Sermons

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Glory!
May 14, 2000
Sermon Series on the Gospel of John
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

John 12:20-28

I thought this week about how important single words or simple phrases become to us. Especially in our modern culture, where a single word or phrase becomes popular overnight. Now I know that if the truth were known, many of you are faithful watchers of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Some of you are sort of closet watchers! We may have to come up with a 12-step program just for one TV show. It seemed to come from nowhere, and then overnight… every time I picked up a newspaper, or had a conversation with someone, or watched a comedian or listened to a speaker, the same words would come out of their mouths: “millionaire, Regis, lifeline, phone call…Is that your final answer?” It’s amazing how we grab onto a phrase, or just a word.

This morning, as we finish our study of the gospel of John, I want us to grab ahold of just one word. We’ve been reading John since October 24 of last year. And my task for this last sermon was supposed to be to try and pull together some of the themes we’ve looked at, highlight the important things we’ve learned. And on about Tuesday, I realized how daunting that was:

“What are you preaching on Sunday, Dan?”
“Oh, I’m going to summarize 21 chapters of the gospel of John in 20 minutes.”

And then as I sat there overwhelmed, as I read and prayed, I was struck by this one word: GLORY. GLORY. It’s a good word. Roll it around your head for a minute. Say it out loud if you want. GLORY. It’s one of those words, like graceful…that we haven’t ruined…just saying it sounds good, sort of majestic and heavenly. It’s a very important word for John. The Greek word it comes from is DOXA. We get words like doxology from it. John uses various forms of this word 41 times in his gospel. And this morning, we’re going to try and get a glimpse of what it means.

Our family went on a day hike in the Cascades a few weeks ago. We drove up near North Bend, and I have to report to you, with no fingers pointed at anyone…we were one grumpy family as we went up there. Some of us were tired, some of us hungry, some of us irritable…as a family, just plain grumpy. We parked the car, and began to climb up through the trees. The sun was climbing in the sky, and the clouds were breaking up…it was turning into a really nice day. The air was filled with the smell of pine needles and it felt good to breath it into your lungs. It only took a few hundred yards for the grumpiness to sort of dissipate.

By the time we’d walked for an hour, we broke out of the treeline and up onto a rocky point called “Rattlesnake Ledge,” which fortunately didn’t live up to its name. It was just a couple thousand feet up…but what a great view it gave us. We sat down on this rock ledge and had lunch, and just looked around at this panoramic scene. Mountains, a couple small lakes down below… I-90 (turned our backs on that)…and trees. Trees covering everything, like a big velvety rug with an intricate design. It was amazing! One of the kids said “How many trees do you think we can see? A million?” And I started to mentally count, and realized that there were more trees than I could even imagine. It was breathtaking. Sitting there in God’s handiwork, God’s glory displayed in nature.

John Calvin once wrote, “You cannot in one glance survey this most vast and beautiful system of the universe…without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness…There is no place in the universe you cannot discern at least some sparks of [God’s] glory.” Calvin was talking about a brightness, a splendor which manifests God in the very creation. And one which we get to observe, if our eyes are not too dim…we can know some things about God from seeing His creation.

In the Old Testament, the people Israel came to know God in a way that moved beyond just observation. They came to know God as YHWH, the personal, covenant-making God of Israel. And God’s glory was seen in a much more tangible, specific way. God’s Shekinah glory, the very radiant, overwhelming presence of God was seen in a cloud, a brilliant manifestation of the presence of the Almighty God of the universe.

As Israel wandered around in the wilderness, we’re told in Exodus 40, “…Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle… The cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.” God was the tour guide for the Israelites, in a tangible, visible expression of his glory, his majesty breaking into the world. It was reassuring. It was frightening. It was tangible. God’s glory so bright it hurt the eyes. You could observe it, and to a certain extent, experience it as God’s presence.

By the time the gospel writer John came around, God’s presence seemed hard to find. The prophets, God’s mouthpieces, had been quiet for some 400 years. There was a longing, a looking for God’s presence which went on for generations. The world was gray, and people grasped for human inventions to fill this void that longed to see God, longed to know he was still in business. And then God’s glory begins to break in. Black and white suddenly turns to color. Dorothy touches down in the land of Oz.

In Luke’s story we’re told that “an angel of the Lord appeared to (the shepherds) and the GLORY of the Lord shone around them… Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” And in that moment…something happened. And John, lucky John the fisherman…got to see it.

The very first thing he told us, way back in October was: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his GLORY, the GLORY of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” For John, Jesus IS the glory of God, the manifestation, the presence of God with His people…in an intimately personal expression, the glory of God made known…not just to observe, but to know. In Jesus, we don’t just know ABOUT God, but we might KNOW God. John says…something has happened. Something is happening. GLORY.

The further we read in John’s story, the more it erupts. It begins in chapter 1, God’s glory coming in Jesus. It continues in chapter 2, when Jesus performs his first miracle at Cana, turning water into wine and John says “He thus revealed his GLORY, and his disciples put their faith in him.”

