I. More of Jesus, Not Less 00:02
Lord Jesus, we pray that you would reveal yourself more fully to us today, that we would see you in all your goodness, and that it would change us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I see some people here, maybe, supporting a special baptism today. That’s pretty exciting. Baptism is one of the coolest things we get to do in the church, where we welcome somebody into the family. I was baptized here many years ago. Not that many, but a fair bit. And it’s just really awesome to see, throughout the generations, the people who’ve been baptized in this very space, welcomed into the family of God.
Today we are celebrating an interesting Sunday, because we had Holy Week, and then we’ve had Easter. If you don’t know, Easter celebrations are still happening, so we’re still in the middle of that. We’re in Easter till next week, even, with Pentecost. And this past Thursday we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension. And today I’m actually not going to focus on the Ascension all that much, although it’s very relevant to what I’m talking about. Because what Jesus did when he ascended is not leave us. Although it kind of seems like that, especially in the portrayal. We’ve got one right here. He’s kind of going up into the clouds and disappearing into the ether, and we can kind of think, “What is up with that?” If you know anything of the history of the church, they then had to walk out 360-ish years of deadly persecution, being shunned by their own society and even murdered for their faith. Why did he abandon them? What’s this whole thing about?
Well, that’s not the message of the Ascension. The message of the Ascension is that he has ascended to now fill all things with himself. Which may seem even stranger than him disappearing into the clouds, and it kind of is. It’s a mystery. But we’re told that God holds all things together in himself. And so we actually are closer to Jesus now than when he walked on earth. Now, there’s a special moment in which, in particular, Jesus the human man, who still is human, walked with his disciples. But we are called now to participate in him. And in fact, that’s what baptism is all about: entering into Christ, joining him in his death and his resurrection.
And so if you wonder what Christianity is all about, that’s it. We are called to be in Christ, living symbols of Christ in the world. That’s kind of what Christian means. It’s “little Christ.” That was like a slang term they called the church: “They’re like little Christs, just running around.” That’s who we are. And so the invitation of Ascension is not less of Jesus, but more of Jesus.
II. What Is Glory? 03:08
And so as we go through here, I want to talk about this particular word that Jesus used when he was praying for his disciples. He knows he’s ascending. He knows what it will look like to them. And so he prays this prayer over them that we read in our Gospel, and he mentions this word that stuck out to me throughout the readings, and even in our song choices today. It was all throughout: this word glory.
Now, glory is used an enormous number of times in the Bible. But I think if somebody said, “What’s glory?”, you’d have a little difficulty defining it. It’s a little bit hard to categorize, and so I just want to talk about what’s going on in glory. It’s mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture, and that’s the noun form. If you use the verb form, it’s like thousands, because when it says “praise him” or “glorify him,” those are kind of the same word. And so it’s all throughout, this idea of attributing honor and glory to God. And the glory of God is a theme throughout all of Scripture.
I want to start with this: there are different ways we can recognize glory on earth, and that might help us understand what we’re talking about when we talk about God.
III. The Glory of Beauty 04:24
First of all, I think we see glory in beauty. Maybe you’ve been paying attention to the news, and you’ve seen shots like this coming from this latest Artemis mission. Now, I know these are not the most high-res screens, and it’s bright and all that, so you maybe don’t see everything that’s going on here. But you see these little dots lining up with the moon there? Those are planets. And they just happened to catch the solar plane of these giant bodies that orbit the sun. And we’re sitting here like, “Yeah, it’s okay. I’ve seen better.” You kind of have to enter into the mystery of what’s even happening here. They are flying through space, taking a picture back at the sun being eclipsed by the moon, from space. It’s unbelievable. It’s incredible.
And if you take your trip down this road, maybe you like this picture better. This is another one that was awesome. This is the earth setting behind the moon. We’re on that thing. That’s crazy. And there’s this wonder, and maybe you feel a little bit of awe when you truly encounter it in the world. Now, it might be a sunset, it might be this, that, or the other thing. Whatever it is, when you encounter beauty in this world, there’s a sense of awe that comes about. That’s an encounter with glory. That’s what you’re responding to. The beauty is kind of revealing a glory there. In fact, in the Psalms it says:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Ps 19.1
Imagine showing the psalmist who wrote this that image. He was just sitting on earth looking at the stars, like, “How amazing.” And then we show him that. I mean, it only grows. That’s the good thing about true beauty: the deeper you go with it, the more there is. There’s just more beauty in creation than we can even imagine. The same thing is happening in the opposite direction. People who are looking at cells and biology are discovering that even the infinitesimally small is filled with the order and beauty of creation. It’s just suffused. The whole world, the heavens, everything, is suffused with the glory of God. And we can enter it through an understanding of beauty.
