The Purpose of Suffering

Romans 5:1-5

These verses of scripture were very important to me thirty years ago when my father died in 1983. I did not know it at the time but within one year both my grandfathers and my father would die, leaving me at the ripe old age of 33 as the oldest man in the family. My father’s funeral was held in Danvers, Mass, and I remember turning the big Bible on the table at a funeral home to this passage. I read it and pondered it many times during those days, and it still remains one of the passages of scriptures closest to my heart. It is a treasure trove of wisdom, and I am glad it is our epistle lesson for today. I think it holds the secret – if we want to call it that – to the purpose of suffering. There are four points.

I. First is Narrowing down the Suffering. When I say that this passage contains the secret to the purpose of suffering I do not mean all suffering of all people at all times and places, what is commonly called the problem of theodicy. The so-called “problem of evil” is one of the chief arguments against the existence of God. The argument says if God is all powerful and all loving, then why doesn’t he stop the senseless suffering of innocent people? Examples like the Jewish holocaust or the suffering of innocent children are usually used as examples. If he doesn’t stop the suffering, then either he is not all-powerful or not all–loving; therefore God (as we traditionally understand God) does not exist. It is a strong argument and a profound theological problem, and I have struggled with it personally. I have written about it most recently in reference to tragedies like the Newtown Shooting and the Boston bombing. I have preached about it. It is a serious challenge to the theistic and Christian worldview. But that is not what I am going to be talking about today. I am going to narrow down the scope of the suffering that we are talking about.

This passage in Romans is not addressing all people’s suffering. It addresses only the Christian’s suffering. The apostle Paul narrows the scope of the suffering in verse 1-2, he tells us who he is addressing. He says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” He is talking to those who have been justified by faith in Jesus Christ and have found peace with God through Christ by God’s grace. He is talking to Christians. He is not talking to or about atheists or agnostics, Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims or New Agers or adherents of the pop spirituality of today. The purpose of everyone’s suffering is a valid question. But that is not what the apostle Paul is talking about here.

This is an important distinction to make. A lot of people will make general statements about suffering. People will say that it is a universal truth that everything works out for everybody for good, and they will say that as if they are quoting a biblical maxim. But that is not what the scripture says. The text referenced in such comments is Romans 8:28, which is another one of my favorite passages. It does say, “all things work together for good,” but you have to finish the sentence to understand what it is really saying. The full verses reads, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Again the apostle is talking to believers in Christ here. And that is also what I am going to address.

Maybe all the suffering of the world does work together for the good of everyone. If God is love and he loves everybody, then it seems to follow that he would work out everything for the good of everyone. But our text doesn’t say that, so I am not going to take that further step this morning. I am going to stick to what the passage says. It is addressed to those who have been justified by faith in Christ and experienced peace with God by the grace of God. 

I also want to narrow down this topic of suffering even further to unavoidable  suffering.  Some suffering is inevitable, and some of it is not. Some physical suffering is inevitable; pain is going to happen to all of us. We can’t get through life without it. We can reduce the amount and likelihood of it; we can do things to protect ourselves physically from harm – like taking safety precautions like using seat belts and having regular medical checkups and early treatment of medical conditions. But we are never going to be free of all physical pain; it comes with physical life. The same with emotional suffering. It comes with being human. We are going to lose people we love, we are going to fail sometimes, we are going to make mistakes and hurt people and be hurt by people. Having family, friends, acquaintances, enemies, just living as part of society means a certain amount of emotional suffering. Life hurts.

But it is also true that a lot of emotional suffering is unnecessary. A lot of it is self-inflicted. A lot of suffering is caused by our own minds. It is one thing to be hurt emotionally by some event or person. That is inevitable. It is another thing to keep replaying that past event in our mind. When we do that we are reliving the hurt and pain over and over again as if it were happening now. Our body responds with stress when we are remembering and emotionally reliving something bad that happened. That is unnecessary suffering. The same is true with worrying about the future. We live bad things in our minds that never happened. We speculate about something that might happen in the future, and rehearse it emotionally, even though it never really occurred and might never occur. A lot of suffering is mentally self-generated and self-inflicted. We can stop that suffering with spiritual disciplines. But today I am going to talk about inevitable suffering – both physical and emotional – that comes with being human.

2.  Second, the apostle Paul talks about Rejoicing in Suffering. Paul says in verse 3 “we rejoice in our sufferings.” That is the English Standard Version. The NKJV says, “we also glory in tribulations.” NIV: “we also glory in our sufferings” “we also exult in our tribulations,” “we also rejoice in our afflictions,” “we also boast in our sufferings.” There are different ways of translating this, but you get the idea.  He is saying that the key to approaching the inevitable suffering of life is to change our attitude toward it.

Some people’s attitude toward suffering is to complain. Some people whine about the hardships of their lives. Some people make suffering the focus and centerpiece of their whole lives. They seem to derive a sense of meaning from suffering. Their life becomes the story of their suffering; if the suffering magically disappeared, they wouldn’t know who they were. And if they didn’t have physical pain or emotional drama in their relationships, they would have to find something else to complain about - the weather or politics or the government or family and friends. We all know people like this. A lot of suffering is the self-caused and self-inflicted suffering. The key to all types of suffering – inevitable or evitable – is to change one’s mind about it. Rethink it. The word “repent” literally means to rethink.

Paul says that we are to rejoice in suffering. That is what he did, and Paul knew something about suffering. He suffered a lot. He was persecuted severely with physical beatings and imprisonments as well as having physical ailment and economic hardships and opposition from enemies in the Jewish synagogues and the Christian churches and the Roman government. Everyone was out to get him. The apostle Paul knew real suffering. And he said that we are to rejoice in our sufferings, glory in our sufferings, boast in our sufferings! That is a radical rethinking about suffering. This is not a Pollyannaish, whistle a happy tune, close your eyes and ears and ignore reality. This is a spiritual reinterpretation of life based on his faith. This brings me to my next point, which is …

III. Processing our suffering. This is the meat of the passage. He says in verse 3-4 “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (NIV) He  is describing suffering as a process, and that process is redemptive. This is a key truth of Christianity. This is why the cross – a symbol of suffering and shame, as the old hymn says – is the central symbol of our faith. Suffering is redemptive. This is a different way of thinking about suffering. Our society’s idea of suffering is that it has no redeeming value. But the gospel says that suffering is a process that produces good in our lives. “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character; and character produces hope.”

