Bound for Glory

Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11 

The glory of God, as the bible talks about it, is not a fact “about” God that we can use or not as we see fit.  It is not an “attribute of God” as a philosopher of religion might say, trying to describe what God is like.  Strange to say, the bible is not interested in describing God.  Rather, the bible is about the glory of God, and that is something that transforms the ones to whom it is revealed.  It awakens a response of the whole person, the whole community—a response of praise, of thanksgiving, of awe and joy and worship, of obedience and love. The glory of God shows us how much glory of our own we have to give. 

That’s why we sing in church, “Glory to God in the highest.”  Glory is not just something we can receive, it is something we can give.    So the essential question that the bible puts to us as human beings is, “to whom will you give your glory?”  Will you return it to the giver, to the one who is truly glorious?  Or will you give it to something lesser?  Will you follow the fallen angels and the ruler of this world, who try to keep the glory of God for themselves?  

When we talk about Jesus, about what makes him the Messiah, the Son of the Father, Christ the Lord, we very often say that he, unique among human beings, was without sin.   But the Gospel of John offers us a different vocabulary for thinking about Jesus, and it is all about glory.  John announces this in the prologue at the very beginning of his story, when he says, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”  And after the wedding in Cana of Galilee, where Jesus changes water into wine, John adds that this was “the first of his signs,” that “manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

And if we also believe in him, it is not because we believe this or that thing about him.  We believe in him because of his glory, that brings the presence of God to us.  When we say, before the reading of the gospel at every celebration of the Eucharist, “Glory to you, Lord Christ,” we are not praising a book, or even the words in the book, but the presence we sense in the words.  We are saying that, listening to these words of Jesus, we are beholding life and truth.  We are on the way that leads to the fullness of presence, that we have a foretaste of in our sacramental celebration, where together we ascend into heaven, and unite with the chorus of angels singing “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory.” 

Today we come to that part of the gospel of John where Jesus is ready to complete his work, by giving over everything that a human being can receive of the glory of God.  This he will do on the cross.  But before he does, he prays that the Father will receive his gift, and give him an even greater one, the glory of the Father himself.  And this God will do, by raising him from the dead, and exalting him to heaven.  We are now 43^rd days from Easter.  It has taken us six weeks to get to this point, where we can understand just how far Christ’s resurrection takes us.  Because when Jesus prays to share the glory of God the Father, it is not for his sake, but for ours.   From now on, those who know the name of Jesus Christ, who keep his word, and believe that the Father sent him, will be the glory of God in the world.  And they will do this, says Jesus, when they are one, as the Son and the Father are one.

I spent last Wednesday and Thursday in the company of our Bishop, and the priests and deacons of our Episcopal Diocese of Northern California.  And I am happy to be able to report to you that the desire to be one, as the Son and the Father are One, is alive and well in this diocese.  It was manifest in the friendship and collegiality among the clergy, and between the clergy and the bishop.  The perspective I got was of a church that has ridden out the storms of conflict over biblical authority and human sexuality, and now desires something more than an end to hostilities—more unity, greater interrelatedness, a deeper sense of purpose, to glorify Christ for the sake of the world the Father sent him to save. 

In his informal report on Wednesday evening about what he’s been up to and thinking about, the Bishop told us about a church-wide conference that he attended in April in Memphis, called Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace.  It is part of a growing sense in the church that we need to speak out in response to our nation’s epidemic of self-inflicted violence.  And Bishop Beisner brought back from Memphis an invitation to send youth from every part of our diocese to join a pilgrimage taking place next summer in North Carolina, along the route of the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights movement.  And if we decide we want to, and this first pilgrimage is a success, there will be an opportunity to join another, in the summer of 2016, which is going to Auschwitz.  The purpose of these pilgrimages will be to engage our whole diocese in supporting and learning from these young people as they become formed as ministers of reconciliation.

