Scripture/Sermon of the Day

When Jesus finished saying these things, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son can glorify you. 2 You gave him authority over everyone so that he could give eternal life to everyone you gave him. 3 This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent. 4 I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And I have been glorified in them.

I. Some form of the word “glory” is used six times in the passage we just read. This word is often used in the Old and New Testaments when talking about God. The Hebrew word most often translated as “glory” is kabod which means “weight” or “importance.” To give someone glory is to make them important in our lives. For John, God’s glory appears in Jesus. Jesus’ glory is revealed in his life and miracles and death. And his resurrection. Paul and John say that the goal of the spiritual life is to participate in Christ’s glory.

II. The hymn we’re singing today — called The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was written by the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in 1861. Its theme links the Union cause with God’s vengeance on the Day of Judgment. Julia and her husband Samuel were active leaders in the anti slavery politics of their time — today you could have seen them supporting Martin Luther King and Civil Rights and more recently, Black Lives Matter, and the teaching in schools and colleges of critical race theory. And isn’t it interesting that the last words of this song, sung at the end of the first verse and the end of the chorus are: “His truth is marching on.” Or — the glory of God, of Jesus, marches on in us.

III. That disturbing word “truth” keeps appearing in our Bible readings and hymns. Last week it was the theme of the sermon where Jesus promise send his disciples — people like us — his “Sprit of truth.” And I said that Jesus’ promise to give this Spirit might scare some people — people like members of my family who use a lot of energy to keep the truth hidden. I said that if my family knew that Jesus gives the Spirt of truth — they’d change their religion.

IV. Last week I was talking to someone — about truth and my family’s struggle with it. They said, “I never lie.” I wanted to say, “That’s a lie! Nobody never lies!” But I said instead, “Are you telling me the truth?”

But here’s the thing — just because you don’t lie doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth. The person who told me they don’t lie was also someone who didn’t reveal who they were, who didn’t talk about feelings which can expose truths that our words try to conceal.

V. When the Gospel of John talks about glory, he also talks about light. He says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. And we have seen his glory — full of grace and truth. But people rejected him because they “loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19)

VI. But I have sympathy for all those people that the Gospel of John talks about who loved darkness and hated Jesus, hated the light of God that exposes everything. It can be embarrassing or painful to bring ourselves under the light of God’s glory and have to look at the truth that is so carefully hidden in us.

VII. Listen to what the light revealed about this woman who was a Holocaust survivor. This is from Thomas Keating’s book “The Human Condition” which was made from two lectures he gave at Harvard Divinity School in 1998. Keating says he attended a panel discussion of people who had suffered during the Holocaust. A woman was there who survived the Holocaust but her parents had been killed. Later in her life she started a humanitarian organization to prevent such horrors from being repeated. Keating was talking to her at some point and she told him, casually, “You know, I couldn’t have started that organization unless I knew that, with the situation just a little different, I could have done the same things that the Nazis did to my parents and the others in the concentration camps.”

Keating said this woman “possessed true humility — the knowledge of oneself that clearly perceives that with just a little change of circumstances, one is capable of any evil.”

VIII. Jesus said he is glorified in us. The light and glory of his truth — the image of God hidden in us - comes to the surface of our lives like a gradual awakening: glory, light, love, humility — shining through even our simplest daily routines. Jesus said we glorify God by finishing the unique and particular work God gave each of us to do.