It penetrates in chapter 5 when Jesus heals the man at the pool. GLORY. In chapter 7 at the Feast of Tabernacles when Jesus begins to teach who he is…GLORY. In chapter 8 after dispersing the crowd who want to stone the woman, GLORY. In chapter 11, the raising of Lazarus, “for God’s GLORY, that you would see the GLORY of God.”
See, in John, there’s glory breaking through all over, and it builds in power and presence. There’s no way to keep these streams of light out of the world, they’re shooting down from heaven and landing all over the place, landing on people. It doesn’t change everything…but it changes everything. And if we’re watching…we’ll see some of it. Lord Almighty, we might even be hit by it, and we’ll be changed too.

Years ago, we had a young woman named Shannon live with us who had been on the streets for much of her life. Drugs, fights, prostitution…she had seen it all, and she wanted to escape from the street life, and she stayed with us for several months. We prayed for Shannon, we talked about Christ with her and in front of her, we prayed over meals, even brought her to church a few times. But Shannon was hard. She was very hard. We wondered if anything could crack that shell.

Then the night the Gulf War started, Anne and I were sitting in the living room. And Shannon came upstairs with a different look on her face. She knew some young men heading for the Gulf. She had watched the news, and was scared about what was happening in the world. And she walked in the living room and said, “Could we pray together?” A crack , some light…GLORY.

As most of you know, on Wednesday nights here at the church, we host a dinner for anyone who needs it. Some folks come from the neighborhood, some through the food bank, many off of the streets. A few weeks ago, they began to provide free haircuts after the meal in the library. Professional hairdressers volunteer to cut hair, caring for folks who often haven’t enjoyed caring for themselves for a long, long time. And I was outside on the sidewalk talking with someone when a man I knew walked out of the library. He’d just had his hair cut. He looked like a million bucks. He FELT like a million bucks, you could tell. He gave me this shy grin that sort of said “Can you believe this?!” GLORY.

We wish we could see more of it…and we will someday. But when God’s presence in Jesus came into the world…things changed. And when Jesus left the world, and sent the Holy Spirit…things keep happening. Sometimes we get just a glimpse.

Sometimes we get hit by the light. Sometimes it overwhelms us. Always it changes us. Harriet Tubman was the slave woman who single-handedly seemed to keep the Underground Railroad operating 150 years ago, smuggling slaves out of the South. In 1845 she made her first trip to freedom across the state line. She said “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.” GLORY.

After all of the buildup, it might strike us as strange that the gospel writer John suddenly turns us here in chapter 12 to a subject that seems quite a bit less than glorious. “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds….Father, glorify your name!”

There have been hints before, but now it’s clear…Jesus is going to die. AND…glory has something to do with death. It seems upside down and backwards, but through Jesus’ death…God was showing himself at work. And later in Christ’s resurrection…God was glorified. Made manifest, revealed, made known. In Jesus’ life? Yes, obviously. In his miracles? Yes, certainly. But in his death? Absolutely. A death on behalf of others. Christ’s glory comes into focus at the cross. The tremendous light that broke through into our world at Bethlehem grew much brighter with the death, and then the resurrection of Jesus. And that assures us that no darkness can ever overcome this. It’s too much, it’s too strong. It’s God’s extravagant love-in-action.

And Jesus calls us to participate in this glory. Not to be just observers, but participants. In chapter 17 he prays to God regarding his followers and says “I have given them the GLORY that you gave me.” But in order to participate, we’ll have to die too. Jesus says “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” When the light, God’s glory catches us, it changes us. It allows us to quit living for ourselves. To quit walking around saying “How can I get my needs met?” To lay down baggage that we’ve carried for years and years, because we’re learning how to die. The kind of death that changes us while we’re still alive, that makes living worthwhile. You see…the GLORY has come into this life. C.S. Lewis said, “a cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great captain inside.” We get to participate in that glory. We get these glimpses.

In Minneapolis two years ago I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital with a man named Alex. He was a man in his fifties, from Ghana. He’d lived in the States for 10 or 15 years, and had lived a very self-destructive lifestyle in Texas. Eventually he’d come back to Christ, and ended up in Minnesota. He was a very gentle man, soft-spoken, and still with something of his home-country’s language. When I knew him, Alex was dying. I think he knew it. I remember visiting him in his hospital room in downtown Minneapolis. He’d had a stroke, and was breathing through tubes, and it was extremely difficult for him to swallow…which of course made speaking difficult. One afternoon, I pretty much carried on a monologue for about a half hour, read to him and prayed with him. As I stood up to go, I could see that it had begun to rain outside, and it looked slick and cold. As I started for the door, Alex tried to say something from his bed.

I couldn’t hear, so I went back and leaned down close. Finally I could understand. He was saying, “Drive carefully.” That’s all. Drive carefully. Alex was caring for me. He was dying, he couldn’t swallow, he could barely talk…but he was worried about me. What makes a man do that? GLORY. It was all over that hospital room, GLORY.

As we finish this gospel…I had a picture this week of this writer John. It was a picture of a wizened old man with a lot of wrinkles and long white hair and gray beard. He was tired. He’d been through a lot, he’d seen a lot. He’d seen and done miracles, he’d helped start the church, he’d seen the darkness of the world. But when you looked him in the eyes…there was an undeniable sparkle there. A glint of light that shouted out, “Something has happened. Everything is different. Something is going on.”

You wondered what it was…and then it strikes you: GLORY! John had once been like us, wondering if there was a reason for living, wondering why the world was so dark. And then Jesus came, and the sky opened up, and beams of light burst through. John wanted to know what God was like, wanted to know God…and he looked at Jesus and he knew. GLORY!