Suffering produces perseverance. Some translations use the word endurance. But this is not just stoically gritting our teeth and enduring something bad; it is persevering knowing that the end of the process is something good. Have you ever noticed how a person who has endured suffering can minister to others who are going through the same type of suffering? Only recovering alcoholics know the suffering of being an alcoholic and can be a sponsor to help someone else going through the same thing. The same with any type of suffering – whether it be physical or sexual abuse, grief, cancer survivor, amputees, PTSD. This is Memorial Day weekend; I heard on 60 Minutes recently that 22 veterans commit suicide every day. That is almost one an hour, due to PTSD or traumatic brain injury or clinical depression. A person who has been in the depths of it knows what it is like and can help a person. Suffering gives us the ability to minister to others who are suffering. This same apostle says elsewhere: “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Suffering produces perseverance, which is an inner strength to continue one day at a time.

“Perseverance produces character.” Life involves change, whether we like it or not. Things will never stay the same. Hardships in life change us for better or worse; that is a fact. For some people, hardships and sufferings harden them. They become bitter and angry, and their hearts are hardened. “Why is this happening? Why is God doing this to me? I have never done anything to deserve this!” That attitude hardens a person’s heart against God and short circuits the transformative power of God in our lives.

Francis Bennett lived most of his life as a Trappist monk, first in the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (not far from where I went to seminary)` and later in a Trappist community in South Carolina. He worked for years as a hospital and hospice chaplain. In his book “I Am That I Am” just published last month, he describes a 43 year old woman named Mary – a wife and mother - suffering from cancer. The cancer had destroyed this beautiful woman’s face requiring the surgical removal of her tongue and jaw, so she was not able to eat or speak. Francis was her hospice chaplain.  Every time he visited her she would write on her tablet “Why is God doing this to me?” She would phrase it different ways, but it was basically the same question. She became more and more bitter and angry at God and life as the weeks went by. In fact she wore out one hospice chaplain with her anger, and Francis was her second chaplain. One day God inspired him to say these words to her: “Mary, the only way I know of to get beyond the kind of pain you are experiencing right now is the way of absolute surrender.” He says he felt like God was saying these words through him. After he spoke these words, she just gazed at him for about three minutes, then she wrote on her tablet “Thank you, Francis.”

He writes “Mary had surrendered completely and utterly that day. She seemed to be a different person. All the bitterness disappeared and an unconditional joy appeared in its place. Her birthday was about two days after this event and it was the most joyous party I had ever attended. There was a presence of peace and joy that surrounded Mary from that day forward that was palpable. Everyone around her could feel it. When I visited her after that day, I felt uplifted in her presence. She was transfigured, radiating a living light and peace and serenity. The next week she wrote on her tablet: I used to ask God and myself every day, Why me? Now I find myself saying, Why not me?.... This statement, coming from a woman who, just a week before, was so bitter and angry at God seemed truly incredible to me, like a miracle…. Mary only lived about two weeks after this breakthrough.”

Suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character and character hope. Suffering can create a sense of hopelessness in people. But when one surrenders oneself and one’s suffering to God, then it can produce hope. The epidemic of suicides in our country is disturbing. Do you know that more military personnel died by suicide last year than were killed by the enemy in Afghanistan or elsewhere. This is the real enemy. Everyone seems concerned about gun related deaths these days; people want to pass gun control laws to prevent gun violence. But I have mentioned before from this pulpit the disturbing statistics that almost twice as many deaths from guns are from suicide than homicide. 19,000 gun-related deaths are suicides compared to 11,000 homicides each year. All the gun control laws in the world are not going to stop suicide, unless you outlawed all guns, and then people would just find another way. Hopelessness is the problem – hopelessness caused by the emotional pain and suffering of life. But when our suffering is surrendered to God – the God who knows suffering in Jesus Christ – then suffering is transformed and we are transformed. Suffering produces perseverance and that perseverance produces character and that character produces hope. And Paul says that “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

IV. This brings me to my final point, which is the Spirit with us in Suffering. That Spirit is the Holy Spirit. In suffering, the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts. That is the end result of suffering according to the apostle Paul. When suffering is sanctified by God’s Spirit, the end result is not despair and bitterness. It is hope and love. The love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Suffering causes some people to doubt the love of God. They ask how a God of love can allow suffering. But the Holy Spirit turns suffering into an experience of the love of God in a way impossible to explain or understand.

This is the mystery of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What some people use as an argument against God becomes an experience of God and his love. That is the meaning of the cross. The cross is suffering and pain. It confronts suffering head on. Even Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, Why has thou forsaken me?” he suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually. God’s answer to his Son on the cross was not to stop the pain and take Jesus off the cross. God’s answer was hope in suffering and beyond the suffering. The suffering and death of Christ on the cross was to be the greatest symbol of the love of God the world has ever known. And that hope has not disappointed us. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead, and because he lives we will live also. And we have received the Holy Spirit, who has poured the love of God into our hearts. Suffering opens a space in our hearts for the love of God to be poured into it by the Holy Spirit. That love fills us with a peace beyond human understanding and a joy deeper than suffering. That eternal love of God lived in us, now and forever, is the purpose of suffering.  

The Holy Who?

Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17

Today is Pentecost. It is the day on the Christian calendar when Christians celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in power upon the early church. There is a branch of Christianity that takes its name from this holiday. They are called Pentecostals. I don’t know how familiar most of you are with Pentecostal Christians. Pentecostalism began in the early 20^th century in California and quickly spread throughout the country and the world. It emphasizes dramatic spiritual gifts. The most distinctive practices are speaking in tongues, prophesying, and the healing of the sick in an instantaneous manner. These are often accompanied with displays of emotion that are just as dramatic as the gifts. Sometimes people fall on the floor, supposedly under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Some of them used to be called Holy Rollers because they rolled on the floor. The Pentecostal movement came into mainline churches in the 1960s to 1980s in the charismatic movement. 

I got to know a number of Pentecostal pastors when I was in western Pennsylvania. For several years I was part of a weekly pastor’s prayer group that included mainline, evangelical and Pentecostal pastors. It was a truly ecumenical and interracial, and I enjoyed the diversity. In fact most of the pastors in that group were Pentecostal. I even attended a couple of evening services in the Pentecostal churches of these pastor friends to understand it better.  I will say this for them - they sure know how to pray – loudly and at great length. And they know how to grow churches. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing segment of Christianity worldwide. But I am not Pentecostal and I am not going to be advocating this type of activity here in the Federated Church, so some of you can relax right now. I disagree with Pentecostals theologically on this matter. But I do think it I important to know the Holy Spirit, who plays the main role in the story of Pentecost. My question this morning is: who or what is the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Christian trinity. Christians worship one God in three persons. This is difficult to understand and impossible to explain. So I am not going to try, except to say that the concept of the trinity came out of the spiritual experience of the early Christians. They experienced God in the traditional Jewish manner as a transcendent masculine Deity; this is God the Father. They also experienced God in the man Jesus of Nazareth – understood as God the Son. And they experienced God coming upon them in power and within them as God the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the trinity is the way the church theologically reconciled these three experiences of God and yet affirm the Biblical truth that there is only one God. That is all I am going to say about the Trinity in this message. Now I am going to focus on the Holy Spirit.