In a meeting of the clergy of the Russian River Deanery, the geographical subsection of our diocese that stretches from Sonoma and Petaluma in the south, to Fort Bragg and Willits in the north, we rediscovered our strong mutual interest in working together to support initiatives we cannot carry out on our own.  Among other potential arenas of collaboration we talked about supporting the Latino ministry currently centered at St. Paul’s, Healdsburg, and expanding it to other parts of the deanery.  I came away from that meeting with an invitation to preside at a girl’s traditional Quinceañera service in Healdsburg on August 9, where I will lead the Eucharist in Spanish for the first time in my life.

These are only two of the exciting possibilities that I heard about at the clergy conference, but they are enough to give you the gist of whole event.  And all this came along at a moment when I, personally, am quite tired.  It has been a long run from Ash Wednesday, and I’m ready for some summer vacation.  But when I think about these opportunities, even along with all the good work that we are already doing here at St. John’s, I get energized.  I think that is because this week showed me something about the church I’ve never quite understood before.  In the church we love the world, and our impulse to seek unity across barriers of race, religion, language, class, and even species, is how we give our glory to what God has made.  But it’s hard to know if we are going about it the right way.  Some of the projects that we talked about at the clergy conference may never get out of the starting gate.  They may never fulfill the potential we can imagine for them now.

But the real work of the church is not to improve society.  It is to bring the world our witness to its glory, as we have seen it in Christ.  We can only do this united, in an attitude of worship.  Our unity in prayer is our basis of hope for reconciliation, and healing, and peace, which is what we have to offer to the world.  When we are together in this way, we can dare to try almost anything, and it may succeed beyond our wildest dreams, or it may fail miserably.  We may even, as First Peter says, be reviled and suffer, but still we are blessed, because we know that our brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.  Besides, being a smash hit and admired by everyone wasn’t what we set out to do anyway.  So there’s no reason to be anxious about any of it, because our only real purpose was to be united in giving Glory to God.   

    

     

How can we know the way?

Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14 

I have preached many times on today’s reading from the Gospel of John.  It is one of the passages that the Book of Common Prayer recommends for funerals.  For those who are grieving, it is reassuring to hear the words of Jesus that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house, and that he is going there to prepare a place for us.  It is good news, under those circumstances, and my job is to proclaim it, for strength and consolation. 

But it is a little different to read this passage today, on a Sunday morning in Easter season.  Granted, the spring it not as fresh as it was five weeks ago, when the green on the hills had not begun to fade, and the roses that are losing their petals now were just breaking their first bloom.   Maybe the light that burst forth from the empty tomb has dimmed just a bit, and the shadows are stealing back in around the edges of the world.  But when Thomas says to Jesus, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" he is not yet thinking of the martyr’s death that he will someday die.  That is still far away. 

Thomas asks this question because he has learned that Jesus, whom he followed along the roads of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, out across the Jordan and back again, who has led him and his friends here to Jerusalem, whom Thomas was ready to follow even to death, is going away, and leaving him behind.  Thomas’ question is not about the fate of Jesus’ soul, or about how to cope with his own grief and loss.  It is a question about how to continue the journey they have begun.  It is about carrying on in Jesus’ absence.  It’s a question about discipleship. 

It is a question we might ask, knowing that Christ is risen, but our lives are still in the midst of death.  Where we live, the Father’s house seems far away.  Jesus says he is going there to prepare a place for us, but there’s no getting around the fact that he is going and we are staying here.  He says he’s coming back for us, but he doesn’t say when.  And then he tells us that we know the way to the place where he is going, as if to say it will not be enough for us to simply wait around for him to get back, but we need to keep moving forward and he’ll meet us on the way. 

 

"Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

It is a good question for a group of people, like this one, that is in a year of discernment about its future.  God seems to have some purpose for us at St. John’s because, in spite of innumerable obstacles, we are alive, after decades of debilitating conflict and the death of schism.  But the time is upon us when the miracle of our existence is no longer enough to give us a sense of direction.  We are asking to know the purpose for which God called us back to life.

