Lord Jesus, be with us this hour, we pray, as we affirm our desire to follow where you lead us. You have promised that you are going to prepare a place for us, that where you are, we might also be. Make us worthy and willing to be where you are! Amen.

 

 

Today’s text comes from the Gospel according to St. John 17. John is listening in on a prayer that Jesus offers to God. This is what he remembers. Here begins the reading.

 

 

 

 

This is the Word of the Lord for us this day.

 

 

 

I realized something this week. In 39 years of ordained ministry, I have never preached a sermon on the glory of God. How many of you have heard the “glory” sermon lately? Good, because I’ve been here, and I haven’t preached it. At least I didn’t think I had. So that is good.

 

Perhaps it’s the word “glory” that bothers me. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s sort of like that “E-word” – “evangelism” - which we are sort of having to rediscover. That “G-word” – “glory” – has a lot of baggage for me. I think it repels many of us for a variety of reasons.  We just don’t have many sermons on “glory” nowadays.

 

Perhaps it was that battle hymn that I grew up with singing in a church as a child that spoke of wrath, and God’s judgment, and God’s wars, and “the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,” and how Jesus “died to make us holy, let us die to make all free.” And so 50,000,000 men, women, and children in the 1940s, as some of you in this room know, all over the globe tore each other apart, because we could not find peaceful, positive, appropriate ways to solve our problems and live together. 

 

I don’t know what it is about “glory.” Perhaps it’s the word “glory” itself. Maybe that’s the problem. You know, I grew up in the south. Down south the word is pronounced, “G-L-O-O-R-Y-!” “Yes, she’s been H-E-A-A-L-E-D by the touch of J-E-E-S-U-S, and its G-L-O-O-R-I-O-U-S-!” Do you remember that? “Great days a’comin, and we’re all gonna see God in all of his R-A-D-I-A-N-T   G-L-O-O-R-Y-!” I grew up on that stuff. Did you do that? Perhaps it’s my experience with the word. I don’t know. It just repels me.

 

Imagine my shock this week when the text given to the Church to consider all around the world remembers Jesus praying these words, “Father, the glory you have given me, I have given my disciples, so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17). If I am reading that right, folks, Jesus has given you and me and all of his followers everywhere the glory of God. Did you know that?

 

That’s what I want to break open today. I want us to focus on… I want us to try to discover… I’d like for us to name and claim our glory today. I think we could do that if we sort of come at it with some fresh eyes, and with some fresh ears, and with some fresh thinking. We might be able to come up with a fresh understanding. Yes, but more than that. I would hope we could open the box – open the gift box that Jesus gives us – that awesome, unusual, very, very peculiar Easter gift of God’s glory. I don’t know this for sure, but I think we have more glory on us, and in us, than most of us know. Well, let’s see.

 

Let’s start with regular glory. Let’s start with common-sense glory. Let’s start with the kind of glory the world talks about. 

 

There are 24 seconds left on the game clock. The Lakers have done everything possible to keep the ball out of Jordan’s hands. But there he is. You’ve seen him, dribbling the ball out there, way beyond the three-point range. Suddenly, five seconds left, Michael plunges toward the net, defies the laws of gravity, twirls in mid-air, and “Karooom,” winning the championship for the Bulls. It was awesome. It was amazing. It was a glorious moment. Glory!

 

Broadway’s own Angie Kern was a gymnast, according to her mother, since she was 22-months old. She’s worked, and she’s practiced. She has taken instructions and classes. She has competed, and worked, and practiced, and worked, and practiced. A couple of weeks ago, she traveled to Spokane, Washington to compete with the big girls in the Western Nationals. She came home, as one of the top-ten gymnasts on the beam in the western half of the United States. She’s 12 years old. She was in her element. It was glorious.

 

He flew to a large convention center in the Midwest. There were 8,000 fellow believers in a beautiful assembly. He marched down the hallway in this grand procession to the music of this great orchestra. At the appropriate time, he mounted the pulpit and preached one of the most dynamic, moving, inspiring sermons of his life. The service ended with a grand crescendo. Thousands of people stood and sang a beautiful, great old hymn lifting the roof right off the place, as Michael is hoping it will happen here, and he marched out of that huge assembly with banners unfurled and trumpets blaring. It was his moment of glory. It’s glorious.

 

Glory. The apex. The summit. Being in the zone. It’s extreme joy. Exhilaration. I mean… Glory! It just doesn’t get any better than glorious.

 

Now, you know those moments. All of you in this room know those moments. You’ve had those moments. You’ve had those glimpses of greatness, those glimpses of bliss, of magnificence, of pure pleasure. I want you to think of them today. I want you to name them. I want you to claim them – your moments of glory.

 

Now, throughout the gospel of John, Jesus speaks of this thing called “glory.” In John 2, Jesus and his disciples go to a wedding. You remember that story. You know it well. You’ve heard it for a long time. You remember what happened to the wine. It ran out. Jesus was asked to take care of the problem. He told the servants to fill the jars with water. Wonder of wonders, Jesus turns the water into wine. It was awesome. It was miraculous. It was glorious. Right there in Cana of Galilee, John says, the disciples of Jesus saw Jesus’ glory. Glorious.

 

You see… It usually takes something like that, I think, for us to see glory. We plod along day in and day out. We sort of get into ruts. You know about the ruts. I know about the ruts. Everyday, ordinary kinds of things, and then something happens. Something occurs. Something beautiful. Something awesome. If you were outside this morning, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was and is glorious out there. Isn’t it? Something so right, something so worthy, something totally out of the ordinary, and somehow in those moments, in that hour, everything gets changed. Everything gets transformed, and it is glorious. 