Again, who or what is the Holy Spirit? First of all the Holy Spirit is a who, not a what, according to scripture. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal divine force. The Holy Spirit is not the cosmic Force of the Jedi in Star Wars, nor the Eastern concept of chi as in Tai chi or ki as in Reiki. The Holy Spirit is not some form of energy that can be manipulated or used by human beings for our physical or spiritual benefit. The Holy Spirit is clearly described in Scripture as a personal. It is more accurate to describe the Holy Spirit as suprapersonal – above and beyond our normal concept of personal. God is so much greater than what we usually understand as a person. Even though Christians experience God as personal and describe the trinity as three persons, our human concept of a person is too small to contain God. God transcends and supersedes ideas of personal and impersonal. We can experience God as Holy Spirit, but we cannot get our minds around who God is. I use the word he in reference to the Holy Spirit because that is biblical language, and I honor the biblical tradition by using it. But God clearly is not male or female, he or she. The Bible says that in Christ there is no male or female; surely that also is true of God the Spirit. So who is the Holy Spirit? Our scriptures lessons this morning tell us three things about the Holy Spirit.

I. First, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Power. This comes across very clearly in the story of the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts. The early Christians – at least the eleven apostles and probably many more than eleven people – were all together in one place on the Day of Pentecost, which was a Jewish holy day. (I think there were many more there were many more people present than traditionally pictured, including men and women. Because it says later that this was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel that said that “your sons and daughter will prophesy…. And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” But I won’t get into that controversy.)  No matter who they were or how many they were, the Holy Spirit came upon them in power. The story begins: “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.”

This is a scene of loud noise and mighty wind. Think tornado. If you have ever been near a tornado, you know what it sounds like and feels like. When we lived in Southern Illinois the parsonage was in the path of a tornado; it sounded like a freight train barreling toward our house. It spared the house but knocked down a huge tree in our yard. If you haven’t experienced a tornado firsthand, you have undoubtedly heard news reports or seen stories on the Weather channel. That is what happened on the day of Pentecost. Then add fire to the tornado. Combine the wind and sound of a tornado with the experience of being in a house fire – having flames of fire all around you. The story continues in verse 3 “Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.” This is a picture of noise and wind and fire swirling around and engulfing each person in that place. This is a depiction of divine power coming upon these early Christians. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of power.

This story is telling us that we can experience a higher power, as the 12 step folks say. We can live by a power deeper and greater and higher than our own. We can experience and live by the power of God. As Christians we believe that this power has been given to us by God through Christ. This is not just a power given to an elite few who were lucky enough to live in Jerusalem in 30 AD and be in this place on this particular day. The book of Acts tells story after story of how something similar happened to many others as the gospel spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea to the uttermost parts of the earth - all the way to Sandwich, New Hampshire. This spiritual power, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, is upon us and in us and through us. This power is in every believer. It is just a matter of whether we are aware of this Spirit of power and live in that Spirit or live by our own strength. 

II. Second, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of communication. The story continues in verses 4-6 “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.” Often this scene of Pentecost is described as happening in the small private upper room where the Last Supper took place. That is why this scene is often depicted as only involving eleven men. But that does not fit the facts of the passage. It says that a multitude of Jews heard the sound and heard these Christians speaking in their own language. I think this happened in the temple courts, where Christians were used to gathering together for worship. That also is a controversial interpretation, but I think it fits the text. 

In any case these Christians were speaking in languages that were not their own and which they had never learned. That is the miracle of Pentecost. Some interpreters say that this was a miracle of understanding, not speaking – that people miraculously heard their own language even though these Galileans were speaking in their own language. In either case this was a miracle of communication. The whole point of the power of the Holy Spirit present was , as verse 11 says, “we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” This is all about God communicating to humans through the Holy Spirit.

 I don’t know if the Spirit communicates in this manner today. My Pentecostal friends say he does. They say that their practice of speaking in tongues is the same thing as Acts 2, that Pentecostals today are actually speaking in an unknown language. But I am skeptical. I have done a little research into this. There have been studies done of the Pentecostal phenomenon known as glossolalia, speaking in an ecstatic language. Recordings have been made of Pentecostals speaking in tongues, and they have been analyzed by linguists. They say that glossolalia bears no resemblance to any language. It does not have the characteristics of language. It is just certain syllables and sounds repeated over and over. It seems to be a natural psychological phenomenon rather than a supernatural spiritual gift. That is my conclusion. In spite of the anecdotal evidence of people today who say they have spoken or heard someone speak in a real language they never learned, there is no objective evidence that this actually happens.  I am not saying God can’t do it; I am just saying that that God is not doing it today, as far as we can tell.

But I believe the Holy Spirit still communicates to human beings.  The apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 “12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. [Another translation says “ communicating spiritual truths in spiritual words.” 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The Holy Spirit communicates in the Spirit, communicating truth too deep for words.

III. Third, the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of adoption. Our epistle lesson says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ….”

This amazing passage tells us who the Holy Spirit is and who he is not. He is not the spirit of bondage nor a spirit of fear. “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear.” A lot of religion is about bondage and fear.  Bondage to religious laws and rules, diets and customs, rites and rituals, creeds and commandments, which if you follow correctly will result in achieving what we Christians would call salvation. But with religions of bondage, you never know for sure if you are doing it right, if you have chosen the right religion and whether you are on the right path. Maybe those other people are right and we are wrong, and we are going to hell. This produces fear: fear of punishment, fear of condemnation, fear of hell, fear of an angry God squashing us if we get out of line – morally or doctrinally. So we better circle the wagons and build up the walls to protect us from them, whoever them is. Religion of bondage is built on fear. The leaders of such religion will feed that fear in order to control you and keep you in line. They will use techniques involving guilt and shame. The spirit of bondage and fear is a terrible thing.

