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Sermon: Tuesday of Holy Week
Tuesday, 26 March 2024 09:16 pmAs preached at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 71:1-14
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36
In our epistle this evening, St. Paul describes the proclamation of the crucified Christ as a “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”
In his book Reflections on the Psalms, famed Anglican author C.S. Lewis describes a “stumbling block” he encountered as a young Christian, “in the demand that we should praise God. Still more [he writes] in the suggestion that God himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people ‘round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. [. . .] It was hideously like saying, ‘What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.’ [. . .] It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him,” those Lewis thought he “could understand; [but] not this perpetual eulogy.”
Lewis described this as “[t]he miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him. Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog,” Lewis remarks, “to bark approval of my books.”
I think young Clive Staples could be forgiven for this brief bout of thinking this “absurd Deity” might be the God of Christianity, because I think there are Christian theological systems, promulgated even today, which make God out to be exactly thus.
Under this account, the entire history of salvation: the Creation, the Fall, the revelation to the prophets, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Christ's second coming in glory, the general resurrection and the judgment of the living and the dead, the new heaven and new earth, are all simply means employed by God to accomplish God's own self-glorification. God is simply too great, the argument goes, too perfect, too glorious to be concerned with anything else than the glory of God.
It is sinfully prideful, this account tells us, for us to seek glory for ourselves because we are human and inferior. But it’s okay–necessary, even–for God to desire God’s own glorification because God is perfect and divine and superior.
I don’t know that I’m quite prepared to go so far as to say this account is wrong so far as it goes. Certainly as a philosophical and theological system it’s impressively consistent. But that might be part of the problem: God is too great–too glorious!--to be fully contained within any system. When we get too caught up in preserving God’s metaphysical perfection, we sometimes lose track of God’s compassionate nature as revealed in Scripture.
Now, God is glorious, and it is only natural and right that God's glory should evoke in us the desire to glorify God exemplified by the psalmist’s words in our psalm this evening: “Let my mouth be full of your praise and your glory all the day long.” After all that is one of the major reasons why we are gathered here tonight, and every other time we come together in liturgical worship: to join our voices with the company of heaven to proclaim the glory of God’s Name. Later in this service we will pray in the Prayers of the People, Form III “[t]hat [God’s] Name may be glorified by all people.” May we do so with sincerity, and may God in God’s glory hear our prayer with patience, mercy, and compassion.
The theologians might be correct in saying that God's glorification would be a sufficient end in and of itself. But this evening’s Gospel passage suggests something different, or at least something more. After an angelic voice announces the glorification of the Name of God, Jesus says, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.”
And Jesus immediately continues, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” New Testament scholar and Church of England bishop N.T. Wright explicates this passage by pointing out that Jesus’ death on the Cross is the “way in which [God’s] glory is fully revealed; and it will also be the victory over ‘this world’s ruler’, the dark power that has held the nations captive. This is Jesus’ answer to the arrival of the Greeks. Once [Jesus] has died on the Cross, ‘all people’”--both Jew and Gentile–”will be free to come to [Christ] and so discover the living and true God.”
The glorification of God’s Name through the Cross, then, is not simply an attempt to satisfy a massive divine ego. It is instead, for us. And the fact that Jesus says this after Greeks, not Jews, come to meet Jesus and worship him, reinforces that it is for all of us.
The glorification of God’s Name is the means by which all are drawn to Jesus. God’s Name is glorified so that we might have the opportunity to take note of that glorification and turn away from that which separates us from God’s glory, so that we may ourselves participate in that glory. The purpose–or at least a purpose–of the glorification of God’s name is the ultimate glorification of humanity.
Jesus glorified God’s Name for us, and when we participate in that glorification, when we glorify God’s Name through worship and service, we do so for God, but we also do so for ourselves and for each other. We proclaim the word of the Cross which St. Paul describes in our epistle reading as “God’s power” and “God’s wisdom.” We fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah in our first reading: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Now, when we start talking about something being “for” something else, we’re always on complicated philosophical ground. It’s certainly true to say that the glorification of humanity accomplishes the further glorification of God’s Name. But reducing the purpose of the former to the latter alone distorts the nature of divine glory, which always expresses itself in the form of overflowing love.
The Scriptural account attests that God’s glory does not primarily lie in God being impossibly above human beings, set apart and superior. Instead, Scripture tells us that the paradoxical nature of divine glory is that it lies in God’s very willingness to set it aside, to debase Godself in solidarity with humanity.
We are now four days away from the Easter Vigil, when we will once again say that word we typically don’t say during Lent, a word which translated into English means “praise the Lord.” And when we do, it will escape from my lips and I hope from yours because the burden of holding it in a moment longer will become more than we can bear, because through grace we recognize the ineffable glory of our God who seeks glorification not for God’s own sake, but for ours.
