Easter V

Elizabeth M. Hoster
May 6, 2007

We are to glorify God in Christ by showing God’s essence, which is love.

Is anybody else a little confused by today’s Gospel?

Here it is, the fifth Sunday of Easter. And in our Gospel lesson, we are dropped back into Maundy Thursday, right at the crucial moment upon which this whole Gospel pivots. Judas has just fled the upper room, Jesus accepts Judas’ betrayal, turns to his disciples, and says, NOW.

And then, it gets really confusing. All of that talk about Glory in that circular grammar of John: the Son of Man gets glorified, God gets glorified, they get glorified in each other– By the time all of this glory gets reflected back and forth, the light is far too bright for any of us to see anything.
And then, if that were not confusing enough, Jesus seems to jump into a commandment about loving one another!

What’s this all about? Why are we back here, anyway? It’s after Easter now. We know how this story ends.

But we need to go back and tell the story again. Only when we know how the story ends can we then go back and make sense of the pieces.

After all, look at the stories in your own families. Look at the stories you tell that give meaning–the stories that changed everything in the family: The story of how your grandparents met. The fabulous vacation that resulted in the third child. The chance conversation you had with a friend that made you decide to take the job in West Virginia.
Or how about those near miss stories? In my family, one of them is the scary story of my dad double checking his parachute while still on the ground, and realizing it would not have functioned.

Inevitably, there is some moral in these stories–some real “family value” in the best sense of the word. Never say never. Always give people a second chance. Always trust your gut.

In our families, we go back and look at those moments of transformation through the lens of what we know now, and can see where God was at work.

And that is what we do today, a month after Easter. It’s safe to tell the story now, the story of how Jesus’ followers had no idea what would happen next. That last dinner with Him was confusing and fraught with unknowing. After his resurrection and ascension, they told this story over and over, finally seeing how God was working. It’s safe now. It all worked out in the end.

Most of the family stories we like to tell are the ones where lives are created or saved.

This is the rare family story–I will wager the ONLY family story–where betrayal and death–where a life freely given-- leads to something good for future generations.

This short passage this morning marks a turning point in John. It is a huge turning point in the Christian family, and in this Gospel particularly. In the first half of John, often called “the book of signs,” Jesus is teaching large groups, talking to believers and non-believers. During the second half, often called “the Book of Glory,” he is talking only to those who believe in him. HERE is where we enter the Book of Glory.

And here is where we find those morals, those “family values,” that are going to be passed down from generation to generation.

The first one: Don’t mistake earthly glory for God’s glory. Glory isn’t going to look like what the disciples may be used to. Glory to them looks exalted and powerful: The high priest has tremendous power, and fabulous, fabulous vestments. Caesar is truly all powerful, and has been elevated to the status of deity. This kind of glory they may understand–and want Jesus to attain-- will be described later in the Revelation to John, and will only be after the second coming.

To glorify here does not only mean “to give honor to,” but to show the essence of. It’s not adding to and obfuscating, but stripping away what is unnecessary.

Now you are going to see the essence of the Son of Man. If he has shown God’s essence, God will show what the Son of Man is made of, and will do it right now.

For Jesus, and for God, glory is going to be very different than what we expect. God would show His essence by emptying out God’s self on the cross in Jesus. Only God can transform betrayal into glory, and that glory would mean that the essence of God’s self, and Christ’s self: LOVE.

THIS IS OUR FAMILY STORY. THIS IS THE ONE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THIS ONE, WE WOULDN’T BE HERE.

And of course, we get to that BIG family value, what we are to learn, and what we are to pass down to generations: Love one another, as Jesus has loved us.

Now, to be sure, we often talk about that love better than we live it. But maybe it is because we misunderstand it. It is not merely the emotional, natural affection we do or do not feel for another. After all, I bet Jesus felt more affinity for some disciples than for others.

Rather, as Roberta Bondi writes, it is “characterized by a commitment we make that shapes our ways of seeing, understanding, and acting...it is about a chosen, cultivated, and long-term attitude of the heart, a habitual attitude of the heart that wishes for and seeks to provide for the well being of another, in concrete acts of kindness, consideration, and service.”

We are told, in our worship, in our hymns, that we are to glorify God. It does NOT mean a bunch of God talk that serves to separate ourselves from others. To glorify God is to show God’s essence–to be neither dictator nor doormat, but to use the free will we are given by God to see that the image of God is in all and was placed there by God, and to choose freely to cultivate that image of God in all that we do and are.

In our life after Easter, we are not asked to simply go forward in the power of the resurrection. We don’t just go out and forget what brought us here. Rather, we are to remember what that resurrection glorifies, what it was all about: it shows the essence of God’s self as divine LOVE.