But our scripture says, “you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God….”  Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Scripture says that the love of God casts out all fear. The Holy Spirit sets us free. When Christ sets us free we are free indeed. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” The Holy Spirit is not a spirit of fear or bondage.

The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of adoption. The apostle is telling us that we have received is a spirit of adoption that declares us to be children of God and heirs of God. In Christ we are the beloved children of God. This is the experiential reality of what it means to be a Christian. When we are talking about Pentecost today we are not talking about theological dogma; we are talking spiritual experience. Actually experience is not even the right word. We wouldn’t say we experience ourselves as children of our natural parents; I simply say I am the son of Wilbur and Rachel Davis. In the same way the apostle says that we have “received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God….” He is saying that the Holy Spirit within us affirms us that the deepest level of our being – which the Bible calls our human spirit – that we are children of God. We don’t have to convince ourselves or prove to ourselves or others that we are children of God. The Holy Spirit bears witness in us with our spirit that we are children of God.

“And if children then heirs —heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” That means that we have an inheritance. When my parents died, I and my siblings received an inheritance. When Jude’s parents died recently, she and her siblings received an inheritance. When Jesus Christ died - when the immortal God the Son in some paradoxical  way died, then we as children of God received an inheritance. The apostle Peter calls this “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

One does not earn an inheritance. We receive an inheritance as a gift. It is a gift of love from one who died to her or her heirs. Through the death of Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we have an inheritance as the heirs of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. All of England may be in a tizzy now because of the anticipated birth of the child of Prince William and Kate, who will be heir to the throne of England. But that is nothing compared to being heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. That is our birthright as children of God. And the Holy Spirit affirms that inheritance deeply in our spirits.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Power, the Power of God at work in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Communication, communication to us his grace and truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Adoption, affirming that in Christ we are children of God. Thanks be to God for his Holy Spirit.  

Theory of Everything

John 17:20-26

I am not a scientist, even though while in high school and college I originally planned to be one. Even though I took the religious route instead, I still enjoy reading science books and articles and watching science shows – especially about the origin of the universe and quantum physics. The vastness of the universe both on the macro and micro level – the cosmic and subatomic scale - fills me with wonder. It puts things in perspective and reminds me how little I am and how little I know and understand.

There is one concept that fascinates me in particular. Theoretical physicists call it the Theory of Everything. The theory of everything or final theory seeks to explain all known physical phenomena in scientific terms, and be able to predict – in principle - the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out. It seeks to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. The theory has not yet been successfully formulated and is one of the unsolved problems of physics. Being a layman scientifically, I don’t really understand the problem, much less the possible solutions. But I see it as an attempt to understand how the universe works, explaining it in terms of one grand theory. In fact in theoretical physics there is even called a theory called the Grand Unified Theory.

There is a corresponding problem in philosophy – which I know a little bit more about - called the problem of the One and the Many. This is about metaphysics rather than physics. It goes back to Plato and even earlier to pre-Socratic philosophers. In Christian philosophy it seeks to understand how the one God is related to the many things of God’s creation. In other words, how is everything in the universe related and how is it all connected to God? This may all sound much too complex and heavy for a Sunday morning sermon – especially on Mother’s Day. So I will give you the quick answer: the solution is Christ. In fact the answer to almost any question for the Christian comes down to Christ, as any Sunday School student knows.

There is an old joke about a Sunday School teacher using squirrels for an object lesson. He started out by saying, "I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what the answer is." The children nodded eagerly. "He lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)..." No hands went up. "And he is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)..." The children were looking at each other, but still no hands raised. "And it jumps from branch to branch (pause) and chatters and flips its tail when it's excited (pause)..." Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The teacher breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. "Well," said the boy, "it is probably Jesus ... but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!"

This morning I don’t want to talk about physics or squirrels. I want to talk about our lives. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things in their lives. They try to make sense of everything that happens – from personal tragedies to Boston Marathon bombings. They try to discern the will of God for their lives. The answer – as simplistic as it may sound – is Christ. Christ is what connects us to everything. He is our Grand unified theory – the theory of everything – except that Christ is not a theory; he is reality. Our scripture lesson for this morning is one of the great passages in the Bible. I love it not only because it helps me to put everything in perspective theologically, but also because it rings true to my own experience of Christ. I hear these words of Jesus and they ring true to me on a deep level. So what I have to say this morning is not going to be difficult to understand – like theoretical physics. Hopefully it will be very simple.

I. The first point I find in this passage is Oneness with God – Communion with God. In this passage Jesus prays a prayer for us. He prays this prayer on the night before he dies. Right before he died, Jesus was thinking of us – which itself is very moving. He says: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word.” He had just finished praying for this 12 apostles. Now he is praying for those who will believe in him through the word of the apostles. That means not only first century people who heard the apostles directly, but also all those throughout the centuries who would believe through the testimony of the apostles contained in the written gospels in our NT. So that means us. He prays in verse 21 “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” This one verse is an amazing statement. It fills me with the same wonder as I feel when I look at one of those photographs of distant galaxies taken by the Hubble telescope.

This passage tells us that Jesus is one with God. This is a repeated claim in the Gospel of John. It begins in the very first verse of the Gospel of John and runs as a unifying thread through the whole gospel. The Gospel of John begins with the words: ‘In the beginning was the Word [which refers to the eternal Christ before he became man] and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Without getting too much into the philosophical underpinnings of this verse, this is saying that before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born, who Jesus really was as the Eternal Word was one with God, and in fact he was God.

This is the basic claim of Christianity - that the man Jesus was not just a human being, but was in some real and meaningful sense Divine. Jesus described his relationship to God in our passage today in these words: “You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.” This means that we can experience God in Jesus Christ. When I look into the distant heavens I see God. I see not only the creation of God, but I actually experience God through the wonder of his creation. When I read about the complex sub-atomic world of quarks and Higgs bosons – I see not only the intricate handiwork of God, I experience God. And when I look at Jesus Christ, I see God. We can get really into theology here and how Jesus is God, but for me that is mostly a word or idea game. I see these words of scripture as ways of expressing spiritual experience. When I say that Jesus is God, I mean that I experience Jesus as God. That God was and is in Jesus and Jesus in God. I think that is what Jesus meant when he prayed these words – that he experienced his oneness with God.

Jesus also wanted us to experience that oneness or communion with God for ourselves. Listen to what Jesus prayed. He prayed, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.” He goes on in verses 22-23 to say, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one….” Verses 22- 23 are even more astounding to me than verse 21.