Amen.
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 71:1-14
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36
In our epistle this evening, St. Paul describes the proclamation of the crucified Christ as a “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”
In his book Reflections on the Psalms, famed Anglican author C.S. Lewis describes a “stumbling block” he encountered as a young Christian, “in the demand that we should praise God. Still more [he writes] in the suggestion that God himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people ‘round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. [. . .] It was hideously like saying, ‘What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.’ [. . .] It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him,” those Lewis thought he “could understand; [but] not this perpetual eulogy.”
Lewis described this as “[t]he miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him. Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog,” Lewis remarks, “to bark approval of my books.”
I think young Clive Staples could be forgiven for this brief bout of thinking this “absurd Deity” might be the God of Christianity, because I think there are Christian theological systems, promulgated even today, which make God out to be exactly thus.
Under this account, the entire history of salvation: the Creation, the Fall, the revelation to the prophets, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Christ's second coming in glory, the general resurrection and the judgment of the living and the dead, the new heaven and new earth, are all simply means employed by God to accomplish God's own self-glorification. God is simply too great, the argument goes, too perfect, too glorious to be concerned with anything else than the glory of God.
It is sinfully prideful, this account tells us, for us to seek glory for ourselves because we are human and inferior. But it’s okay–necessary, even–for God to desire God’s own glorification because God is perfect and divine and superior.
I don’t know that I’m quite prepared to go so far as to say this account is wrong so far as it goes. Certainly as a philosophical and theological system it’s impressively consistent. But that might be part of the problem: God is too great–too glorious!--to be fully contained within any system. When we get too caught up in preserving God’s metaphysical perfection, we sometimes lose track of God’s compassionate nature as revealed in Scripture.
Now, God is glorious, and it is only natural and right that God's glory should evoke in us the desire to glorify God exemplified by the psalmist’s words in our psalm this evening: “Let my mouth be full of your praise and your glory all the day long.” After all that is one of the major reasons why we are gathered here tonight, and every other time we come together in liturgical worship: to join our voices with the company of heaven to proclaim the glory of God’s Name. Later in this service we will pray in the Prayers of the People, Form III “[t]hat [God’s] Name may be glorified by all people.” May we do so with sincerity, and may God in God’s glory hear our prayer with patience, mercy, and compassion.
The theologians might be correct in saying that God's glorification would be a sufficient end in and of itself. But this evening’s Gospel passage suggests something different, or at least something more. After an angelic voice announces the glorification of the Name of God, Jesus says, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.”
And Jesus immediately continues, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” New Testament scholar and Church of England bishop N.T. Wright explicates this passage by pointing out that Jesus’ death on the Cross is the “way in which [God’s] glory is fully revealed; and it will also be the victory over ‘this world’s ruler’, the dark power that has held the nations captive. This is Jesus’ answer to the arrival of the Greeks. Once [Jesus] has died on the Cross, ‘all people’”--both Jew and Gentile–”will be free to come to [Christ] and so discover the living and true God.”
The glorification of God’s Name through the Cross, then, is not simply an attempt to satisfy a massive divine ego. It is instead, for us. And the fact that Jesus says this after Greeks, not Jews, come to meet Jesus and worship him, reinforces that it is for all of us.
The glorification of God’s Name is the means by which all are drawn to Jesus. God’s Name is glorified so that we might have the opportunity to take note of that glorification and turn away from that which separates us from God’s glory, so that we may ourselves participate in that glory. The purpose–or at least a purpose–of the glorification of God’s name is the ultimate glorification of humanity.
Jesus glorified God’s Name for us, and when we participate in that glorification, when we glorify God’s Name through worship and service, we do so for God, but we also do so for ourselves and for each other. We proclaim the word of the Cross which St. Paul describes in our epistle reading as “God’s power” and “God’s wisdom.” We fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah in our first reading: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Now, when we start talking about something being “for” something else, we’re always on complicated philosophical ground. It’s certainly true to say that the glorification of humanity accomplishes the further glorification of God’s Name. But reducing the purpose of the former to the latter alone distorts the nature of divine glory, which always expresses itself in the form of overflowing love.
The Scriptural account attests that God’s glory does not primarily lie in God being impossibly above human beings, set apart and superior. Instead, Scripture tells us that the paradoxical nature of divine glory is that it lies in God’s very willingness to set it aside, to debase Godself in solidarity with humanity.
We are now four days away from the Easter Vigil, when we will once again say that word we typically don’t say during Lent, a word which translated into English means “praise the Lord.” And when we do, it will escape from my lips and I hope from yours because the burden of holding it in a moment longer will become more than we can bear, because through grace we recognize the ineffable glory of our God who seeks glorification not for God’s own sake, but for ours.
Amen.
