Giving Glory
May 04, 2008
May 4, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11
There is something very intimate about overhearing someone’s prayer – in the Gospel reading we heard a portion of Jesus praying for his disciples, as the lectionary divides it into thirds and uses part of it each year on the 7th Sunday of Easter. In the letter, several themes recur again and again. One is the theme of glory – Jesus talks about God’s glory, his own glory, and the glory given to his disciples. Another theme is that of giving – in the whole prayer, the Greek word for “give” occurs seventeen times, eleven of them in our passage today. And the third major theme is that of unity – Jesus prays repeatedly for the unity of his followers that exists between him and the Father.
What, indeed, is glory? Most of us probably think of glory as something akin to fame – the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “praise, honor, or distinction extended by common consent”. But in the Bible, there is also a sense of revelation about glory – the idea is that God’s glory is revealing a glimpse of the greatness of God. In our culture, glory being connected to something means that it is famous, and the attributes of its excellence are being recognized – a sports team’s glory is about the attributes that lead to winning. A nation’s glory is connected to whatever qualities lead to its greatness, its success, its leadership in the world. And so, the definition that I heard once about giving glory to God makes sense: that giving glory to God was defined as making God’s character more evident. In that definition, glory both reveals and honors God. So in that sense too, divine glory is the character of God made evident, either through the work of God, or of God’s people. It’s old-fashioned language, to be sure, but it’s still an important concept – after all, in our world there have been people who call themselves Christian, and whose sense of God makes us reluctant to use the same word. Giving glory to God simply means living in such a way that God looks good.
In the other passage, the story of the Ascension, the disciples are hoping that the time has come for the glory of Israel to be restored – that is, for Israel to be restored to its former greatness, to be freed from the Romans, and to assume leadership in the world. It is somewhat remarkable, from our perspective, that even at this point in the ministry of Jesus – after he had consistently rejected power, and had allowed himself to be crucified – the disciples are hoping that his ministry is about power. As one commentary inelegantly put it: “They are hoping that now, it is finally time to kick some Roman butt.” They are looking for Israel to possess its own country, for Jesus to possess power, and yet, they don’t even get to possess Jesus for in an instant he is gone from their sight in what is known as the Ascension.
Anglican theologian N.T. Wright explains in his recent book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, that Christians have consistently misunderstood the Biblical cosmology of Earth and Heaven. We tend to think of Earth and Heaven as being different places, so that in the Ascension, we think that Jesus left here and went there. Now, it’s a whole other question whether or not we believe the Biblical version – but it’s hard to evaluate that when we don’t fully understand it. Wright’s understanding is that in the Biblical view, heaven and earth are different dimensions of the same world, and that some day earth and heaven will be united in one coherent and harmonious creation. This is not, by the way, to be confused with the non-Biblical story of end times, a rapture, an era of evil, and then a triumphant military rule of God as told in the Left Behind series. That version of end times approaches humanity with a “them and us” mentality that is inconsistent with the Biblical perspective of care for all people. And it has also fueled a disinterest in environmental care, for those who believe in the rapture, Armageddon, and its sequel tend to believe that this world is doomed to destruction anyway, and will be replaced by God’s new creation.
Most of us find that perspective embarrassingly non-rational, but in our desire to avoid that irrationality, and the anti-scientific view that often accompanies it, we become super-rational, and somewhat materialistic, disbelieving in anything that is not physical, and hence having a skepticism of the mystical: of any experience of God that is not readily explained.
And so we have lost important dimensions of the Christian and indeed, also the Hebrew, worldviews in which the spiritual dimension of life is as real as the material dimension. We are susceptible to reducing Christianity to an ethical system at this point – of dismissing the experience of God as emotionalism or superstition, of dismissing most of scripture as allegory and poetry, and of dismissing God as simply an energy field..
Although most of you probably think of me as being very at home with spirituality, and with a conviction of the reality of religious experience – I struggle with this a great deal. My own experiences tell me that there is mystery to God and that mystical experience can be just as real as physical experience. But my background leaves me very skeptical of anything that can’t be explained. And so I struggle just as much as anyone here with explaining prayer…though I believe in it. And I struggle just as much as anyone with understanding those dimensions of the Biblical story that seem fantastic…but the hungers of my own soul teach me that there is a reality that is beyond my mind’s grasp. My own experiences of mystery affirm that there is a dimension to reality that is beyond what can be seen and touched and easily explained – and that spiritual experience is extra-rational, not anti-rational. It is an additional dimension that is not in opposition to what our God-given minds can discover.