A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon on the glory of God. I talked a lot about Jesus as the glory of God, quoting the beginning of John’s gospel where he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The glory of God was beheld in and through Jesus Christ. I defined glory as the manifested presence of God. Here Jesus says, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them.” The glory of God that was in Jesus, Jesus says he has also given to us! That same glory of God is in us. The powerful manifested presence of God is in us. That is an amazing statement!

Then he goes on to say: “that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me.” Jesus is saying that just as he is one with God the Father, so are we to be one with Him and God. This is talking about our union with God, being united with God. We can go all types of theological places with this idea. People can develop monistic philosophical systems or pantheistic theologies. I don’t go there. I don’t think Jesus is talking theology or philosophy; Jesus was not primarily a theologian or a philosopher. I think Jesus is talking spiritual experience.

Here I think that Jesus is inviting us to our own experience of being one with him and one with God. This is the heart of true Christian spiritual experience – the heart of being a Christian. The Christian life is not primarily about holding correct doctrine about Jesus or living by a certain Christian code of ethics. Those things are certainly part of Christianity, and I believe them and teach them, but they are secondary. They come after the experience; they flow from our relationship with Christ and God. The most important thing is being one with Christ and one with God through Christ.

Personally I think this is missing from much of Christian religion today – not only missing from mainline Protestant Christianity, which tends to be too much in the head - but also missing from much of evangelical Christianity. Most Christians of any denominational variety have little awareness of what Jesus is talking about here in this passage about being one with Christ and one with God. I might be wrong. It is impossible to get into someone else’s mind and heart, and I definitely would never presume to judge another’s relationship with God – only God can do that. But as a fulltime pastor for 35 years now I have had many discussions with many Christians about their understanding of God, their experience of God and their relationships with God. My assessment is that a lot of Christian religion is mostly ideas.

What Jesus is inviting us to in this passage is not just an idea. This is reality. In fact it is more real than what most people mistake for real life. Most of our lives we live in our heads – the realm of our ideas. We mistake our thoughts about the world for the real world. People create stories about their lives with themselves in the starring role. Everything that happens is all about them. Ideas are not real; they are just in our heads. But God is real. The true God is not an idea. God is real. And Jesus is saying that we can experience unity with true God like Jesus experienced unity with true God. Listen to Jesus’ word again: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

This experience of God that Jesus is inviting us to is not just an inferior imitation of what Jesus experienced. Jesus calls it here “perfect,” “that they may be made perfect in one.” He is talking about us being “made perfect in one.” This is the type of thing Jesus said often that Christians don’t really know what to make of and so we gloss over his words and do not take them seriously. A few chapters earlier 14:12 Jesus said this, “ Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” We will do greater works than Jesus did? Do we really believe this? We don’t know how to deal with such words because they don’t fit with our ideas of Jesus or ourselves. Jesus is saying that what he experienced, we can experience. What he experienced of God, we can experience of God. We can experience it because we are in him and he is in us, and we are in God and God is in us – just like Jesus prayed! What Jesus prayed for us is real!

There is another important point that I need to make from this passage. It is about the purpose of this unitive experience of God. Jesus said in verse 21, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” Verse 23 “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

There are actually a couple of things here. The purpose of this experience and awareness of our unity with God and Christ is so that people might know that God sent Christ. In other words there is a missionary purpose to all this – that people might believe in Christ.  This is not just about us. We tend to make spirituality all about ourselves. That is especially true of the “spiritual but not religious” movement in our society now, people who respond to surveys saying they have no official religious affiliation to any church or religion. Yet many of these will say they are spiritual. What they mean is that they have an individualized spirituality – designer religion. It is all about them. What Jesus is talking about is not just about us. In fact it is not about us at all. The more we know God and less it is about us. The more we experience our communion with God, the more that the self disappears in the majesty and greatness of God. Jesus said we have to die to self to live to God. We have to lose our selves to gain God. It is not about us. It is so that others may know Christ and God.

It is also about love. Jesus talks about the centrality of love in this passage: “that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” In the closing verses of the passage Jesus mentions love several times. Verses 24-26 “You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” The oneness that we experience in Christ and in God is love. It is a unity of love. We love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength – and that love overflows to loving others as ourselves. Love is the nature of God; God is love. When we are one in Christ and one in God we are one in love. You could say that Love is the grand unified theory. It is the theory of everything. Love is incarnated in Jesus Christ. When we are in Christ, that love is also incarnated – enfleshed and lived in our lives. It is not about us. It never was. It is all about God and God’s love expressed through us to others. That is the theory of everything.

Experiencing God

John 14:23-29

The cover story of the April 15 edition of Time magazine was entitled “The Latino Reformation: Inside the New Hispanic Churches transforming religion in America.” It explored the change in Hispanic religion from predominantly Roman Catholic to Protestant, and particularly to evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. It said that the desire to experience God personally is one of the driving forces behind this transformation. Experience – personal experience of God - is the focus of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. I think that this is true of all forms of Christianity. I think everyone wants to experience God. I think it is the same drive that is behind the “spiritual but not religious” movement of the last decade, and the increase in the so-called “nones” (spelled NONES), those who in surveys do not identify themselves with any particular religion, but would nevertheless consider themselves spiritually inclined. I think it was the force behind the New Age movement of the 1980’s and 90’s and its successor, the Pop Spirituality of today. People want to experience God. That is what religion and spirituality is all about. That is what set me on the spiritual path back in the 1960’s and 70’s and what led me ultimately to Christ. I think it is still what pulls people to investigate spiritual matters.

Most people do not rules or rituals, dogma and ecclesiastical structure for their own sake, but only insofar as they can help bring them into an experience of God. This is what is important to me. There are two things that are most important to me in religion. One is community – being part of a caring community of faith. The other is communing with God. I am not saying other aspects of religion aren’t important – doctrine is important and ethics is important - but these are the two most important aspects. Today I am going to talk about communing with God – experiencing God – using this passage in John’s gospel as the framework for my remarks. There are three aspects of experiencing God mentioned in this text.

I. The first is experiencing the Love of God. Jesus starts off our passage in verses 23-24 saying, “Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” This tells us that we experience the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Without the story of Jesus, the love of God is just a fuzzy feeling. Feelings come and go. That is why marriages fail so often. People mistake the feelings they have for one another as love. So when the feelings change, they think that the marriage is over. The Love of God is not a feeling – neither our feelings for God nor God’s feelings for us. Love can be expressed in feelings, but it is not based in feelings. Love is based in the nature of God. And the nature of God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. This is why the gospel story of Jesus is so important. Christianity is not primarily a philosophy or a worldview or an ecclesiastical structure. Christianity is the story of God expressing his love for us in history in the person of Jesus Christ. John, the apostle of love, wrote: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  Love is God sending his Son. Love is incarnated in action. God’s love was enfleshed in Jesus Christ, and especially in Jesus laying down his life for us. You can say you love someone all you want, and it may or may not be true. But when you lay down your life for someone, that is when love is revealed as genuine.