 

Now, here’s the catch. What kind of glory does Jesus give to those who follow him? That’s right there in the heart of that text today. Jesus says, “I give my followers my glory.” What in the world is he talking about? Now, I suggest the answer to that question, according to John, is Jesus gives the exact same kind of glory to his followers that the Creator gave to the Christ. Isn’t that interesting?

 

Back at that wedding, Jesus told his followers his hour had not yet come. His moment of glory was not here yet. He hadn’t taught. He hadn’t preached. He hadn’t performed miracles. His moment of glory, his hour of glory had not yet come. But as you all know, as we have followed Jesus, year in and year out, it becomes more and more obvious what he was sent to do. We follow him, don’t we, year after year, and we move closer, and closer, and closer to Jerusalem, and to the powers that be. There we remember what happens. He confronts the injustices of the powers that be. He stands beside the people in their hour of deepest need. Soon – we all know this – it becomes clear that his greatest hour involves threats, and trials, and betrayal, and rejection, and brutality, and suffering, and the nails of a cross. Do you get it? Jesus called that his greatest hour. A very peculiar definition, don’t you think, of glory?

 

He is a wonderful, kind, deeply Christian man. For years he worked in the loan department of a bank. He became aware of, however, a systemic but completely quiet practice of denying loans to ethnic minorities. Now, everybody knows there are federal laws now prohibiting such discrimination. But this one was so subtle. It was so smooth. It was so clearly, however, a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. It really bugged him. He couldn’t let it go. Through very serious, deep prayer, he decided he just couldn’t turn the other way any longer. He was going to have to deal with it. So he came up with the figures. He documented his case. Very quietly, very privately, and very respectfully he approached management. Exactly one month after he initiated this process, he was fired. Now the bank said it was just going through some reorganizational kinds of things. But he knew. He knew exactly why. 

 

He was out of work for seven months. When he did find employment, it was a much lesser job. People around him said, “You know, he’s going through a period of bad luck.” His friends said, “I know this must be a hard time for you.” 

But Jesus might have said, “This is your hour to share in my glory. And you are awesome.” Isn’t that strange?

 

Decades ago, when she was young and fearless, her church sent her to work as a nurse in a mission station in Japan. She had a very tough time, as you can imagine, in Japan in the 1940s. She encountered racial, cultural, and political resistance to her work, to her message, and to her very reason for being there. As you probably also know, to win the people over, the missionaries, in that day, gave away free medical care, free food, and free clothing. People really took that in, but on Sundays, when they gathered for church, only two or three of the locals would show up. 

 

She was jailed at the beginning of World War II. No one in the community around her stood up for her. After one year of deplorable treatment and abuse, she was released. She returned back to the United States, very sad, very defeated, very disillusioned. 

 

Yet, when she returned, her church welcomed her with open arms. They held a great banquet in her honor. They provided her a home in which to live and a place to work in the church-related medical facility, right there in the community. She said, “I came back to this country thinking I was a complete failure as a missionary, but fortunately for me, the church has an odd definition of success.” I think Jesus might have said, “This was your hour to share in my glory, and you were awesome.”

 

Students of Franklin Delano Roosevelt generally agree. They tell me that the polio attack he suffered in 1921 literally changed his life. Some of you remember those days. They say he might have become president regardless, whether he had to surmount that obstacle or not, but it was unlikely that he would have ever become a good president, much less a great president. But in fact, before he became crippled, F.D.R. was a pretty acceptable human being, but pretty much a glad-hander and a lightweight, according to the pros. Then, of course, came the struggle to walk again, and the stark realities he had to face, and how it toughened him up. His legs withered away, but from the waist up, he became a barrel-chested man, able to swing the useless parts of his body in such a way that communicated incredible strength to all kinds of people. They said the suffering he experienced deepened his sympathy for others. Most importantly, however, that polio did not separate him from other people the way some diseases affect people. In fact, they say, it actually drove him towards other people. Isn’t that interesting? Jesus might have said, “This is your hour to share in my glory. And you were magnificent.”

 

Point: To greater or lesser degrees, Jesus, according to our text today, gives every single one of his followers a piece of his glory. He gives us an opportunity to do the good, the right, the loving thing even if it costs a great deal. He calls us to share in his glory and in his ministry. The promise he makes, in John, is that he is going to prepare a place just for us – a place where we can go to be with him, because we would really like to be with him, and to partake in God’s magnificent splendor forever. Isn’t that amazing?

 

As Scripture says, “No eye has seen; no ear has heard; no mind has even conceived of what God has prepared for those who love God.” 

 

So, let me just ask you. Have you had a moment of glory lately? Did you know what it is? Can you name it? If not, well, I ask for you to watch for it this week. I have a feeling – just a feeling – that an opportunity is going to come along for you wherever you might be this week to share a moment of God’s glory.

 

According to Paul, he encouraged all believers, “In everything you do, not just moments, but in everything you do, whatever that is, do it all for the glory of God.”

 

Glory. You know what? It’s really a pretty good word after all.

 

And all the people say… “Amen.”

 

 

Glorious God, take us to the place where we may reside in the warmth of your love; a place where even in the darkness, there is the radiance of your grace. Thank you for being our companion and our friend. May your awesome light shine upon us, always. Amen.