Another story from science camp…
One of the lessons I taught was taxonomy. I explained to the students why animal and plant species are given scientific names in Latin. I told them Latin is used, because it is precise. Latin is, basically, a dead language, which means it doesn’t change.
Other languages, like English, are living languages. The meaning of words in English do change from one generation to the next, and new words enter the language all the time.
I told my students that a challenge for someone like me is trying to keep up with the slang used by kids: how they use words and phrases that are new and unique to their generation, in ways that are sometimes hard for older generations to understand.
This fluidity of most languages is why animal and plant species are given scientific names in Latin.
In seminary, I had a professor who was always talking about how words have a way of “getting up and walking around.” In fact, because he said it so often, and because we really liked this professor, we all showed up in t-shirts one day with that phrase printed on them… What he meant when he said that is that the meaning of words can change from time to time and even from person to person.
So, whenever we use a religious or theological term, we need to define what we mean by that term, because our understanding of that term might be different than someone else’s understanding of that term.
We might think we know what we’re talking about when we use a certain word, but that word may have gotten up and moved to a new location, where it acquired a new meaning. So when we use a word like that, we need to make sure people understand what we mean when we use that word.
There’s a lot of religious words like that. Salvation. Righteousness. Atonement. These words don’t always mean the same thing to all people.
Today, I have a word to share with you. Literally. Just one word.
That word is glorify.
That word appeared a lot in our scripture. Near the end of John’s gospel, Jesus gives a long speech to his disciples, followed by a long prayer that scholars call Jesus’s “priestly prayer,” which our scripture today was part of.
And as we heard, in that prayer Jesus says: “Father, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you…” He also says, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed…”
And, then, when Jesus prays for his disciples, he says: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. I have been glorified in them.”
So what does it mean to glorify God? And how can we glorify God? How can God be glorified in us?
In Exodus 33, Moses asks God to show him his glory; Moses knew about God’s glory, God’s goodness, God’s honor, but Moses wanted to experience it firsthand.
I think maybe Moses, like us, had been told what glory meant, or what it meant to glorify God, but to really understand, Moses wanted to experience God’s glory first-hand.
It’s like someone who has never seen the ocean. You can tell them what the ocean is like, and they can read about the ocean and look at pictures of the ocean, but that still isn’t the same as actually seeing the ocean first-hand: standing at the ocean’s edge, looking down at the water lapping at your toes, and then turning your gaze upward until you’re staring at the spot where the ocean touches the sky.
And it isn’t the same as smelling that ocean air, or watching the endless motion of the waves, or the rise and fall of the tides.
You need to see it in person.
Moses asked to see God’s glory in person, so God said: “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
So: God’s glory is God’s mercy, and God’s compassion. That is what reveals God’s glory.
Jesus was merciful and compassionate. We read in scripture that he was often moved to compassion by the crowds that followed him. His mercy and compassion reveal God’s glory. And God was glorified through Jesus when Jesus acted with mercy and compassion.
We, too, can glorify God when we act with mercy and compassion. We especially glorify God when we practice compassion with people to whom we might find it difficult to be kind. We glorify God when we take the time to try to understand their situation or their background.
God loves each of us, no matter what. No matter what! God knows all of your goodness, and God knows all the times and ways you have failed to live up to that goodness. Yet none of that stops God’s love from reaching you.
That is God’s glory.
If we can learn to love like that, God is glorified by us, in us.
In his prayer, Jesus said that he has glorified God by finishing the work that God gave him to do. So, another way to say this is that we can glorify God by doing the work God has given us to do.
And we know what that work is. It is to seek justice, show kindness, and walk humbly with God.
Cornel West said that justice is what love looks like in public. If we can learn to love someone, we will do what is right for them, and we will insist that governments and corporations also do what is right for them.
The book I’m currently reading is by Matthew Desmond, and it’s titled, Poverty, By America. The focus isn’t on the poor themselves; the focus is on how our government and corporations have actually contributed to poverty, and how they actually benefit from poverty, and how regulations and the lack of regulations perpetuate poverty in America.
James Baldwin observed that it’s expensive to be poor, and that’s been especially true in the past few decades in America. We’ve made it so hard for those who are poor to ever rise out of poverty. In banking and finance, the poor are subject to more fees and more penalties than rich people are, and their share of the tax burden has risen while the share of the tax burden borne by the wealthy has fallen. Our economy is engineered to keep poor people poor.
An economy like that is not just. It is not right. It is exploitative.
I’m learning that people of privilege like to complain about how much welfare our government hands out. But while they complain about welfare given to the poor, they accept homeowner subsidies and claim mortgage interest deductions and have employer-sponsored health insurance which is subsidized by the government; aren’t those also forms of government welfare? And the subsidies given to these wealthier families and the deductions they take cost the government far more than assistance given to poor people.
There is more government assistance given to the wealthy than to the poor.
And I guarantee you, God is NOT glorified by that.
Showing love and doing justice means reshaping the economy, so that the poor are given a better chance to improve their situation and prosper.
When we do that–when we show love and when we do justice and when we create a society where all are able to thrive–God is glorified.
How else is God glorified?
I read something this week by Anne H.K. Apple, a presbyterian pastor. She wrote that “To glorify God is to know where you have come from and to whom you belong.”
And I thought, If a painter or sculpture creates a masterpiece, you glorify that artist by acknowledging the beauty of their creation.
Well, YOU are God’s masterpiece. You are beautiful. God is glorified when you recognize your beauty, when you understand your inherent goodness, and when you acknowledge that who you are is a gift from God.
Apple also writes that to glorify God is “to take rest in the blessing that comes when we put others before ourselves, to serve strangers by shining the light of the world into the shadow of all-consuming darkness. To glorify God is to risk opening our hearts by living into oneness in Christ Jesus when we would most often not bother to expend the energy that it takes.”
In addition to talking about glory and glorifying God in his prayer, Jesus also talks about unity. He prays that his disciples may be one… He prays that they may be one in the same way that Jesus and God are one.
There is glory, then, in that unity.
Now, the disciples were a diverse group. Yet they worked as one. And God was glorified.
God is glorified in us when we work as one, when our hearts are united. It doesn’t mean we all act the same or think the same; it doesn’t mean we try to erase our differences or what makes us unique.
But when we are united in purpose and in love, God is glorified.
I believe that God has been glorified through our denomination, the Disciples of Christ, and our efforts throughout our 200 year history to bring Christians together. Unfortunately, there were also times when we worked against unity, and in those times, God was not glorified.
But when we open our table to all, and when we proclaim that unity is our polar star, God is glorified.
And when we work to bring healing and wholeness to the world, God is glorified.
And so, may God be glorified in our love for one another, and in the compassion we show to others, and in the work we do to create a more just world, and in our quest for unity.
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