Our love for God, if it is real, must be more than feelings for God. That is why warm fuzzy feelings for the Creator when walking in the woods are not enough. It is nice and it is real, but it is not love. That is why Jesus says in our passage, ““If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words….” God’s love is manifested in action towards us, and our love for God is manifested in action toward God and his Son – in keeping Christ’s word. In other words we will follow Christ. We will obey him, walk as he walked and do as he did and do what he taught. That is love. Anything less is just feelings and words.

I am talking about commitment here. Once again the analogy of marriage is helpful. So is the analogy of a parent and child. That is why we have the whole concept of God as Father and Son. That is why we have the idea of us as children of God. Parental love is more than feeling. Love of a child for parent is more than feeling. It is a deep commitment. A parent would be willing to lay down his or her life for a child. When a child experiences that type of genuine sacrificial love, then the response is one of loving gratitude. This is love. This is why God is more than a philosophical idea or a theological principle. That is why we say God is Person, because we experience God personally as personal love. And we respond in personal commitment and personal service to a personal Savior.

II. The second aspect of experiencing God is experiencing the Presence of God. We don’t just have a story to tell about a God who sent his Son 2000 years ago to a distant land. We have a living experience of God now. We call this the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in our passage in verses 25-26, “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate, walked the earth for thirty years. Then he died, and he rose again and appeared to his disciples as the Risen One over a period of 40 days. Then he ascended to heaven. That is the story. This coming Thursday is Ascension Day on the Christian calendar, when Christians celebrate the day that Jesus made the transition from the physical to the spiritual state of being. The Book of Acts says that after another ten days God sent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God with us and in us today.

When we experience God, we experience God in the Spirit. We talk about experiencing God in Jesus and experiencing God as our Heavenly Father. And this is true. But we experience God as Christ and Father through the Spirit. Jesus says in our passage, “We will come to him and make Our home with him.” That means that God as Trinity makes his home in us. We have God dwelling in us in the Holy Spirit. To experience the Holy Spirit is a powerful experience of the presence of God.

Christian theologians talk about God as omnipresent. That means that God is present everywhere. There is no place and no time when God is not. That means that God is here now. Do you sense that God is here now? Are you experiencing that? If you aren’t, let me help you experience God right now. I don’t want this to be a sermon about experiencing God; I want to make this a practical exercise in experiencing God. If God is omnipresent, then that means that God is present here now. If you are not experiencing God here now, then that means you are paying attention to others things instead of God. So what we are going to try to do now is set aside those other things just for a moment. If we put those other things aside, then the presence of God will hopefully come to the forefront for our awareness. Just pause for a moment.

First, let’s deal with all the inner noise that fills our heads all the time and masks the presence of God. Ignore your chattering mind for a moment – that endless fountain of thoughts that won’t shut up. I have a four year old grandson who won’t shut up. He talks continually. I love him very much, but his incessant chatter drives me nuts – just like my mind. I can’t stop my grandson or my mind from chattering away. I have tried it; it doesn’t work. What works is to ignore it. Don’t try to stop your mind from thinking; just don’t pay attention to it. Decide to pay attention to God for a moment instead. Also ignore your feelings for a moment. Along with our thoughts come constant feelings about the thoughts. Thoughts prompt emotional reactions. They take us mentally into all kinds of places that aren’t necessarily good places to go emotionally. Don’t suppress the emotions or fight them, just ignore them for a little while. The same with your body’s sensations. Just ignore your body’s aches and pains, hot or cold, or any other bodily sensation for a moment. If you can do this just for a moment, and be aware of that which is deeper than mind, emotions and body, what you become conscious of is the subtle realm of Spirit. What you experience in the Spirit is God. Just try it now for a few seconds ….. What we sense intuitively as always present with us everywhere we are is God. Try this throughout the day. Lean back and rest your soul in that Quiet Spacious Omnipresence. That is the Holy Spirit. The spiritual life is the daily experience of the Holy Spirit - living in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit – dwelling in that awareness of the presence of God, doing things based on what the Spirit says and how the Spirit leads.

In our passage Jesus says two other things about the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Helper. This word is elsewhere translated as Advocate and Comforter or Counselor. We have divine help in the Person of the Holy Spirit whenever we need it. If God is truly omnipresent as we say he is, that means that we are never without God. We are never alone. We are never helpless. We always have the most powerful spiritual help available 24/7. All we have to do is step back and let God come to the forefront and guide us. Let the mind of Christ come to the forefront; the apostle Paul says we have the mind of Christ. Avail yourself of Christ’s mind. Let God take over the driver’s seat.

A little pamphlet by Bill Bright’s Campus Crusade for Christ, entitled the Four Spiritual Laws was popular years ago. Perhaps it still is. It was simplistic, but insightful. It had a series of little diagrams that showed Self (represented as a capital S) sitting on the throne of our lives. Consequently everything else in our lives was in disarray. Christ (represented by a Cross) is pictured on the outside of our lives. The Christian life is described in this pamphlet as deciding to dethroning the Self and allowing Christ to take his rightful place on the throne. We get out of the driver’s seat and let God take over. There was a film back in 1945 entitled God Is My Co-Pilot, based on the autobiography of fighter pilot Col. Robert Lee Scott Jr, who fought in the Pacific during World War II. The title of the book became a popular bumper sticker. But I like the newer bumper sticker that reads, “If God is your co-pilot, you are in the wrong seat.” God should be the pilot, and us the copilot.  We experience God as Lord of our lives when we put our Self in the backseat and let God – as Christ or the Holy Spirit – come to the front. When our self is in control, we tend to make a mess of things in life. But when God is running our lives, things naturally fall into place. He is our Helper. When we finally admit we need help, the Holy Spirit will take over.

In our passage Jesus also describes the Holy Spirit as teacher. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” In the religious life people look for spiritual teachers or leaders. They look to gurus or popes or saints or famous pastors of big churches or the latest writer of a spiritual bestseller to teach them and guide them. We don’t need that. We have the Holy Spirit, the greatest Teacher in the Universe as close to us as possible all the time. Jesus said “But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ,  and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.” We have the Teacher, the Holy Spirit in us, who will teach us all things. “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” He will teach us what the historical Jesus taught his disciples, because this is the Spirit of Jesus. He will not contradict the teachings of the historical Jesus, but confirm them. He will enlighten the scriptures for us as we read them. The Holy Spirit works in our human spirits through the spiritual faculties of intuition and conscience to guide us into all truth.

