He wanted to build the New Jerusalem right there on the River Arno. He wanted to make the City of Florence a fit home for God. The earnest Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola, became the prior of the monastery of San Marco near the end of the fifteenth century. What he saw when he looked out the window of his little cell was a city God could not deign to dwell in. The Renaissance had brought back classical interest from the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Plato and Homer, Cicero and Virgil filled Florentines with a pride in learning and a devotion to beauty that showed up their art and literature, their politics and behavior. Savonarola looked upon these pagan influences as signs of God's absence. If Christians were cozy with worldly things, they could not expect God to be cozy with them.

So the beak-nosed little friar began to rant from his pulpit about the profligate city of Florence. He denied last rites to Lorenzo the Magnificent because the great head of the Medici family would not renounce the republican form of governance in Florence in favor of the monk's desire for a more godly personal oversight. Before long the glorious city of Florence was turned into a grim citadel of virtue. People had to watch what they said, what they did, what they wore, and whom they associated with. And if they didn't, not to worry-the Angels, the priest's Pleasure Police, would roam the streets and watch for them.

In her historical novel The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant tells the story of these times from the point of view of a young woman from a wealthy family who had learned and loved the classics and could not understand the strictness of the holy man's version of the true faith. Listen to this passage:

"When I was a child it had all seemed so simple. There had been one God, who, though He had a voice like thunder when angry, also had enough love to keep me warm at night when I spoke to Him directly. Or so it seemed to me. And the more I learned and the more complex and extraordinary the world became, the deeper His capacity to accept my knowledge and rejoice with me. Because whatever man's achievement, it came first and foremost from Him. But this no longer seemed true. Now man's greatest achievements seemed to be in direct opposition to God, or this God, the one who was now ruling Florence. This God was so obsessed with the Devil that He seemed to have no time for beauty or wonder, and all of our knowledge and art was condemned as just another place for evil to hide. So now I no longer knew which God was the true one, only which was louder." [Random House, 2003, p.222.]

It doesn't matter whether you are talking about Florence in 1497 or Dallas in 2004; the contest of two visions of Christianity still plays out. And it's not just with our faith. Jews struggle between Orthodox stringency and Reform adaptability. Muslims wrestle with their own Religious Right that considers anyone to their left not just left but wrong. Anyone that does not follow the austere vision of a God who demands strict moral obedience is given over to Satan.

This is the same spirit that has led some Baptists to call for all Christian parents to remove their children from public schools in America. These schools have now been declared "officially godless." And the reason for that is they fail teach children things that the church and Christian parents hold to be true. We are not talking about whether 2 + 2 = 4; we are not talking about whether subjects in sentences ought to agree with verbs; we are not talking about whether E = MC². We are talking about whether God created the world in six 24-hour days; whether Christianity ought to be the preferred religion in schools while tolerating other religions as long as they don't ask for equal time or rights; and whether homosexuals will be condemned for polluting the morals of children.

Here's the central problem: Once you go down the road to trying to purify everyone and everything around you to the way you think things ought to be, sooner or later you sap all the joy out of life, and you destroy yourself and everyone else with you. It will never be enough: things will never be pure enough; people will never be righteous enough; and in the end you will never be perfect enough for Jesus and his Father to come and make their home with you.

Do you remember the movie As Good As It Gets? Jack Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, an obsessive-compulsive writer who falls for a waitress at the restaurant he both frequents and terrorizes. Udall cannot wash his hands enough, cannot keep his gay neighbor or the gay neighbor's dog far away enough, and in the end cannot be content enough to live without love.

This is what happens to all of us. We must choose between a life of control and a life of love. Either try to control yourself, control other people, control the church or the way the world around you works; or live a life of love that never allows control to be a condition. Keep in mind that you don't have to approve everything to love: acceptance and approval are not the same thing. But this is a choice we have to make-between control and love; and it's a choice Jesus says that makes all the difference if we want him and the Father to make their home with us.