For the church, the answer to that question will always have something to do with remembering.  We know where we are going, at least in part, because we know the way that we have come.  But there is a danger in this, the danger that we will be satisfied with the answer that has already been given.  We might believe we have already arrived, when the answer that Jesus gives is about being on the way.  “I am the way,” says Jesus, inviting us to keep moving, trusting his guidance;  “and the truth,” he adds, not a truth cast in bronze, or set in stone, but the truth that lives and grows as we journey further with Christ.  And finally “the life”— life that is, by definition, dynamic, and changing, and ever renewing itself, or it is not life at all. 

We are justly proud of the long history of our congregation.  Our parish archives contain handwritten minutes of vestry meetings and ledgers of accounts that go back to the pioneer days of Petaluma.  We also have a collection of old parish newsletters that is not quite that old, but covers the first four years of the 20^th century, not long after this structure was built.  And what strikes me, reading those papers, is how entirely focused they are on churchly concerns.  There are little notes about parish life and reports of the rector’s travels, and appeals for the support of missionaries in Yreka, and Alaska and China.  There are long articles about ancient church history, and summaries of doctrine and biblical texts, but not a word about the social changes that are radically transforming everyone’s lives.

In those years this valley, like all of America, was rapidly urbanizing and industrializing, integrating into an expanding national and global system.  Her people were embracing the habits and values of the modern consumer society, but the only clues in the parish newsletter that all this was going on are the paid advertisements in the margins of the page.   It is as if the church lives in a different world, one that looks backward to simpler times, and forward only to heaven.  The unspoken message is that the modern world knows where it is going, and the church is just along for the ride.  And even if the world is not following Jesus, it is not for us to resist or critique.   Our role is to stand on the sidelines, keeping open a place apart for rest and inspiration, where religious culture and family tradition, and beauty, decency, charity and reverence are not completely lost.

The world still needs this from religion, but by itself it is no longer enough.  On Monday, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a report on the melting of glaciers in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica.  Their observations show an ongoing collapse of the ice in the region that has passed the point of no return.  Just this one source is causing a rise in global sea levels of about four feet.  The thing that alarms the scientists the most is that these are changes that used to happen in geological time, in hundreds of millennia, and now they take one or two or three human generations. 

In the face of runaway change, the church can no longer sit on the sidelines.  We must get out on the way.  We have to bear witness, like Stephen in the Book of Acts, that our leaders they do not know what they are doing.   Our civilization does not know where it is going.  It has no map, but is too proud to stop to ask for directions.   Of course, some Christians have been saying this for a long time.  They say, we know a different way, the way to the exits.  We believe the truth—the unchanging, fixed, literal truth of the Bible, and its iron jaws are closing on the world.  We hope for the life, the life that is death.  We know where we are going—to heaven, and you and your world can go to hell.

But there’s another way of being Christian, one that doesn’t hope for the destruction of the world.  It’s a way that reveres what God has created out of reverence for a wisdom and design that we do not understand.  It’s a way of loving what is passing, because it is not passing away to eternal death, but passing over into the house of God.  And wherever that is, we say, with the author of 1^st Peter, that it is a house that God is also building here, from living stones.  This place is not forsaken, not if we are to believe what Jesus says about his own future.  Because he doesn’t say that he is going to the Father to chill out, in a state of endless bliss and eternal rest.  He’s says he’s going to get busy. 

“Because I am going to the Father,” Jesus says, “I will do whatever you ask in my name.”  His priestly work, reconciling the world to God, making the love and wisdom, the compassion and justice of God come true and come alive in the world—the work that he used to do, so to speak, from our side, Jesus promises to continue from the other side, the side of God.  So what about us, we who are still here—what do we ask him for?  It’s a good question, since we don’t know where we are going.  I guess we ask him to show us the way.