: I can keep my heart from anxiety and worry and trouble just fine when all is right in my world. But what happens when it isn’t? What happens when the storm rages and the direction is unclear?

Maybe that’s why Jesus follows this opening bit of encouragement with what appears like a real estate advertisement for heaven: “There are many dwelling places in the Father’s House.” Great. Good to know. Someday I might get the Paradise Penthouse or the Kozy-Korner Kingdom … just hang on, no matter how bad it hurts right now. That’s what we hear, isn’t it?

But the more I pray with this, the more I realize there’s another level of understanding to which the Lord wants to lead us. While it is true that He went to Calvary to suffer, die and rise in order to open eternity for us, I’m coming to see that the Lord isn’t just talking about constructing mansions in the sky for us. He isn’t just pointing to a future of eternal bliss.

Rather, I believe He’s pointing to His very Heart, the one he holds out to us at every step of His journey to the Cross and ours as well. A Heart pierced for our offenses, but also one that beats with a love beyond all telling. A Heart where we can truly abide both here and now as well as in the life to come.

Abide. It’s such a powerful word. John uses it often in his Gospel, although it isn’t always translated as such in most modern translations. But Jesus means it here: in my Father’s House, there are many ways to abide — to be held, to be embraced, and to be absorbed into love.  When Christ abides in us and we in Him, he takes it all: the pain, the grief, the anger and frustration, the struggles, worries and doubt. He takes the joy, too, of course. When we abide in each other fully and completely, God’s love is made manifest and He leads us to all truth, to healing, and to a place of comfort and hope.

Couldn’t it be that when Jesus is saying that there are many dwelling places in which to abide that he’s showing us the chambers of a Heart that is offered to us, in order that we can rest upon it (as John did at the Last Supper) and find everything that we need?

One abiding place He offers is that of a heart where he listens without judgement, like he first did with the woman at the well and Zacchaeus. Talk to Him in that space of abiding, and share with Him everything you are wrestling with and care about.

Another abiding chamber of that heart beats with mercy and forgiveness, the very same offered to Peter when he denied the Lord at Calvary as well as to all of us who put him on the Cross. It is a chamber that beats with the words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Then, of course, there is the abiding place where he sits with us in our sorrow and grief, loving us right where we are. The God who saw the grieving widow and the prodigal sons’ father is the same one who stays with us and holds us and will remain as long as it takes, no matter what. Isn’t it beautiful to recognize a God who doesn’t minimize our own pain but instead offers to wait with us in it and then, when we’re ready, take it and transform it?

And finally, there is a chamber that beats with the certainty of knowing that no matter what we feel or experience, no matter how far we stray or stumble or doubt, He’s still right here with us in it all, and He’s already working it out for our holiness and our salvation.

Thomas asks long before he struggles with faith following Christ’s death at Calvary: How do we know the way, Lord? How do we know the way to that Abiding Heart of Yours?

And Jesus, looking at him with such great love — knowing the personal journey of doubt and grief he’d take after the Crucifixion — offers words that touch the very core of our soul (as it did Thomas): you’ll know me and the Father through the cross you carry. You’ll find me as the way, the truth and the life when you’re willing to travel the road I’ve trod. You’ll know I’m with you when you invite me into the mess, the pain and the grief. I’m right there in your own wounds and brokenness.

I abide in the very places you need me the most, so do not let your hearts be troubled. I’m holding you in the very chamber of My Heart that beats for you, night and day, into eternity. My Heart pierced and broken is the same Heart where your pierced and broken heart can find rest and strength.

And when we are willing to abide there, then we come to know the Father’s love for the Son who loves us and invites us to share in the vision and works of the Trinity. If we go to His Heart and His Cross, there we find the very thing Philip was seeking: God’s eternal presence of love in every storm – the rock to which we cling.

Many years ago, while I was teaching in the suburbs of Philly, an older woman would come to the school as the students and faculty were leaving for the afternoon. She would shuffle past classrooms, usually carrying a bucket and mop, with a rag or two and a bottle of Windex sticking out of a flowery housecoat that was nearly as old as she was.  Her name was Rose.

Rose spent decades cleaning the bathrooms and hallways of her parish’s grade school, often the last one there to turn-out the lights when she finished by 7 p.m. Then, wearily, she walked down Manoa Road to her quiet home, where her husband was waiting for something to eat before going to bed.  Just the two of them now, both in their 80s.

Their son had died years ago: a boy whom Rose took care of everyday for 50-plus years, feeding him and bathing him and loving him the best way she knew how.  Yet very few knew this about her.  To them, she was just the “old Irish lady that cleans the toilets.”  But there was really so much more to her than that. She was, after years of humble service and cross-carrying, abiding in the very Heart of God, finding her own strength there as well as the love she offered to others in their own daily struggles.

Every afternoon at 3:45 p.m., Rose would pass my classroom on the way to scrub middle school toilets, and leave me with this greeting: “Hi, Mr. Jasper. God is good. Keep the faith and don’t worry about a thing.” It was her catch-phrase.  I clung to those words then; I still cling to them now.

Too bad I didn’t see then that Jesus just passed by in an old housecoat, a bucket and Windex in hand, abiding right where I needed Him at that moment.

Somehow, He always does.