We are coming to the close of the Easter season. Next week the Day of Pentecost will celebrate the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit. In the Sundays following, we’ll discover how the Holy Spirit brings power to the life of the Church – and to US!
But today, we want to take up one more Easter experience. Or better yet, one more Easter WORD.
GLORY!
You cannot celebrate Easter without colliding head-on with the word, “GLORY!”
The term “GLORY!” in the Bible has a rich and deep meaning. The word means “weightiness” or “gravitas”, so to see God’s GLORY is to experience the fullness of who and what God is. It is to see that God IS God, the one true God, the Creator of all that is and the Source of our lives. To see God’s GLORY is to see that God is the Real Deal upon Whom we can depend and to Whom we can entrust our lives and the lives of our children.
And the amazing claim of Easter is that in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s GLORY is ultimately revealed.
You know, sometimes people ask, “If you believe that the one true God is revealed in Jesus, then what about other religions, and all the other god-candidates out there?”
Well, there ARE lots of gods on the ballot, you know. The gods of Greek mythology. The gods of pagan religion. The secular gods – like materialism and power and intellect and self. There ARE a lot of competing deities, and many, many religions to go along with them. And we followers of Jesus Christ acknowledge with respect whatever truth other religions, their teachers and their followers have to share. And we recognize that truth is not owned by any one religion or person or discipline. So mutual respect and dialogue with others must always be at the heart of those who follow Jesus.
But we also acknowledge that there are false gods and false religions out there. There are gods that are one-way streets to disaster. There are gods that call people to sacrifice their children, and send us off to kill the infidels. There are gods that place self over neighbor, and hate over love, and spirit over both mind and body. There are gods that try to persuade us that pursuit of career or personal needs supersedes responsibility to marriage or family. Oh, there are false gods and dangerous religions out there that lead to hurt and harm and injury. And we are called to recognize them and stand against them when necessary.
So in a world that is overflowing with great ideas and horrible ideas, truthful teachers and false teachers, helpful disciplines and harmful ones, and gods of all sorts, how are we to find the way to life? This – you may remember – is the very question Moses put to God up on Mount Sinai when the life of the escaping Israelites hung in the balance. “How do I know YOU are true? I have to know that YOU ARE THE REAL THING and are worth following and staking our lives on!”
And then Moses said to God “Show me your GLORY!”
You see, that’s the test of Godship. GLORY! If you are truly God – if you are in fact the Way, the Truth and the Life – SHOW US THE GLORY! That is the test every god must be put to. Show us the GLORY!
And in a world not at all unlike the one we live in today – full of religion and all sorts of competing deities – a humble community of people – men, women and children just like you and me – long ago proclaimed that in the baby born in Bethlehem, the boy raised in Nazareth, and the man named Jesus who preached Good News everywhere, they beheld God’s GLORY!
They saw God’s GLORY in his life, and the way he opened his arms to the least, the lost, the left out, and the last. He welcomed them into a healing, forgiving, redeeming, renewing love that brought them to life and gave them back their dignity as human beings. And when the people saw it, they knew they were seeing GLORY!
And they saw God’s GLORY in his death on the Cross where he became something like a bridge closing the gulf between God and the world, and bridging the gap that separates me from you, and us from others. As you look at the upright and the crossbar of the old rugged cross, can you visualize Jesus crucified there, and drawing together God and the world and all of us with each other in his death? And when the people saw him give up his life like this for US, they knew they were seeing GLORY!
And they saw God’s GLORY in his resurrection. When they witnessed the risen Christ, they knew they were seeing something they’d never seen before in any god, any religion, or any philosophy. They were seeing GLORY in the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
And that’s the GLORY we want to take a look at today.
My observation is that we human beings have a great fascination with the subject of death and resurrection. We are powerfully drawn to the possibility that there might be something beyond the grave. And yet the way we think and talk about these things is often so trivial and superficial. Two very popular novels about life beyond the grave are Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones”, and Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”. In both books, the main character is killed in the first few pages, and what follows is their encounter with life beyond the grave. Mark Ralls comments on the two stories in the Christian Century magazine:
For Susie – the heroine of “The Lovely Bones” – heaven is a personalized setting of a teenage girl’s most fervent desires. There is a high school like the one she never got to attend. The boys all behave themselves. The textbooks are Susie’s favorite magazines – Seventeen, Glamour, and Vogue. There is an ice cream shop with Susie’s favorite flavor, soccer fields, friendly dogs, and most especially, a gazebo within which Susie can sit and watch those she has left behind.
In Mitch Albom’s book, Eddie awakens in heaven and proceeds to meet a procession of five people who, over time, show Eddie the true significance of his life on earth. One of the people Eddie meets states it clearly: “Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”
These novels are very entertaining, and they may even inspire us a bit. But here is what’s interesting to me. Both ideas see heaven as a place for looking BACKWARDS – back to what we had before we died. That is to say, our real life was what we had BEFORE death. And now, after death, we’re not quite sure what to do with ourselves except maybe to sit in a gazebo and watch those we’ve left behind, or figure out what the life we had was all about – or any of those other ideas we’ve been brought up with. You know the silly things people say we do in heaven – bouncing up and down on clouds, playing harps in an angelic band, or even spending eternity in a worship service that never ends. And for all of you who back into parking spaces and leave your engines running for a head start to breakfast after church – for all of you who check your watches when THIS service runs five minutes over an hour…that’s not your idea of heaven, is it?
