Sermon — May 25, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23)
Bilbo Baggins travels far to the east to find himself; to live the life of adventure he’d always secretly craved, he must first leave behind the homely comforts of cozy Hobbiton. Harry Potter takes a train, departing from a mysterious platform at King’s Cross Station for a castle in parts unknown; to learn about the magic he was born with, he has to go to a place he’s never been. Elizabeth Gilbert processes the end of a marriage that has come apart by traveling the world on a voyage of self-discovery in which her adventures fall neatly into three chronological sections, which just so happen to correspond with the title of the memoir that she writes: in order become who she was meant to be she must journey around the world, learning to Eat, to Pray, and to Love.
These stories share a common structure that’s sometimes called “the hero’s journey.” Time and time again, we human beings tell tales of a hero who leaves ordinary life behind and, with the assistance of a mentor or two, embarks on a road of trials and testing, only to return back home, bearing the gifts and the wisdom they have earned. We can’t help ourselves from writing the same story, over and over again, of a Frodo-Harry-Luke who leaves the Shire-Dursleys-Tatooine, and, with the help of Gandalf-Dumbledore-Obi Wan—spoiler alert—destroys the Death Star-Horcruxes-Ring. If you’re not careful, 4000 years of stories can begin to blend together into one story of what the scholar Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Look too closely, and you can get jaded about how easily we replicate the trope. Wait a minute—are you telling me the mentor dies, leaving our hero to undertake the final stage of the journey alone? NO WAY! What a twist.
I love these stories, in their ancient and modern forms. But I often think about a comment I read years ago by the author Orson Scott Card, best known for the science-fiction series Ender’s Game. He observed that most stories like this, including his most famous ones, are about adolescents, literal or metaphorical. After all, “Who but the adolescent,” he asks, “is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?” Even the characters who are grown adults are basically teenagers still. Bilbo Baggins and James Bond share with Harry and Luke a kind of freedom to adventure that comes only when you haven’t yet settled down.
Now, some of you today do have adventures ahead of you in life. But all of our adventuring days will one day fade into the past. Maybe because of kids or pets at home, who can’t be left alone while we go off to find ourselves. Maybe because of our own health or mobility. Maybe we’re already overwhelmed by the things we have to do right here, and can’t afford the time or the money it would take to undertake a quest.
And that’s the tension of this literary form. The hero must go on a journey to be transformed. But the reader’s life mostly stays in place. And that same tension between “home” and “away” appears in all our readings today.
For example: Paul has a vision. A man from Macedonia pleads for help. And so he goes, to spread the good news. The Book of Acts is careful to note the itinerary, so that you can follow along—from Troas to Samothrace, and then you kind of bear left to Neapolis, and just up the road to Philippi. If you’re not looking at a map, let me just say that this is one small step for Paul, one giant leap for Christianity. It’s a relatively quick sail across the waters separating what’s now Turkey from Greece, but it symbolizes the spread of this new Christian religious movement from east to west, from Asia into Europe for the first time. Paul has left the continent he calls home to share the good news. But the women whom Paul meets haven’t traveled very far. They’re right there by the river, as they often are, where there is a place of prayer. And they’re intrigued. When Lydia hears what he has to say, she invites him in: “Come and stay at my home.” (Acts 16:15) And they do. But soon enough, Paul and his companions continue on their journey around the Mediterranean; and Lydia and her companions remain, right where they are, at home, and continue to live their ordinary lives.
Jesus, for his part, lives out the hero’s quest more than once: in the stories of his birth, in his temptation in the wilderness, in his travels from Galilee to Jerusalem, and in the bigger theological story of his voyage from heaven to earth and back, Jesus’ life is journey after journey. Jesus comes from the Father, and goes back to the Father. (14:29) He goes away to die, and returns to live again. (14:28) He ascends to the Father, then he sends the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to teach us everything, and remind us of what he’s said. (14:26) As he sums it up: “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” (John 14:28) But for all this back and forth there’s a sense that the journey does have an end. And it’s a surprising one: “Those who love me,” Jesus says, “will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (14:23) Jesus doesn’t say that if we love him, we will make our home with him; that if we are good in this life, we will go to heaven. He says that they will come—the Father and the Son and the Spirit will come—and make their home with us.
It’s that same journey that we find in the closing chapters of the Revelation to John. John is taken up to a great, high mountain for a better view. But he isn’t brought to see people going up to heaven. No. He sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem, “coming down out of heaven from God.” (Rev. 21:10) Because the story of the Bible doesn’t end with all of us leaving earth behind to go live somewhere else. It culminates in God coming down again to live with us, in a renewed and restored creation, right here.
We are Lydia and the other women, gathering time and again to hear the good news, and then returning to our homes. We are the disciples, gathered around the table with Jesus. We are John, sometimes catching a glimpse of heaven as it breaks through onto the earth. And there is a journey happening in these texts, but it’s not our journey; we stay in place, and all the motion is God’s.
Many people talk about their own spiritual journeys, and I don’t want to discount or discourage that. I think it’s a really helpful way for many people to reflect on their relationship with God.
But I think we’re used to thinking that way. And I think it can create a sense of a lack, of something we’re missing out on. I look at some people and I think, “Wow, what an incredible spiritual journey they’ve been on, while I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out what to cook for dinner.” But there’s a journey that’s taking place even when we feel like we’re treading water. There is an ongoing quest, even when we feel too overwhelmed to pray, let alone to go off and find ourselves. But we are not the heroes of that quest.
Are you ready for me to push the premise of this sermon past its breaking point? Okay. What would it mean if, in the story of your life, you were not the Frodo/Harry/Luke Skywalker of it all? What if you were Merry-Pippin/Ron/Chewbacca? What if Jesus were the protagonist, and you were one of those supporting characters who turns out to be the best of all, because they are ordinary, decent people inspired to do extraordinary things by the hero’s quest, even after Frodo-Harry has ascended into heaven. Sorry, I mean sailed West to the Undying Lands/mysterious heavenly train station.
For the most part, our role story is the part of Jesus, or even Paul. It’s more like Lydia or John. It’s not the struggle to ascend the great, high mountain up to God, but to see God’s holy city is coming down to us, and to walk in its light, exactly where we are. That’s the least exciting job. It doesn’t feel like a fun adventure of self-discovery. But God has come and made God’s home with us. God is already here. God’s light already shines, here in this world. And we can look for and walk in that light.