Last week my son’s soccer team won their game. I was even more proud when he scored the first goal! That day I glorified my son. I bragged to others about him. I praised him for his good work. That’s what it means to glorify something or someone – to point it out, to lift it up for all to see.
We glorify people and things all the time. We have three women in our congregation who have been glorifying their engagement ring to the rest of us – showing it off for everyone to see. Not their fiancée, mind you, but their ring. We praise sports heros and brag about them to others. We glorify many different people and things.
And of course we glorify Jesus! He is the one most worthy of being glorified. He is the Son of Man, Son of God. He is the Author of creation and its redeemer! Everyday we are called to glorify the Son, Jesus Christ in Word and Deed!
In today’s gospel lesson Jesus says to his disciples, “NOW the Son of Man is glorified! And God is glorified in Him!” When we hear that we imagine the tombstone laid aside, and the resurrected Lord marching out in victory! NOW THE SON OF MAN IS GLORIFIED! Or we imagine His ascension into heaven and His placement upon the right hand of the father with a scepter in His right hand from whence rules heaven and earth for His church. NOW THE SON OF MAN IS GLORIFIED!
But what great event had just happened to cause Jesus to say, “Now the Son of Man is glorified.”?
Judas had just left to finish his betrayal of our Lord by bringing the guard to arrest him! And what happens immediately after today's text? Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him 3 times and that all the disciples will scatter.
The whole organization is breaking down and falling apart. Yet Jesus says, “NOW the Son of Man is glorified!”
Jesus talks as if He is at the height of his glory and we cry out, “the titanic is sinking! Get out of the boat. It’s all ruined. Your empire is crumbling beneath your feet." It looks like Jesus darkest hour.
Yet Jesus proclaims, “NOW is the Son of Man glorified.”
It is when we see Jesus suffering and at his lowest that He invites us to praise Him with the loudest voice! In the deep darkness we see the piercing light of His love! The strength of His love. The endurance of His love. The depth of His love. The patience of His love. And the sacrifice that is His love!
Here we see Jesus loving people at their worst! their ugliest. their darkest. Here it seems that everything is at its worst! Yet Jesus goes to the cross without complaint. And on the cross He takes Peter’s place, Judas place, Barrabas’s place, and your place.
In the valley. In the crisis. In the worst of moments is when Jesus is glorified. Not after He rises again from the dead, but when He hangs on the cross! There we see the love of God!
Now is the Son of Man glorified. Now does God's love find it's beginning and end.
But the same goes for Christ’s body, the church.
Jesus invites us share in His glory in this world when He instructs us saying, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
We are called to love one another not on the mountaintops and in the easy place, but in the valleys and dark places.
Jesus does not qualify the objects of our love. He simply says love one another as I have loved you.
We think we know what love means. But how quickly we forget His command when loving is not easy. How quickly we stop short of loving when the going gets rough!
We stop short of loving, when to love someone means to sacrifice stuff we want for others. To love someone does not mean to given them your leftovers.
We stop short of loving, when to love someone means to look foolish and naive to the world. Our friends whisper to each other, “look at how she is being taken advantage of” or “How naïve of her to help that drunk woman, who just goes around from church to church asking for money” or "why is he speaking so well of that man when everyone knows he'll just stab him in the back."
We stop short of loving, when to love someone means to love someone who doesn’t love us back. Or to give to someone who does not give back. Even well intentioned Christians like to say, "it's good to forgive or its' good to give because it makes you feel good"
We stop short of loving, when to love someone means to walk with them for the extra mile. How easy it is to throw a dollar at someone or shake their hand or tell them you'll pray for them. How hard it is to walk with them in their footsteps through the valley.
Jesus is not glorified when we love people who are easy to love! Anyone can do that! Jesus is glorified in the difficult situations – when we love people who don’t love us. When we help our enemy. When we embrace the denier and the betrayer. That is when the Son of Man is glorified.
In 1940, Nazi Germany had brilliantly taken over central Europe. All that was left was Great Britain. And things looked hopeless. Winston Churchill stood up in parliament and said this, “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." Churchill does not point to the day of victory or celebration, but he points to the day when things were at their worst, but great Britain did not give in or run away – that darkest and most difficult hour would shine brighter in history than a million victories.
How tempting it is for a church and a pastor to run away from challenges and difficult situations. How quickly I get mad when I see people not getting along and I just want to say, “what’s wrong with this church?” “What’s wrong with me!” It's all falling apart! Yet it is in such situations that we are called to embrace and love and have compassion! For there God is glorified!
We are not the church of the successful and the strong. We are not the church of the perfect and mighty. We are the church of the Judas’s and Peters. And today the Son of Man is Glorified as he comes to us in our despair and sorrow. In our darkest hour and he says, “take and eat, this is my body given for you.” “Take and drink this is my blood shed on the cross, for the forgiveness of all your sins.” Today, even we who fall short of love receive the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life. And again today the Son of Man Glorified. May the brightness of His glory reflect upon us and to others.
AMEN.
