Easter 7 A: A Peculiar Glory
Dear Partner in Preaching,
You won’t often hear a Lutheran preacher or theologian talk about glory. At least not positively. Luther frequently railed against theologians of glory, those who trusted and elevated the role of human reason and ability with regard to our salvation. He argued instead for a theology of the cross, one that trusted completely in God’s mercy and grace as revealed in the cross of Christ. No, you won’t often hear a Luther preacher talk positively about glory.
Except today.
Or, at the very least, I can’t help but acknowledge how important “glory” is in this passage and, it would appear, to Jesus. “Glory” and “glorify” are mentioned no less than five times in the first five verses:
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”
That’s a lot of glory talk.
But, once you get over the preponderance of the term, it doesn’t take long to realize it’s a peculiar kind of glory Jesus is talking about. Keep in mind that this passage describes the conversation Jesus is having with his disciples on the evening he will be betrayed, arrested, tried, denied, and sentenced to death. It is not a setting that would typically lend itself to boasts about glory! Moreover, the “work” Jesus speaks of completing – and hence the reason he is to be glorified – is the work of the cross, the unexpected, even unimaginable place of his ultimate glorification. Why unexpected and unimaginable? Because the cross is a place of extreme vulnerability, isolation, and complete identification with humanity; that is, with us.
Perhaps it’s also both unexpected and unimaginable because we tend to identify glory with strength, with victory, with triumph and success and adulation. Yet Christ seeks glory in service and servanthood, in suffering, vulnerability, and loss. God is glorified in these things. Again, why? Perhaps because the human penchant for identifying strength with glory and vulnerability with weakness leads us to an unhelpful trust in ourselves and our abilities. And, when we finally realize that we are limited and fall short – whether by illness (including this pandemic!) or age or moral lapse or one of the simple but manifold disappointments we either suffer and inflict daily – the lie of our strength is exposed painfully by the very fact of our mortality.
And the shock of this “mortality reality” often leaves us with two choices – deny or despair. We may deny our mortality and vulnerability by imposing our will on others, by contrasting ourselves favorably with others, or simply by making the kind of vain boasts that seem rampant these days (but is, truthfully, part and parcel of human history). Indeed, at times we seem to believe that by insisting on our strength and glory relentlessly we make it a reality, something along the lines of Joseph Goebbels’ law of propaganda: “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
Except when it doesn’t. Like, say, in the face of a relentless virus. Then, when denial has failed, all too often despair sets in, an inability to believe there is a way forward. Deny or despair, these are the ultimate and disastrous outcomes of relying on human ability, human possibility, human glory.
And so Jesus goes to the cross to demonstrate God’s power to defeat death, the ultimate specter overshadowing human life and joy. Jesus’ utter rejection by the religious authorities, his suffering on the cross, and his death in weakness provide both the proof of human futility and the absolute necessity of God’s intervention. Similarly, Jesus’ resurrection asserts God’s power over all things, even death, and God’s ability and intention to open a new future.
All of which would be a delightfully pious assertion of God’s absolute sovereignty over humanity except for one thing: it is God who, in Jesus, enters into our mortal, vulnerable condition. It is God who endures unjust suffering and unbearable loss. It is God, ultimately, who dies. Jesus’ cross and resurrection testify not merely to human weakness and divine sovereignty but to God’s complete embrace of our weakness out of love. In Christ, to echo Paul, God chooses to give up divine sovereignty in order to privilege empathy, identification, and solidarity, all out of love. This is the “sacrifice” Jesus makes – not a blood offering to an angry and just God – but the sacrifice of divine right and power in order to communicate God’s profound, limitless, and life-giving love for God’s children.
And that sacrifice, that embrace of mortality, that identification and solidarity… that, according to Jesus, is what glory looks like. True glory, even divine glory, it turns out, is always a cruciform glory.
Okay, Dear Partner, I know this has been a lot of “theologizing,” perhaps more than is helpful. But it occurs to me that just now, as we find ourselves at a time when Christian leaders are asserting their individual rights and religious liberty to gather again and in-person for worship regardless of the best counsel about safety, about limiting the spread of the coronavirus, and about guarding the larger community against a resurgence of the virus and the physical, economic, and psychological toll that would take – at this particular time of Christian leaders asserting their rights, we might remember that Jesus urged us to seek glory not through self-assertion but through sacrifice. Not by claiming our freedom but by giving up some of our freedoms for the sake of our neighbor. Not by arguing that we are entitled to worship Jesus truly in our churches but by demonstrating that the most faithful worship of the God we know in Christ is through service to the vulnerable. Opportunities to glorify God by serving others, it turns out, all are around us and never more available than in times of extreme need.
You may or may not use the passage to anchor and explain some of the decisions your community may be making in response to the coronavirus. That is totally and appropriately up to you. Moreover, there are, I know, all kinds of factors influencing such decisions, ranging from the presence of the virus in your community to the readiness of your local health care system to the size and kind of gatherings you usually have, and so no one answer fits all. But… one mandate continues to be true for all: that Jesus has given us a new commandment, to love one another, and that obeying that command, and trusting in the promises of the sacrificially loving God we know in Jesus, is the only kind of glory worth talking about.
You have hard work in front of you during this time, Dear Partner. But also good work. Work to which you have been called and for which you have been prepared. Know as you go about it that you are in my prayers, prayers of gratitude for your faithfulness and prayers of supplication that you be granted additional measures of wisdom, courage, and compassion sufficient to the challenges of the day. Blessings on your proclamation and ministry this day and always.
Yours in Christ,
David
Thank you so much for this.
David, Thank you. My very wise mentor told me “God will always give you the gifts you need when you need the, IF you humbly pray and ask.” I don’t feel anything in my experience prepared me for this time, except every hardship, loss, or failure I experienced. Those are now the fodder of ministry for this time. It is humbling and faith building all at the same time.
Know your words help more than you can know. We hold you and your ministry in prayer. Blessings
Dead David – thank you for your great words. They are always wonderful to read, and I for one am always grateful of your prayers and encouragement. God bless.
DEAR David!! (It’s early!) 🙂