Everyone please turn to page 126 in your LEVAS hymn books.
The children have been working on this hymn, which they’re going to sing for us now, and then we’re all going to sing it together.
(Children sing- and all join in)
In today’s gospel, just after Judas goes out to betray him, Jesus speaks with the disciples in a sentence that contains a string of glories, like the most exquisite of pearls strung together on a necklace.
“Now the Son of Man has been gloried, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.”
What does this string of glories mean?
These magnificent glories are resplendent with glorious love—the love that Jesus will soon show as he “stretches out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that all creation might come within the reach of his saving embrace—“
And God’s glorious love will soon be revealed as God’s love flows out, conquers death, and raises Jesus out of death into eternal life.
And then we get to the glorious love that we are to share with one another, based on the new commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples that night.
This is the same magnificent commandment that he gives to us.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
This glorious love isn’t just the garden variety love that we create on our own.
This glorious love that Jesus talks about is reflective of the glorious love that God has for us, and we glorify God in our lives when we love one another as God has loved us.
So—what is this glorious love like?
This glorious love is free.
We freely give love to one another because God has loved us with no strings attached. We give to one another the generous love that God has given to each one of us.
This glorious love is sacrificial.
Jesus loved us so much that he went to his death in order to lay out for us the pathway to the heavenly city we heard about in Revelation today, where pain and death are no more. When we give this sort of love to one another, pain and sacrifice are part of the deal—sacrifice as simple as sitting up all night with a sick child, or as hard as taking care of homeless dying people in Calcutta.
This glorious love is abundant.
God’s love isn’t limited to a little group of people. God’s love is for all humanity, and for all of creation. And when we love one another as God loves us, we reach out not only to one another, but to those who are unloved, those who are different, those who are hurting or in pain, those in need. This kind of abundant love is evident in this church’s incredible generosity to people we will never know in person in the Sudan, and in Haiti, the sort of abundant love that provides things as simple as fishing nets and toilets.
This glorious love is healing.
Sharing God’s love helps us to knit back together relationships that have become unraveled. And we give God glory when we love the earth and treat it lovingly as God’s glorious and holy creation, made to praise God as our Psalm and canticle today so extravagantly illustrate. Our decisions about how we care for one another and also the earth can reflect God’s healing love for all of creation.
This glorious love is full of praise.
Remember last week, I talked about praise being part of what we do as Agents of the Resurrection. So I’m going to quote myself here, and say again that we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to praise God. When we think about the fact that God pursues us with goodness and mercy all the days our lives, we can’t help but praise God, starting here and now!
This glorious love is new.
Every morning, the sun of God’s glorious love sheds new light on our lives, filling us with light, so that we can be filled with God’s light, lighting the way for others who still walk in darkness. Behold, I make all things new, God says—not in the future, but here and now, today.
This glorious love is full of God’s freedom and justice.
This is the love that Martin Luther King referred to in his famous ”I have a dream” speech.
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
We could go on forever, defining this glorious love, but I’m going to end with one last definition of the love that we have for one another.
This glorious love is visible to the world.
When we love one another just as God has loved us, then everyone will know that we are God’s disciples, if we have love for one another.
Look at your neighbors here in these pews. God’s love is visible here in our midst because we try to love one another here with God’s glorious love.
Now we’re going to end with one more verse of “In my life, Lord be glorified”— and as we sing this, remember that our job as God’s disciples is to share this string of God’s glories—God’s glorious everlasting love for each one of us—the love that God wants us to share wholeheartedly and without reserve with the entire world, this glorious love that gives God the glory.
And our last verse goes like this.
“On this earth, Lord, be glorified, be glorified. On this earth, Lord, be glorified today.”
Amen.