Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 24, 2020
Acts 1:6-14
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
According to our calendars, we have come quite a distance since Ash Wednesday on February 26. That date seems like an eternity ago given all that has happened in the last twelve weeks. We go into the wilderness, to the depths of our souls and the nature of our resistance to God so that we may be ready and willing to receive the medicine of salvation freely offered us. We emerge into the glory of the empty tomb and the risen and ascended Christ. The Gospel today ties together these seasons and stories of death and resurrection spanning from those dark, cold days of February (when I actually physically touched people’s forehead’s with ashes) to today. The mystery of life, death, and resurrection cycles and tumbles through our lives just as in the Gospel of John where Jesus is always the crucified, risen, and glorified One even in his earthly ministry, even, we might say, from before the foundation of the world.
All of that is context to the verses I would like to focus on this morning. Verses 9 and 10 say this,
And then “I have been glorified in them.” Here is a union, fusion, participation in the dignity of each human being in the eternal and everlasting unfolding of the love and grace of God to and in all things. Our human life is the context within which the glorification of Christ is an ongoing incarnation of perfect union and utter self-giving love. The ever-being-revealed radiant being and presence of Christ is ongoing within us. That is the essence of the meaning of our human lives – to be an incarnation of the glory – that is, the perfect union and utter self-giving love of the Son in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the context of the Upper Room, the soon coming arrest and execution, Jesus has little time and does not waste words. The imminence of death has a way of focusing thoughts and words to what is essential. Jesus urgently wants the disciples to be so rooted and grounded in their identity as belonging to the Trinity, that nothing will shake their belief. What is it that Jesus leaves the disciples as the Last Word, the final echo of his voice before the Passion? The glory of the Son from the Father lives on in us as individuals and community.
All of this theology is lovely, but the reason Jesus is talking this way is to inform our lives from the inside out. Living as the one in whom Christ is being glorified is the heart of the Christian vocation. Christ glorified in us is the conversion from self-will to detachment. The desire for our own glory is the source of sin and distorts and warps our identity. Detachment is knowing the difference between my glory and Christ’s glory. Christ’s glory is not about control, power, dictating the future. The allowing of Christ’s glory, the surrendering of my will to power, orients my vocation to what is ultimate and eternal. Whenever I assert my self-will, I embrace the illusion that I am independent and can separate myself from belonging to the Holy Trinity.
In A Letter of Consolation, Henri Nouwen writes to his father six months after the death of his mother on the relationship between autonomy and detachment. He is seeking to distinguish between a passive resignation and an active surrender in the spiritual life. He writes,
We can hear these words of Jesus in a fresh way as we are in our own urgent time. We are in need of being rooted in what is meaningful and lasting. Our lives reflect and participate in this mystery. In aging and ultimately our own death, we live in the hope of the promise of resurrection. That hope amplifies and enriches the present moment because eternal life is now and we are preparing, storing up treasure for what awaits us. St. Benedict counsels us to live with the end in mind: “remember that you are going to die”, he says in the Rule. Like John’s bending of time, it is difficult to understand how to “remember” something that is in the future. St. Benedict is inviting us to look forward to the day when there are no more denominations, church buildings, monasteries – when the containers are gone, having been replaced by the eternal presence of the thing these structures signify and toward which they point. The expectation of fulfillment in a world where only our acts of love remain from all our days helps us hold loosely what is useful and necessary, but is still passing away. The externals are given to us to teach us the way of love.
Lately I have been in mind of Mary Oliver’s famous poetic question;
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Well, Mary, “I plan to live it, and then to lay it at the feet of the One who made me and to whom I belong.” The prayer Jesus prayer for the disciples, praying even now for us, imagines what might happen when we are welcomed into heaven. “Tell me”, Christ will say, “did you live, did you enjoy the wild and precious gift I gave you of being alive and being you? Did you enjoy sharing my glory – in all the joys and sorrows, gifts and losses – as much as I enjoyed creating you?” Amen.