Haley and I were just in Paris for the installation of the patriarch of our denomination, and we had an opportunity to go into Notre Dame. And we walked in there… This thing was built eight hundred years ago. It is unbelievably beautiful, and both of us were just overcome. Tears just came to our eyes at the beauty, and the history of people praying and serving and worshiping our God. Glory comes through in those moments.
And in fact, I think one of the things we have to worry about is that we get so dull to the ideas of beauty in the world. I know I’m literally holding this [the phone] during a sermon, which feels a little sacrilegious, but we have our phones, and they just constantly pump you with tunnel runs and videos and shorts. It’s almost like a Vegas slot machine all the time. And it can dull your ability to appreciate the real beauty in the world. And so I just want to encourage us to be open to seeing the glory of God in the beauty we encounter in the world, because it will open you up to an experience of God that is closed otherwise.
In fact, when you talk about people throughout the history of the church who truly sit and contemplate beauty, they often talk about finding their path through these aesthetic wanderings, and they discover more of God, more depth, more understanding. And then, you know who they think is more beautiful, when they do things like this? You guys. They go on these journeys where they discover beauty, and then they find beauty in the human face: the image of God, the Creator. How dull are we? We look at one another, and all we can think of is either “I don’t care,” or all their flaws, or “You’re just so familiar, why would I consider further?”
It changes in a baby. Have you noticed that? A baby reawakens our ability to see the beauty of humanity. At least in my experience, when I encounter a little baby, all of a sudden I am locked in: “Look at this little thing. Look at this guy, this girl.” It just opens you up again to the miraculous nature of humanity.
IV. The Glory of Accomplishment 08:45
Okay, other glories. I’m not going to go on forever, but: glory from accomplishment. And you’re going to have to bear with me here, because I’m a little bit of a nerd, a big nerd, really. But in The Lord of the Rings, one of the most emotional moments (and forgive me if you’ve never seen it) is when, at the end of The Return of the King, after all the journeys are concluding, Aragorn is arrayed in all of his glory, all of his refinement, in this great moment on top of Minas Tirith. And the hobbits show up, and they go to kneel before him. And what does he say? “My friends, you bow to no one.” And then everybody bows, including the king, to these hobbits.
Now, some here are already a little misty-eyed, and some people here are wondering what the heck a hobbit is, and everyone in between. But the idea is that you have these four ordinary people. And not just ordinary, but less than the tall, strong men and the beautiful, refined elves and all the other races in the whole thing. They’re just kind of like the podunk people in the backwater trailer park. They don’t have anything to recommend them. And yet these four people saved the world. I could list all their accomplishments, but I don’t know if you’d recognize any of the names. So, either way, they do all these crazy things, like defeating the Witch-king of Angmar, and so on and so forth. And at the end of this great saga, they are bestowed a glory unlike any other: “You bow to no one.” Because of your accomplishment, your heroism. That’s one of the ways we see glory.
And maybe you’re thinking of something a little bit more tangible, like the firefighters who run into burning buildings and save people. That’s glory: those who are even willing to lay down their life. There’s a glory from accomplishment. We could just contemplate this phrase all day: “My friends, you bow to no one.”
But you can also see it in an athlete. I remember where I was when I saw Tony Hawk do the 900 for the first time. It was absolutely incredible. It was during the X Games, and he had landed it in practice, but he hadn’t been able to do it in competition. And it was this glorious moment where he had done something nobody had ever done. And maybe you don’t care about Tony Hawk, but I got to meet him once, and let me say, there was a glory in the moment. I tried to shake his hand. I’m stuttering. He looked a little scared. But I was like, “Man, I love everything you’ve done. It’s so cool. I remember being a kid and watching this.” We know what glory is when we see it in part. There’s this little bit about the glory of accomplishment.
V. The Glory of Goodness 11:26
And finally (I know there are other ways we could go with this), there’s also the glory that comes from goodness. In fact, there’s one story Jesus told that everybody here knows, whether you’ve ever read the Bible or not: the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.30–37). And Jesus says that you only call God alone good (Mark 10.18), but the Good Samaritan: that’s how good this man is. His glory… He’s in a made-up parable, and yet the glory of his goodness has echoed throughout all eternity: the idea that you would care for an enemy of yours at great personal expense and restore him to life, for no other reason than that you were moved with compassion for him. How glorious. There’s a glory that’s reflected from goodness.
VI. Show Me Your Glory 12:14
And so we move from that to talk now about the glory of God, because that’s really what we’re interested in and after right now: understanding the glory of God. And we go back to a story that you may or may not have heard of. There’s this guy Moses. If you’ve seen The Prince of Egypt, you know. He’s the guy who says, “Let my people go,” all of that stuff. He’s in the wilderness now. He’s led the Israelites out of Egypt, the great empire, through the plagues. He’s fed them, literally, in the desert, raining down manna. Moses was a part of that whole thing. He struck a rock and water came out. He’s like the hero of the Old Testament, Moses is.