III. The third aspect of experiencing God mentioned in our passage is experiencing the peace of Christ. Verse 27 “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” We can experience the peace of God that surpasses human understanding. Whenever the risen Christ appeared to his disciple the first word he spoke was “Peace.” The apostle Paul wrote: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” The peace of God is our birthright as children of God.

A lot of people are troubled and worried and anxious about many things. Their minds are constantly torturing them with all kinds of troublesome thoughts about what has happened in the past – constantly replaying those mental videos – and then worrying about the future – playing all types of scenarios about what terrible things might happen. Their emotions take them on emotional roller-coaster rides every day. That is not necessary. You do not have to be slaves to your emotions, thoughts, or body. In Christ and in the Holy Spirit is perfect peace. It is not our peace that is earned by anything we do. It is the peace of Christ that is given: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you;” It is not a worldly peace, that is a temporary cessation of hostilities. Jesus say, “not as the world gives do I give to you.” The peace of God is entirely different. It is not dependent upon what happens in our lives. It is present within and underneath whatever happens. Just like God is always present, so is the peace of God always present in us and with us. It is just a matter of being present with it, and in it. Letting that peace be our present experience instead of all the fears and troubles that fill our hearts and souls. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

We can experience God. In fact it is the most natural thing in the world to experience God. We were created to experience God – to have fellowship with God. That is what God desires more than anything. God sent his Son so that we might experience God. We experience God through Jesus Christ – through the way opened up to us through him. In Christ we experience the sacrificial love of God and return that love in gratitude for what he does for us. We experience God as Holy Spirit – God present in us and everywhere present around us. And we can experience the peace of God that surpasses human understanding. I invite you to experience God.

The Glory of God

John 13:31-35

This is April 28 and the gospel lesson for today takes us back to the events we celebrated on March 28, which was Maundy Thursday.  This Gospel passage is part of John’s account of the Last Supper. You would not know that just from hearing the gospel lesson unless you read the words that come immediately beforehand, which are the context of our lesson for today. The first words of our text say, “So, when he had gone out, Jesus said…”  The “he” that is being referred to is not Jesus (as we might assume), but Judas Iscariot who had gone out of the upper room where they had just eaten the Last Supper. Judas was going out to betray Jesus to the chief priests. That is the context of our gospel reading this morning. The context makes a big difference in the meaning of a passage. We have to be careful about interpreting the Scriptures out of context.

A man was looking to the Bible for some guidance during a difficult time in his life. Not knowing where to look in the Scriptures, he prayed to God to show him what he was supposed to do. Then he opened the Bible and randomly placed his finger on the page. Wherever his finger landed, he would take as God’s advice. His finger landed on the verse: "Sell everything you own and give it all to the poor, and come, follow Me.” He thought to himself, “That can’t be right.” So he flipped back a few pages and did it again. This time it landed on the words: "Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple." “Oh, oh,” he thought. He tried a third time. This time his finger pointed to the verse: "Whatever you are to do, do so quickly." You can’t take the words of scriptures out of context. And you certainly can’t poke your finger anyplace in the Bible and consider it a command from God. The bible is not a divination device. You have to read every passage of scripture in context in order to interpret it correctly.

When Jesus spoke the words we are looking at this morning about the glory of God, he was not sitting on a mountaintop in Galilee early in his ministry chatting with his disciples about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. If he had said these words at that time and place, it would have meant something entirely different. When Jesus spoke these words, he was approaching his crucifixion and death. Twenty four hours after saying these words, “Now the Son of Man is glorified” Jesus (the Son of Man) would be dead, his body lying cold in the tomb. This context helps us to understand Jesus’ words.

The topic of his words is the glory of God. The Bible talks a lot about the glory of God. The Old Testament is filled with the glory of God – on Mount Sinai and in the tabernacle in the wilderness and in the temple of Jerusalem. The psalms talk about the heavens declaring the glory of God. These are all manifestations of the glory of God.

I.  But this passage talks specifically about the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Our passage begins with verses 31-32: “So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately.” That is a lot of talk about glory. The word “glorify” is used five times in two verses.

What exactly are we talking about here? What is glory when used in reference to the glory of God? It is a very difficult concept to explain. It is nothing physical. I would define it as the manifestation of the powerful spiritual presence of God. Often in scripture the glory of God is described in visual terms as light or fire. God is light and in him is no darkness at all, or God is a consuming fire. So we have the idea of God as the blinding light of holiness that one cannot look upon and live. In the Book of Revelation when John looks at the throne of God to get a glimpse of the One sitting there, all he sees is light. When Isaiah has a vision of God on his throne, he hears the seraphim call out: “"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." Paradoxically, sometimes the glory of God is pictured as just the opposite - as thick cloud or deep darkness. Isaiah saw the throne room of God as filled with thick smoke. That is what Moses saw on Mount Sinai, and in wilderness and the tabernacle. These are both ways of saying that mortals cannot look upon God because of his glory.

I understand the glory of God as the indescribable presence of God. The scriptures tell us that the presence of God was in Jesus Christ. The prologue of John’s Gospel says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It goes on to say: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” This prologue of John talks about the glory of God being manifested in the birth of Jesus. The gospel of John goes on to say that the glory of God was manifested in the life of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus. By this I think it means that when people were in the physical presence of Jesus of Nazareth, they experienced the glory of God – the spiritual presence of Almighty God.

You know how people experience God in nature. I think most people experience the beauty and majesty of nature – mountains, rivers, ocean, desert, canyons, and starry heavens - as a spiritual experience. That sense of awe communicated through Creation seems to come naturally to most people. That is the type of experience that people in the first century had when they met Jesus of Nazareth and spent time in his presence. That is the way we experience Jesus in worship today. One of my favorite hymns is Fairest Lord Jesus, which combines these two dimensions: “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, O Thou of God and man the Son, Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.” That is why I love worship. A lot of people don’t like to worship as part of a church, a community of faith. They say they don’t need to go to church to worship God; that they can worship God just as well in the woods or on the lake. Maybe that is true for them. But it is also true that you don’t need to be in nature to worship God. You can worship God just as well sitting inside your house. So why do they prefer to go into nature to worship God? It is because the glory is so much clearer and stronger on a mountaintop or in the woods. And that is why I worship. The glory is so much stronger and clearer in church, when God’s people are gathered together to worship God’s Son. We can feel the presence of God in Christ when we are gathered together with who love God and Christ.