Notice what Jesus says. Those who love me will keep my word.. Now, at first glance that sounds like the kind of thing Savonarola would jump on. You show that you love Jesus by obeying all his commandments. If you want to believe that Jesus is with you, that God is at home in your life, then you'd better do things right. Unfortunately, what we usually think that means is wrong. We usually think that what Jesus means by "keep my word" is don't enjoy life too much, don't buy nice things, and don't do anything that might make anyone think you aren't spiritual enough.

But that leads us into all sorts of bad thinking about God. We start to think that if bad things happen to us, it is because we have not been good enough. God cannot be at home with us unless our hearts are spic-and-span, unless we have somehow proven to God that we care nothing for the world-even though the only world we have is the only world God made.

When Savonarola's control over Florence had reached its height, he commanded a "Bonfire of the Vanities" in the Piazza della Signoria. All citizens had to produce artwork or jewelry that they held precious and place it on the bonfire as signs that they loved God more than the world. The bonfire was sixty feet high and forty feet wide, and it burned all the day long, leaving ashes in every windowsill in Florence. When a baby died shortly after the bonfire, the mother feared it was because she had withheld her pearls from the fire. Her sister set her straight: "It seems to me," she said, "that if God loves us He does not want us groveling. Or starving. Or even ugly simply for the sake of it. He wants us to come to Him, not to make it impossible to do so. Your selfishness did not kill [your baby]. She died of the plague. If it was God's will to take her, it was not to punish you but because He loved her so much. It is right that you grieve for her, but not so that you destroy yourself in the process." [P. 132]

Well, I'm not so sure about the idea of God taking our babies because God loves them, but I am pretty sure that they will wake after they die into the open arms of our loving God. But the bigger point is this: When Jesus says that if we love him, we will keep his word, and then he and the Father will come and make themselves at home with us, and the word of Jesus that we are supposed to keep is nothing more or less than loving him by loving each other. Remember that just one chapter ago, on the night we call Maundy Thursday, the night on which Jesus was betrayed, he said, A new commandment give I unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Keeping the word of Jesus, being obedient to him, is not running errands for him by cleaning up the world in order to make it a fitter home for him. It isn't taking ourselves more seriously; in fact, it is taking ourselves less seriously so that there is room for others to breathe and thrive around us.

This is something I need work on, in one place in particular. Kim had to sit me down the other day after returning from this 25^th anniversary trip to South Beach in Miami-which was just delightful, don't you know?! Apparently, I did it again at the airport. I don't know why this is, but I am a demanding, grumpy traveler. God forbid they stop and wand me after I have nearly undressed myself in public and allowed them to CAT- scan my luggage. I'm thinking, why not put me on that conveyor belt and check for tumors while they're at it? Anyway, this time the chief offender was the shuttle service to the Express North car park lot. Four Express South vans had passed us, along with four Park 'n Fly's and four of those polka-dotted Parking Spot jobs. So when the guy comes, I can't keep my big mouth shut and just accept that this is life. I have to let him know about it. At which point he says it is not his fault. At which point I say, "No, of course not. It is never anybody's fault in America anymore; only invisible, imaginary people are ever to blame." The next day, I was informed that that person I was at the airport is embarrassing and not easy to love. And I said, "It's not my fault."

The thing is, if we wait for everyone to get things right in order for us to be at home in the world, we will never be at home in the world. We have to learn to live with other people's messes. We might practice by looking in the mirror every morning and realizing that other people have to live with our messes, too. The perfection of love is always a better ambition than the love of perfection.

When Melvin Udall allows himself to fall for the messy waitress with the sick child, things begin to change. The apartment that was his closely guarded fortress, with deadbolt locks he had to check three times before he could feel right, suddenly became a hostel for his beaten-up gay neighbor and the dog that peed on his floor. Suddenly he was able to cope with imperfections in others, and along the way became more comfortable with himself. The line he delivered over dinner, that could have been just a line, became instead the deepest truth: You make me want to be a better man. Her love did that. Her unconditional love made him want to open his heart and change. And his love also made her want to make her home with him.

If you want to feel the presence of God in your life, to know that God is at home with you, make others at home with you. Love Jesus by loving those Jesus loves. The rest will take care of itself.