And at this moment… well, we lost a slide. That’s okay. At this moment he’s up on a mountain, and he’s talking to God, and he’s kind of in the middle of this important consideration with the Lord, and he asks the Lord for a boon, basically. He’s like, “Look, I’ve done all these things for you. Show me your glory. That’s what I want.” And so in this he says:
18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name… 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Exod 33.18–20
It’s this beautiful image. You have Moses: he ends up putting him in the cleft of the rock, and he holds his hand over it as he passes through. It’s all symbolic. It’s this huge thing. It really happened, but it has all this symbolism and meaning that echoes throughout how you understand God and his nature and how he relates to us.
But I just want to highlight a couple of things. First of all, when he says, “I will show you my glory,” he says, “I will show you my goodness, and I will proclaim my name.” So glory has to do with God’s goodness and his identity. That’s what’s important about glory. Who he is, is glorious, and his goodness is in there. And in fact, the “dot dot dot” up there is “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” It’s the glory of God to show mercy to you.
So we come to God with our laundry list of failures, thinking he’s there to hammer us into shape. Which is kind of true, but the tool he uses is mercy and grace and love. Yes, discipline, absolutely. But the discipline of God is kinder than the kindness of men. We’re told throughout all of Scripture that his response to us is always good. In fact, because of what Christ has done, we now bear the image of blameless righteousness before him. So when we say, “Here are all my failures,” he goes, “I accept you, just like I accepted Jesus.” We’re not competing to be good or better in his eyes. We are just accepted, and it’s his glory to give that to us. So that’s a little bit of what the glory of God is about.
VII. Beholding the Face of God 14:59
And then his identity. What does he say? “No man may see my face and live.” Well, what about Jesus? Isn’t he the face of God, the very image of God? Well, guess what? When you discover in the face of Jesus the glory of God, you die. That’s actually what we’re doing today with this baptism thing. We’re introducing this baby to the glory of God, and they are dying and being restored to life. That’s what baptism is. It’s an entrance into the understanding of Jesus as the glory of God. It’s really remarkable.
And every day you are invited to take up your cross and follow him. And how do you do that? Why don’t you behold in Jesus’s face the glory of God? I don’t want to get too technical into all of these things. I’m always tempted to go this theological route. But just on a practical level: if you understand more of who Jesus is, you will not behave the same way. All the things you care about will pale in comparison to the glory of God.
And so one of the things we should be doing is praying like Moses: “Show me your glory.” How many of your prayers are to God about him showing you his glory? Instead of “God, I need you to fix this. I need to stop being so angry all the time. I need to get this promotion at work. I need to figure out where I’m going to live,” or whatever it is. We have all these laundry lists of things we need him to do for us. How committed to him do you have to be to just stop and say, “God, I just want to see your glory”? I think that’s an invitation today. I don’t think we even know to ask. Maybe you don’t even consider what it might mean for you to understand more fully the glory of God.
VIII. Glorify Your Son 17:09
Okay. All of this has to do with the revelation of who God is in Christ Jesus, and then in us. Because the next thing we have to do is talk about the fact that we are given the glory of God. That seems a little reckless, if I’m being honest. I don’t know if I’m quite the vessel for the glory of the almighty Creator God. And yet that is exactly what Jesus prays. We’ll start with this:
1 “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, … 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” John 17.1–5
So if you’re wondering whether Jesus has God’s glory, that is answered right here. Jesus is the glory of God, and in fact God glorifies himself in Jesus. How does he do it? He allows him to be crucified.
Now, I picked this painting. We saw it in the Louvre in Paris. It’s a theme. I’m using all the Paris references I can. Very excited about that. But we were at the Louvre, and we ran into this painting, and I love this aspect of it. This is punched in a little bit, so you can see what the artist is trying to do: to show that simultaneously, as Jesus is crucified, he is also glorified. And you can kind of see that in the revealing of heaven. You see how the clouds are kind of parted, and you see the celestial thing. And he’s just trying to show symbolically that what looks like a crucifixion, a humiliating death, a shameful death, is actually, if you had a glimpse into reality, Jesus being glorified and lifted up.
It doesn’t take away the reality of Jesus’s death. In fact, some of my favorite paintings we saw at the Louvre were of Jesus being laid into the tomb, and how lifeless he looked in those moments. There’s something so harrowing and real about that.
