The Weight of Glory and Today.
Pentecost 3, Proper 5
June 9, 2024
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
You know the moment. The night has been slowly yielding to the dawn. Then you see the edge of that fiery orange ball break the horizon. And it mesmerizes every time - but only for a few minutes. Once the sun rises in the sky, the day beckons, and on we go. Or, maybe you prefer the sun setting, watching it slip away to give us the night. But you know the moment.
C.S. Lewis says such moments give us glimpses of heaven, not in the sensual beauty of the moment but in the tug that beauty gives to our soul. That sunrise or sunset carries us farther than mere beauty. It could be nature, music, art, a space launch, a fine meal or sip of wine, or a heart-to-heart conversation that opens that vision. It awakens a longing we can scarcely identify before it slips away. In the same way a hungry person, whether or not they ever get fed again, needs food, so this longing reminds that we are made for something more but that is beyond our reach.
And too often we settle for the pleasures that bring us those glimpses. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
There is more. So much more. Infinitely more.
We most often focus our faith in affirming it and building it, and on ministry – tending to the very present challenges, hurts and needs we share and face in this very hard life. It takes a great deal of coordination and effort to meet those needs within the church and to do our part to meet them in our community as well. I do love this part of the world, it’s home and I love this church, but we know this slice of paradise is rife with abject poverty and need.
Today's readings invite us to the source that drives us to such a life of loving neighbor as self in this broken world. It's kind of like navigation.
Most often we navigate by landmarks - familiar buildings, geography, or physical signs that we put up identifying highways or streets. Those of you familiar with boats are already ahead of me - there are no landmarks or signs in the ocean, so then we look to the sun and stars which are predictable and well documented as to how they move in time and space, and how our earth moves in relation to them.
But then the night falls. The clouds come. The fog rolls in. There is nothing we can do about the weather or the seasons. Or at least there wasn't until the military put the Global Positioning System in place - for their purposes, but we get the benefits too. Much of it launched right here, I suppose. And because those satellites are fixed in relation to the earth, are outside the tempests that rage in our weather patterns and are able to precisely fix on our positions, they are the most universally helpful navigational tool, whether you're flying from Orlando to London or trying to find the nearest Wendy's. (Chik-fil-A is closed on Sundays.)
Think of heaven like that. It is fixed. It exists well beyond the tempests that rage in our lives and God is precisely fixed on our positions. I'm not talking about some pie in the sky ethereal fairy tale. Heaven is real. It is the most real thing, the most sure thing. We know that in time everything we are and will ever have will come to dust. Jesus didn't. He won't.
In olden times they envisioned it somewhere beyond our sight and atmosphere and were unable to articulate that beyond physical descriptions. Their imagery thus got knotted up in Renaissance visions full of clouds. Today, at the edges of our knowledge, physicists consider other dimensions operating beyond our physical universe and time itself. That doesn't make it less real.
And the promise is that we are invited to be with him, wherever that is, and like him, whatever that means. We are therefore being drawn inextricably to that moment and purpose. We desire what we need and lack.
In today's Gospel, Jesus illustrates the sharp division this creates. He's been revealing a bit about what his victory looks like in teaching, healing and delivering people. Yet, his family decides he's gone bonkers and wants to take him away. The scribes, like the Pharisees influential because of their knowledge and influence, not any official position, accuse him of being evil and having an unclean spirit.
Yet, the opposite is true. The scribes lead by legalism and shortsightedness. The true Spirit leads to the true glory of God. Jesus proclaims that "whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of eternal sin." I think that means that someone who actively denies the work God is doing and thus denies God, cuts themselves off from God's grace. It's like saying whoever denies food will starve.
This glory is not built upon our good behavior. It is built on the person of Jesus Christ. We cringe at the very notion of the cost being paid by his own blood. We find that hard to accept, hard to accept that such a sacrifice was needed, hard to accept that it was given, hard to accept that it was given for – who? You? How could a first century itinerant rabbi do anything, much less everything, for you? Except that who he is and that you, and you, and you and I share the very same chronic problem that demanded solving – forgiveness of our sins.
What does that teach us about love? True love? What glimpse of heaven do we see?
Hear Lewis again, "The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."
This is also the answer to the never-ending cultural descent of self-actualization, as if truly discovering ourselves matters a whit once our physical bodies go cold. We need to get home to our true country, not for ourselves but with Him.
And it has real consequences.
Consider the enormity of suffering of which you are personally aware. In your own person. Among your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers. Expand to the horrific tragedies and conflicts we see nonstop in our city, our nation and our world. Now compare them to the promise of heaven. They are but "momentary afflictions preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure."
That doesn't mean they don't hurt. That doesn't mean they don't matter. Of course they do. They are horribly wrong. What are good men and women to do about it, and more to the point, why? Because we have glimpsed that eternal weight of glory He calls us forward. He gives us direction and he gives us courage to do something about it.
This week we remembered the incredible step in the fight against evil that was D-Day. Does the confidence of the Christian soldier that he is Christ’s own forever make him any less brave? Did Jesus knowing he was bound for the glory of resurrection suffer any less in the glory of the cross?
Our destiny is fixed. Our hope leads our endurance and shapes our response.
Gain a clear and firm confidence in your destiny in heaven and it will shape the way you live today. It's not going to make you a prude - but this life's pleasures and fun cannot be false and cheap idols put up in place of him. We cannot manufacture such moments, they are not ours to make. But as we are faithful he will use us to shine the weight of his glory.
AMEN!