And so in this approach to faith, the foundational relationship is trust, not understanding. And yet, understanding is an important dimension of the spiritual journey, but it is not the whole journey. And the ethical response is a huge part of our response to God, but it is not the whole response – our fuller response is love, and it is a response that includes understanding and ethics. To respond in trust and love to God is to want to extend the love received – that something more which eludes explanation but is nonetheless consistent and real – to others, and we extend it in actions, as God has loved us in actions. God’s love comes to us not only in the mystical experience, which after all, is not something everyone experiences, but also in the generosity of creation, and in the human relationships of love – for love, in every form, is an extra-rational experience.
And so I cannot dismiss those dimensions of the Biblical story that seem unlikely, because my own experience of things that have happened leads me to believe that something indeed happened among the disciples in the Easter season, and that something that happened continued to grace their lives with the experience of the living God. And that experience led to the dynamic experiences of the early church.
And so when I read that the disciples were admonished immediately after the ascension of Jesus to not wait any longer looking for more, and that they returned to Jerusalem to gather in prayer, and that Jesus said that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, that seems utterly consistent with this prayer of Jesus, in which he asks that his glory be shown in the disciples – that their lives and ministry would indeed reveal the character of God, that our lives would reveal the character of God. This makes sense to me. And this seems to clarify our own mission in life: we are to show the character of God in our own town, as Jerusalem was to the disciples; in our country, as Judea was for them; to our enemies, as Samaria was to the disciples; and to the ends of the earth. We are to live out God’s love to those near and those far, to those like us and those unlike us. Just as God’s love is characterized by its reach, as well as its depth; its materiality as well as its mystery – so too should our care for others. We should reach out to those far away as well as near; we should reach out in ways that concretely make a difference, as well as in our respect and affections.
What are the elements of God’s character that are highlighted in this passage from John? The focus is on two qualities – the generosity of God, and the closeness between God and Jesus. So in this passage, God’s greatness isn’t connected to power and might, but to giving and to intimacy. These are also attributes of God that were revealed in Jesus. And so this is the life that Jesus models for us: a life of deep relationships with God and each other, and characterized by generosity.
And this is part of the basis of our stewardship – we are called to give as God has given to us. And we are called to give not only because it is the right and caring thing to do, but because it is how God is, and we are called to show God’s character. We are called to become givers, not only because of the needs in our church, in our town, and among peoples throughout the world – although those needs are real – but we are called to be like God. Think of all that God has given – the created world shows the generosity of God. The world doesn’t provide simply what is necessary – there is a beauty and generosity woven throughout nature. And in Jesus, we see God giving of God’s very self. And in the resurrection, we see that this giving came back to Jesus.
So that as we become more generous, and more open to deep relationships with one another, we find ourselves experiencing the freedom and joy that God intends for us – a freedom that eludes us when we are more cautious and guarded.
So what do I mean exactly – what does it mean to be generous? What is the kind of giving that I’m describing? In practical terms, what am I advocating? For I’ve been told, it would be helpful if sermons had some practical grounding. These aren’t legalistic concepts – Jesus constantly talked about, and lived out, living beyond the law. And we understand that – how many of us base our family relationships, for example, on what is legally required?
Practically speaking, God shows us in the life and ministry of Jesus, again and again, that we are called to deep and generous giving – to a life that is grounded not in a sense of the scarcity of goods, scarcity of time, and scarcity of affections, but a life lived out of God’s abundance. And in reaching for such a life, I can’t tell you how much money you should give, and how much of your time you should give, and how much of your heart you should give away. What I can tell you is that all of us can probably give more – and that giving leads to joy. The Session has sent letters to all of the high school seniors at Frame giving them the chance to give away some of the church’s money – to choose an organization to designate a gift to. And although they aren’t giving from their own funds in this case, they should have the satisfaction of knowing that because of their choices, some organizations have a little extra funding.
I was at a workshop on giving earlier this week, and we were encouraged to try increasing our giving in one of the following ways: give an additional 1% of our income, or give an additional 10% of what we’re giving. And if we are giving 2% of our income, we could try giving 3%. If we’re giving away 15% of our income, we can try giving 16%. Or, if we’re giving $10 a week, we can increase that by 10% so that we give $11 – or if we give $50 a week, we can increase it by 10% and try giving $55.
When we allow ourselves to give more and more, we find ourselves less and less attached to our belongings. Giving is one of the ways we pry our fingers off of our stuff. Likewise, when we give ourselves to other people, we find ourselves less and less afraid of what others will think of us, and we become more and more transparent. When we give ourselves more fully to God, we find ourselves more fully and freely ourselves – experiencing a sense of grounding and joy that releases us to be ourselves. Some of us have some work to do before we can embrace generosity as fully as we might want, because we might be bearing the burden of debt. In such circumstances we don’t want to postpone giving entirely, but we might choose to use a far greater portion of our income in paying off our bills as quickly as possible, so that we can be free from debt. There are some people today in our culture who will never be free of debt, because they cannot break free – between medical bills, food, and fuel, they cannot give up buying long enough to pay their bills. But when we undertake the discipling of disciplining our spending, we begin to find real freedom. And as we reject possessions as our means to joy, we bring glory to God as well, because God’s character becomes more evident to us and to others as we embrace the joy of giving. And at this time when the world is experiencing food shortages, increasing our giving is truly a way to increase God’s joy, and our own.