All of that is context to the verses I would like to focus on this morning. Verses 9 and 10 say this,
“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”Jesus speaks here of the communion between Father and Son, and elsewhere in the Farewell Discourse of the coming of the Holy Spirit. In the discourse as a whole, the life of the Trinity is always described as relational, the persons are distinct yet in and for one another. The Trinity is not an abstract idea for examination or a closed circle beyond us. The unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the source of our being and the model of our life with God and one another. The relationship between Son and Father is not, thankfully, “on behalf of those who have been chosen over others; on behalf of those who are good enough…” But rather because of and out of their relationship we are brought into being, and by being we belong and are being given in belonging. The only qualification needed is that you are here. The belonging is inherent in our souls by awakening to its presence.
And then “I have been glorified in them.” Here is a union, fusion, participation in the dignity of each human being in the eternal and everlasting unfolding of the love and grace of God to and in all things. Our human life is the context within which the glorification of Christ is an ongoing incarnation of perfect union and utter self-giving love. The ever-being-revealed radiant being and presence of Christ is ongoing within us. That is the essence of the meaning of our human lives – to be an incarnation of the glory – that is, the perfect union and utter self-giving love of the Son in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the context of the Upper Room, the soon coming arrest and execution, Jesus has little time and does not waste words. The imminence of death has a way of focusing thoughts and words to what is essential. Jesus urgently wants the disciples to be so rooted and grounded in their identity as belonging to the Trinity, that nothing will shake their belief. What is it that Jesus leaves the disciples as the Last Word, the final echo of his voice before the Passion? The glory of the Son from the Father lives on in us as individuals and community.
All of this theology is lovely, but the reason Jesus is talking this way is to inform our lives from the inside out. Living as the one in whom Christ is being glorified is the heart of the Christian vocation. Christ glorified in us is the conversion from self-will to detachment. The desire for our own glory is the source of sin and distorts and warps our identity. Detachment is knowing the difference between my glory and Christ’s glory. Christ’s glory is not about control, power, dictating the future. The allowing of Christ’s glory, the surrendering of my will to power, orients my vocation to what is ultimate and eternal. Whenever I assert my self-will, I embrace the illusion that I am independent and can separate myself from belonging to the Holy Trinity.
In A Letter of Consolation, Henri Nouwen writes to his father six months after the death of his mother on the relationship between autonomy and detachment. He is seeking to distinguish between a passive resignation and an active surrender in the spiritual life. He writes,
“It [autonomy] is the option to understand our experience of powerlessness as an experience of being guided, even when we do not know exactly where… We can see that a growing surrender to the unknown is a sign of spiritual maturity and does not take away autonomy… I am constantly struck by the fact that those who are most detached from life, those who have learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to, are the really creative people. They are free to move constantly away from the familiar, safe places and can keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life.”Even the holy possessiveness of the Trinity has a detachment that possesses and at the same time freely gives to the other.
We can hear these words of Jesus in a fresh way as we are in our own urgent time. We are in need of being rooted in what is meaningful and lasting. Our lives reflect and participate in this mystery. In aging and ultimately our own death, we live in the hope of the promise of resurrection. That hope amplifies and enriches the present moment because eternal life is now and we are preparing, storing up treasure for what awaits us. St. Benedict counsels us to live with the end in mind: “remember that you are going to die”, he says in the Rule. Like John’s bending of time, it is difficult to understand how to “remember” something that is in the future. St. Benedict is inviting us to look forward to the day when there are no more denominations, church buildings, monasteries – when the containers are gone, having been replaced by the eternal presence of the thing these structures signify and toward which they point. The expectation of fulfillment in a world where only our acts of love remain from all our days helps us hold loosely what is useful and necessary, but is still passing away. The externals are given to us to teach us the way of love.
Lately I have been in mind of Mary Oliver’s famous poetic question;
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Well, Mary, “I plan to live it, and then to lay it at the feet of the One who made me and to whom I belong.” The prayer Jesus prayer for the disciples, praying even now for us, imagines what might happen when we are welcomed into heaven. “Tell me”, Christ will say, “did you live, did you enjoy the wild and precious gift I gave you of being alive and being you? Did you enjoy sharing my glory – in all the joys and sorrows, gifts and losses – as much as I enjoyed creating you?” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment