2nd May 2010 - "Let your glory shine"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin
John 13:31-35

One of the many pleasures of being associated with this church is that every Wednesday I get to take the assembly at Tewin School. We learn new things about God, we say our prayers together, and we sing new songs. For the last two weeks we've been singing a wonderful song new to all of them – ‘All Heaven declares the glory of the risen Lord’. I wonder if you know it. And perhaps we will be able to introduce it here at some point. It speaks of the glory of the risen Lord.

Glory. That's a very important word for us, is it not? And not an altogether easy one to understand. I wonder what you think it means. We remember of course that in the Old Testament Ezekiel saw the glory of God leaving the Temple and going eastwards through the Mount of Olives and out into Babylon where the exiles were. It's a wonderful picture of the reality of the presence of God - a presence weighty, dignified, substantial, to which honour and glory should be given, and it later acquired the idea of brightness, Ezekiel calling it a ‘devouring fire’. Just as Moses had seen the very presence, the glory of God in the burning bush. Later writers describe glory not only as being the actual presence of God but also as something that belongs to the messianic age, that points to the future - and some of this background comes over to us in the New Testament. Glory is an integral part of the Kingdom of God, realised now and expected in the future. And nowhere is this more clearly expressed than in the person of Jesus Christ. The glory of God, says Paul, is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of John is soaked in the glory of God from first to last. Right at the beginning John says to his readers – ‘We beheld his glory’. The glory of God is seen in every miracle that Jesus performs: they are signs of the glory of God. The glory of God is a showing forth of the presence of God, a manifestation of God, an epiphany of God. Look at Jesus, says the Gospel writer John, and you will see in him God in his actual presence. And this morning’s gospel reading tells us that the ‘Son of Man is glorified.’ What does it mean and what does it imply?

When we take up the Gospel thread this morning, Jesus is about to die. He is on his way to the moment of supreme Glory, the climax of the whole Gospel. The chief glory of God in the Gospel of John is seen in the cross - this is the point where the glory of God is most chiefly seen, it is here that we see the glory of God in its greatest climax. So to say the Son of Man is ‘glorified’ means that the presence and the radiance of God will be seen chiefly in this supreme act of self-renunciation.

And now to the really brilliant bit. Before he goes to his death, Jesus invites his disciples to be bearers of the divine glory as well. How will they do it? By loving one another.  Just be loving.   Loving one another will display the presence of God - the glory of God will shine in you and you’ll be giving God the glory.

If you look at the life of Jesus they were just three things that he told his disciples and his many followers to do. He told them to pray, he told them to make communion, and he told them to love one another. He said to them that every day they should pray the Lord's Prayer. He said to them that every day, perhaps three times a day, they should pray ‘Our Father who art in heaven’. He told them to use that prayer as part of their daily prayer, to make it part and parcel of their lives. ‘Thy kingdom come thy will be done’ - and let it be done in me.  Prayer. That was the first of the really important things that they told them as he tells us to do. He told them to share the Holy Communion together. ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. To be united together, with him in their midst, the strong memory of him animating their lives. He told them to do exactly what we are doing here this morning, remembering our Lord and seeing him as the one who feeds us with the bread of life, the life of God himself. And he told them to love one another, just as he'd loved them.

We cannot be certain what Jesus would have regarded as the most important of these three things. For example, no Christian can live without prayer, if prayer is the attempt to let God shape our wills.  But I have a pretty strong sense that he would have regarded loving one another, or doing acts of love, as the most important thing that a Christian can do. That carer who day after day, night after night, selflessly cares for another, is glorifying God. That person who is striving to improve housing conditions in our most deprived areas, is glorifying God. That person who reconciles others, is glorifying God. All acts of love glorify God.

And so we are called, we are called to be bearers of the divine glory, to be people who manifest the glory of God too. The glory of God will be seen in loving Christian lives – in lives that radiate the divine love. So let us love one another as he loved us.

Lord, let us do your will, and let your glory shine in us.

Amen.