IX. Glorified in Them 19:21
But the reality here is that Jesus’s revelation of the glory of God is meant for us as well. We can see it here as he continues to pray: “All mine are yours.” Who is Jesus’s? Every one of us who has been baptized and called his own. Every one of us who believes and calls upon his name. “We’re all mine.” So “all mine are yours”: all of us are God’s. “And yours are mine”: Jesus and God have the same thing. And “I am glorified” where? “In them.” If you want to find the glory of God, it’s meant to shine through us.
“And I am no longer in the world.” So he’s ascended. “But they are in the world… Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me” (John 17.10–11). Remember how glory is about the name? We are called by his name. We are Christians. That’s bestowed on us. “That they may be one, even as we are one.” I love this, because it shows that the glory of Christ is shown in our unity, our love for one another, our coming together. That’s even how Jesus says, “They will know you by the love you have for one another.” That’s how they’ll be able to see me. And yet we get so caught up in bickering and fighting and anxiety and striving. It’s like, no, no, no. The glory of God is in the ability to love one another.
And remember how the glory of God was to show mercy and grace? Well, how many of the things you’re offended by should you just show mercy and grace towards? If you want to display the glory of God, it’s right there. Okay: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13.35).
Okay, last thing on this particular verse. I think what we get caught up in, whether you would say this out loud or not, is that we really want our own glory. In fact, one of the things that offends us the most is if somebody doesn’t understand how great I am. As soon as my actions are misinterpreted as a failure, I am in lawyer mode. I am on it. They will know that I didn’t mess up. Especially if you didn’t actually mess up: you have to tell everybody. In fact, you probably need to send a general bulletin to everybody in your contacts: “If you hear this rumor, it wasn’t me.” We are so concerned with our own glory.
That’s also the inversion here. If you’re so concerned with your own glory, you’re missing it all. Because all we’re supposed to do is love one another, which will automatically, through no effort of our own, display the glory of God. And when you love other people, you’re actually concerned with their glory.
X. The Glory You Have Given Me 22:15
Jesus wants you to be glorified. It’s pretty incredible. I’ll show you here. What did Jesus do with his glory? “The glory that you have given me I have given to them” (John 17.22). So imagine Michael Phelps. Remember when he was wearing all those medals, getting all the pictures? Imagine in that situation he just takes all the medals off and goes, “No, you get all the glory.” I mean, it’s kind of a ridiculous example, but that’s exactly what Jesus is saying: “You see this glorious thing I have done, laying down my life for you, rising from the dead, living that you may live? All of the glory that’s due to me, I give to you.”
And we walk around as princes in the kingdom of God. Now, maybe you’re sitting here thinking, “How in the world does that apply to my life? I’m a janitor, or whatever it is. I’m a plumber. I’m a truck driver. I’m a manager, whatever it is. I’m not a prince. I’m just trying to get by. I’m trying to survive. At the end of the day, I want to be able to go to sleep, maybe watch a couple of Netflix shows, and that’s all I can handle right now. And you’re talking about glory?” Well, the invitation today is to ask God, “What do you mean by this stuff? How am I supposed to hold the glory of Christ?” You should ask him. He might have an idea. At the very least, it means we have to love one another. Simple, impossible, all the other things.
So he continues to pray, “that they may be one even as we are one.” That’s the unity piece. “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17.22–23). God loves you as much as he loves Jesus. I mean, if you just thought about that for the next sixty years, you probably would be as good as you could possibly be. That is just a mystery to contemplate. Every time you’re beating up on yourself: God loves me as much as he loves Jesus. Every time somebody’s beating up on you… I don’t know if you actually say that to the person, but you don’t have to be insecure. You can just rest. God loves me as much as he loves Jesus. Why am I striving so much for other people’s approval?
24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” John 17.24
Okay, that’s the end. I know you guys are hanging out with me here and contemplating this idea, but let’s just think about what this means. This last invitation, part of you displaying the glory of Christ, is that he prayed. And whose prayers always get answered? Jesus’s. If the fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (James 5.16), if it’s effective, then I think Jesus’s prayers are pretty effective. And he prayed to the Father, “Let them see my glory.”
So if you feel as though, in your life, all I can see is the mountains ahead, or the problems I’m facing, or the anxiety I feel, or the depression I can’t shake: there is a promise in this, that God wants to open your eyes to his glory. Which will look a heck of a lot like goodness. Which will look a heck of a lot like accomplishing the purposes of God. Which will look a heck of a lot like beauty. And he’s doing this every day in your life.
So let’s pray with Moses: “Show me your glory.” And now, as we transition to the baptism, let’s remember that this is not just some water, some salty water, but this is actually a participation in the glory of Christ, in that baby. How cool is Christianity? You don’t have to do anything. You can just be a baby, and you can be welcomed in and brought into this. Amen.