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.