A junior high school boy asked his minister if it was true that all you do in heaven is sing. If it is, he didn’t want to go. Why? He was the kid in the Junior Choir who had such a bad voice the Director told him to just move his lips. You see, not everyone likes to sing, or CAN sing! And a heaven where all you do IS sing is more like hell than heaven to them! A college student asked her Comparative Religion professor if the concept of Nirvana allowed for individual awareness and relationship with others. When the professor said that Nirvana was more like being absorbed into the energy of the universe, the young woman walked away very sad because she could not imagine an eternity merged into an energy that precluded her from touching and knowing the young man to whom she had just become engaged. And an old man raised in a fundamentalist home one day thought to himself, if the main thing about heaven is that you don’t burn in hell, that’s not really saying a hell of a lot about heaven, is it?
Oh, from the beginning of time, human beings have pondered the questions of life and death and beyond. And I don’t know about you, but all those high and mighty ideas so often just don’t seem to me to contain anything that truly looks like GLORY!
Except one…
…the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection to which you and I and the whole world are invited to come and experience ourselves.
You know, Jesus never spoke about bouncing on clouds, playing harps, sitting in gazebos, singing in choirs, being absorbed into cosmic energy or any of the things that occupy human minds about heaven. Jesus most especially never said a single word about there not being any beer in heaven. If there isn’t any beer in heaven, I’m sure he would have told us!
But Jesus DID say and show us a lot about resurrection. He knew the meaning of resurrection as the people of his day knew it, steeped in the tradition of the Old Testament. And when Jesus talked about resurrection, it connected to things in life that really matter!
Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament scholar, notes that resurrection in the Hebrew scriptures – especially in the Psalms – is always associated with God’s mighty act of extending his power over anything that threatens or negates life in God’s creation. So God speaks into the chaos before creation begins, and brings forth a beautiful world full of life, hope and promise. So God reaches out to his people held captive in Babylon, and brings them back to their homes and their loved ones. So God forgives sin, and releases people from the bondage of guilt. So God touches a barren woman – or desert – or nation, and brings about a miraculous birth. So God finds his people enslaved in Egypt, and delivers them to freedom. This is resurrection: God’s faithfulness in the face of and God’s power to overcome every negation, including death!
And here we are – you and me – living in a world that so often seems to be falling apart, exiled from loved ones we’ve lost to both life and death, alienated from neighbors and nations, overwhelmed by sin and guilt, bereft of the ability to truly give life to ourselves or others, and enslaved by so many things – sin, age, heart disease, sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol, injustice, racism, war, poverty, hunger…and, of course, the impending certainty of death.
This is where we live. And it is into this human drama that Jesus is born, that Jesus lives, that Jesus dies.
And on the third day, excited whispers echo throughout the land.
“The Lord is risen!”
A new Easter world has spun into being out of the chaos of a man’s tragic Friday! This is RESURRECTION!!!!!
If you are experiencing life’s chaos today, God would love to create a new world of beauty and order for you. If you are estranged from your family, or yourself, or even God, God would love to help bring you home. If you are encumbered with guilt and trapped under the weight of mistakes made long ago, God would love to forgive you and show you the way to freedom. If you have lost hope, or run out of steam, and feel like a dry, barren desert, God would love to give birth to new life in you. If you are caught in the grip of some evil that enslaves you, God would love to set you free.
This is resurrection! And it is the gift Christ offers to us, and our world. And perhaps the most wonderful thing of all about resurrection is that it begins in our lives even before the day we die as we trust our lives to Jesus and follow him!
But that’s not all.
What about afterwards? What about after death? What is resurrection like then?
Well, there is only one example in history of the resurrection life. And when we look at Jesus in the days after his dying and rising, we see something far more wonderful than a life spent bouncing on clouds.
Have you ever noticed what Jesus did with his life in the resurrection?
He stepped into the lives of the people he loved and had left behind! In partnership with God, Jesus brought gifts of resurrection to their lives! His grief-stricken friend Mary was walking in the garden, and he went to her, and helped her find the gift of hope. His doubting friend Thomas was hiding in a locked room, and he went and found him, and helped Thomas find faith. His fearful friend Peter had run away and was fishing at the Sea of Galilee. So Jesus went there, and found Peter and some others, and while they ate breakfast one morning, Peter found forgiveness, and words began to ring in his head that said, “Feed my sheep!”
How did Jesus spend the days after his resurrection? Actively involved in the lives of those he loved, imparting hidden strength, comfort, faith, courage, encouragement, and touching them with the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the challenges of life. In his resurrection, Jesus brought gifts of resurrection to those he loved.
Is this how we spend our lives after death in the resurrection?
I hope so.
To me, far better than learning to play a harp, or sitting in a heavenly gazebo, or analyzing the meaning of the life I left behind, would be the opportunity to be actively involved in God’s ministry to my family, loving them, and you, and working with God to bring about peace on earth, good will toward all.
This is the hope that makes me join my voice with those who long ago declared that in the life , death and resurrection of Jesus, “WE beheld God’s GLORY!”
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