There are many ways to house a business, many kinds of buildings to carry on the business of one’s vocation. And they’re all good ones:  Tall skyscrapers with big glass windows, impressive to clients, downtown locations, suburban sites, places you have to pay to park and go up elevators to get to, places that share office space with all sorts of other businesses, with their names behind a glass message board, this floor, that room number, behind this or that locked door.

 Where you house your business says a lot about not just that business, but about you.  About you, the one who created it, or the one who keeps it going.  There are lots of important things about the places we conduct our business.

          The place where the Robertson Company conducts its business has a porch.  And that piece of architectural information says volumes about the creator of that business, John Robertson. 

          On any given Friday afternoon, that porch attracts the widest variety of humanity you can imagine, folks just passing by, stopping by to talk, to rock, to solve the problems of the world, and have a sip or two of lemonade.  (Well, OK, not lemonade.) 

It was not enough, you see, to be a trusted and respected Accounting Firm in the City of Dalton. They created, on that porch, a kind of community, a community of fellowship and good cheer, a recognition that, even for those who keep the books, life is more than numbers.  Life is about the values of friendship, of trust, of the bonds forged not just from the conducting of fair and honest and accurate business, but about regard for the person with whom you conduct that business. 

          It’s often struck me that when you hire an accountant, yes, that accountant has an allegiance to you and your company.  But in fact, that accountant, if he or she is a good one, in fact has a higher allegiance to the principles of honesty and accuracy and high, high trust. And it is a legacy of trust that is built up and built up, especially in a small town community, over the years. 

2.

          Within the offices of the Robertson Company, the hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks, and, finally, years of steady, hard, honest work, built up for this community, such a legacy of trust. That came within those offices.  But again, come Friday afternoon, there was the porch. 

          Maybe John’s thing for porches went all the way back to the late ‘40’s.  John lived here in Dalton all his life—grew up in the Depression, that house on Emery where his sister Martha still lives; went off to the army, back to Dalton, and while he happened to be hanging around—the porch—there on the porch he meets this new nurse who has just been transferred to Dalton to run the Health Department.  Her name is Evelyn.  And there, on the porch, they first meet.  She later confides in a friend that that thin, hansom, quiet John looked a little, well, like “Gregory Peck.”

          I don’t know whether Gregory Peck had this or not, but John had a certain kind of look—you had to know to look for it.  It was an “almost smile’, like he knew that something funny was about to happen, or the punch line was about to be given when you didn’t even know a joke was being told. (Frank calls it a “weasel smile”, but I would never say that in a sermon!)  But there was mischief in it, and you needed to pay attention, because something, usually dry and most always funny, was about to be said, or happen. 

          And it was not always something he said, but sometimes something that happened to him.  Like the time that Lorraine remembers, late Christmas Eve after the Midnight Service, when John, playing Santa Claus getting the things down from the attic, fell through the trap door.  And Santa said some words that she did not know Santa said very often. 

 Or that time in the old church, the family sitting pew in the back; they didn’t know whether John was so caught up in the sermon, or his mind was just caught up somewhere else, but he just sort of lost himself, and lit up a cigarette right then and there.

          In any event, from that meeting on the porch, Evelyn and Gregory Peck began a life together, here in Dalton.  And they grew a business, and they grew a family.  And such a family!  A close, warm, kind family, the likes of which I see far, far too seldom. 

3.

          Lorraine tells of a childhood memory, just a picture, an image, of her, Frank, and John and Evelyn in church, in probably that 8:00 service, and they’re all there, sitting there, and John’s arm is stretched across the back of the pew, as if he’s holding up the whole scene, even the pews, even the church itself.  All being held up by that outstretched, strong arm.  She says of that memory, “I never felt safer than when my family was at church, and my Dad’s arm around us.” That’s what families are supposed to do for the people in them. Spiritually, not just to give them just a glimpse of what awaits them in heaven.  But even more, a small piece of heaven right here on earth. 

If, then, the legacy of a good business is trust, well, the legacy of a good, kind family is love.  That can only come from a John and an Evelyn Robertson, the kind of folks who knew how to create a space, a kind of a back porch of one’s heart, if you will, a place to feel safe, a place where you can gather to rock, and talk, and solve the problems of the world, and grow in love. 

          In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells his disciples about the afterlife—about heaven. It is an act of pastoral care on his part, for they, like us, wonder about what happens after this life. “In my father’s house are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you. That where I am, you will be, also.”  I don’t think we will do too much damage to the text by paraphrasing it to read, “In my house are many rooms, and there’s a porch, as well.” 

          Because St. Paul was right.  In this life, we have these touches, these tastes of love, the kind of love that God intended for us to have in this life, in the porches and welcoming places in our world, in those special times in the ordinary times of family life, times and places that give us a taste of God’s love.  And the Good News of this day, is that God’s love is more powerful even than death.  Death will not ever diminish the power and reality of that love. 

          In my house are many rooms.  And porches, as well!  And we so we can be certain that, on that porch, John will be waiting as well, rocking, talking, solving the problems of heaven (if there are any), with—ok this is heaven, so let’s not go with lemonade, but real, old scotch—in hand.  And he is there, and will be until we get there, too.