The glory of God is powerfully present in Christ. Our passage today says that God is most powerfully present in the death of Christ. Jesus says in our passage: “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately.” This is talking about Christ’s imminent passion and death and resurrection, which was all going to happen very quickly after Jesus spoke these words. That is why I say that the context of these words is so important. Of all the times and places where God’s glory is experienced, it is most clearly and strongly experienced in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is why we have the cross – and specifically the empty cross – as the symbol of our faith.

Why is the cross so important? Why can’t we just listen to the teachings of Jesus and forget the cross? Because when the man Jesus submitted himself perfectly to God the Father, the glory of God shone forth. The glory of God shines forth in perfect submission. When the man Jesus died, the glory of God shone forth in that death. Something powerful happened when Jesus died. There is spiritual power in the death of Christ which is beyond the ability for our human minds to comprehend. It can be experienced in the human heart and soul. We are liberated through the Christ being bound to the cross. We are released from death by the death of Jesus. We have life through the resurrection of Christ from the grave. The glory and power of God is expressed through the physical life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

II. Second, this passage talks about the glory of God in the absence of the physical Jesus. Verse 33 “Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you.” In context Jesus is speaking about what will happen after he has died, risen and ascended to heaven. After Jesus rose from the dead, the Gospels and the Book of Acts tell us that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples over a period of 40 days. On the 40^th day, he disappeared from their sight in an event called the Ascension. Ten days after that God sent the Holy Spirit to fill the church on Pentecost. We understand the Holy Spirit to be the invisible presence of God and his Son with his people.

On Easter Sunday I mentioned in my Easter sermon that we don’t need the physical presence of Christ with us any longer. The spiritual presence of Christ now is just as powerful as his physical presence was 2000 years ago. Actually in many ways you can say that the presence of Christ is more powerful now. When Jesus physically walked the earth he was limited to his human body and therefore limited to time and space. Jesus could not be in Galilee and Judea at the same time. He could only be in one place at one time through one body. Can you imagine how confining that would be for the omnipresent omnipotent God? God is used to being everywhere at once. But in Jesus he was limited to a human body. But now Christ has no such limitation. He can be with all his people everywhere in the world at the same time. He is with us here in Sandwich and also with his people in house churches in China and churches in Africa. He is with the tiniest church of two or three people meeting in secret in a home in North Korea and also with the largest megachurch in the world in Seoul, South Korea.

This invisible Spirit of the living Christ is the glory of God today in and through his people. The apostle Paul talks about both the individual believer and the church as being temples of God. In the OT, the temple in Jerusalem was understood as the house of God. God was understood as somehow connected to that physical structure in a special way. The temple was called the footstool of God, as if God sat in the heavens and his feet rested on this particular spot on earth. The temple was understood as the physical point of contact between heaven and earth. The holiest spot in that temple was the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the temple. The gospels tell us that when Christ died on the Cross that the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple and hence from the world, was torn in two, opening up the presence of God to the whole earth. When Christ physically died, his Spirit was not only released from his body, the Spirit of God was released from the temple. That is why the temple was no longer necessary after Christ died and was soon to be destroyed never to be rebuilt. It was obsolete, as was the sacrificial system, as the Letter to the Hebrew so thoroughly explains. The physical death of Jesus meant the glory of God was spread abroad to all the earth. The glory of God is present today in the absence of the physical Jesus, but in the presence of the spiritual Christ.

III. Third, this passage talks about the glory of God in us as Love. Unconditional divine love is the glory of God expressed through God’s people. Jesus says in our passage verses 34-35: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus says that the glory of God is expressed in us in love. There are many types of love; I am talking about Christian love. There are many types of Christian love – love of God, love of neighbor, love of enemy. But here Jesus focuses our attention on Christians’ love for one another.

This is a Mandated love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” It is a commandment. That is why the Thursday before Easter – which is when Jesus spoke these words – got the name Maundy Thursday. Maundy comes from the word mandate. When a political candidate gets elected by a large majority of the electorate they often say they have a mandate from the people to fulfill a certain agenda. We have a mandate from our Savior. The mandate is love - specifically to love one another. This is not optional. It is a command. I have a secret to tell you: Christians don’t always get along with each other. I know it is hard to believe, but it is true. Sometimes Christians don’t even like each other. They fight with each other. They hurt each other. In a certain sense is to be expected. That is the way families are sometimes. Family members don’t always get along. Biological families don’t always agree. The same is true of spiritual families. But the difference with a spiritual family – a community of faith – is that we are commanded to love each other even when we disagree. We are to forgive each other no matter what. We are to reconcile with each other. We are to love one another.

This Christian love is also a Modeled love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” We know how to love by looking at how Jesus loved. As Jesus loved us, so are we to love one another. How did Jesus love us? He sacrificed himself for us. The apostle Paul says in Romans 5 “6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ loved us when we were sinners. That means we are to love our fellow Christian even when they are sinners. Even when they do stuff we consider to be wrong. Even when they do stuff to us that is wrong. Jesus loved Peter even when he denied him three times. The third time that Peter said that he did not know Christ, it says that Christ looked at him. It was a look of such love that it caused Peter to go out and weep bitterly. Christ loved Peter no matter what. Christ loves us no matter what. He loved us enough to die for us. That is the sacrificial love we are to have for one another.

Lastly, this Christian love is Missionary love. Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” People will know we are disciples of Jesus not by where we go on Sunday morning or by what beliefs we hold to. People could care less about that! People will know we are disciples of Christ and desire to know Christ for themselves through the love exhibited by Christ’s people. There is no other way. Words won’t do it, unless they are backed up with love. Programs won’t do it. Physical facilities won’t do it. Changing worship styles or music styles or church bylaws won’t do it. Love does it. Genuine Christian love gives off a scent that is irresistible. When realtors have an open house for a house they are trying to sell, one of their tricks is to cook some homemade bread or cookies in the oven right before the open house. That way the whole house is filled with an aroma that is irresistible. A church should be filled with the aroma of divine love. You can’t fake this. You can’t buy an artificial air freshener labeled love spray it around. It has to be the real thing. People will know if we are disciples of Jesus by whether or not we have the love of Jesus in us. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” In this way the glory of God is manifested in the world – through the love of Jesus expressed by the followers of Jesus.