Just as the disciples learned that the kingdom of Jesus wasn’t about power, and restoring Israel to international leadership, present-day disciples learn that life isn’t about getting stuff and status, but giving ourselves and our stuff away. And just as the ancient disciples found that beyond the kingdom of Israel was a kingdom of greater power, so too might we find ourselves living lives of greater and deeper richness.
And we find ourselves understanding what Jesus meant in saying, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” And we begin to understand too, that there is an added something in the life of faith that is not irrational or antirational, but is indeed beyond rational. And we find ourselves understanding the joy that comes in giving, and that a life of generosity truly is a life that reveals God’s glory, that makes God’s character more evident in the world. To God be the glory, indeed. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11
There is something very intimate about overhearing someone’s prayer – in the Gospel reading we heard a portion of Jesus praying for his disciples, as the lectionary divides it into thirds and uses part of it each year on the 7th Sunday of Easter. In the letter, several themes recur again and again. One is the theme of glory – Jesus talks about God’s glory, his own glory, and the glory given to his disciples. Another theme is that of giving – in the whole prayer, the Greek word for “give” occurs seventeen times, eleven of them in our passage today. And the third major theme is that of unity – Jesus prays repeatedly for the unity of his followers that exists between him and the Father.
What, indeed, is glory? Most of us probably think of glory as something akin to fame – the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “praise, honor, or distinction extended by common consent”. But in the Bible, there is also a sense of revelation about glory – the idea is that God’s glory is revealing a glimpse of the greatness of God. In our culture, glory being connected to something means that it is famous, and the attributes of its excellence are being recognized – a sports team’s glory is about the attributes that lead to winning. A nation’s glory is connected to whatever qualities lead to its greatness, its success, its leadership in the world. And so, the definition that I heard once about giving glory to God makes sense: that giving glory to God was defined as making God’s character more evident. In that definition, glory both reveals and honors God. So in that sense too, divine glory is the character of God made evident, either through the work of God, or of God’s people. It’s old-fashioned language, to be sure, but it’s still an important concept – after all, in our world there have been people who call themselves Christian, and whose sense of God makes us reluctant to use the same word. Giving glory to God simply means living in such a way that God looks good.
In the other passage, the story of the Ascension, the disciples are hoping that the time has come for the glory of Israel to be restored – that is, for Israel to be restored to its former greatness, to be freed from the Romans, and to assume leadership in the world. It is somewhat remarkable, from our perspective, that even at this point in the ministry of Jesus – after he had consistently rejected power, and had allowed himself to be crucified – the disciples are hoping that his ministry is about power. As one commentary inelegantly put it: “They are hoping that now, it is finally time to kick some Roman butt.” They are looking for Israel to possess its own country, for Jesus to possess power, and yet, they don’t even get to possess Jesus for in an instant he is gone from their sight in what is known as the Ascension.
Anglican theologian N.T. Wright explains in his recent book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, that Christians have consistently misunderstood the Biblical cosmology of Earth and Heaven. We tend to think of Earth and Heaven as being different places, so that in the Ascension, we think that Jesus left here and went there. Now, it’s a whole other question whether or not we believe the Biblical version – but it’s hard to evaluate that when we don’t fully understand it. Wright’s understanding is that in the Biblical view, heaven and earth are different dimensions of the same world, and that some day earth and heaven will be united in one coherent and harmonious creation. This is not, by the way, to be confused with the non-Biblical story of end times, a rapture, an era of evil, and then a triumphant military rule of God as told in the Left Behind series. That version of end times approaches humanity with a “them and us” mentality that is inconsistent with the Biblical perspective of care for all people. And it has also fueled a disinterest in environmental care, for those who believe in the rapture, Armageddon, and its sequel tend to believe that this world is doomed to destruction anyway, and will be replaced by God’s new creation.
Most of us find that perspective embarrassingly non-rational, but in our desire to avoid that irrationality, and the anti-scientific view that often accompanies it, we become super-rational, and somewhat materialistic, disbelieving in anything that is not physical, and hence having a skepticism of the mystical: of any experience of God that is not readily explained.
And so we have lost important dimensions of the Christian and indeed, also the Hebrew, worldviews in which the spiritual dimension of life is as real as the material dimension. We are susceptible to reducing Christianity to an ethical system at this point – of dismissing the experience of God as emotionalism or superstition, of dismissing most of scripture as allegory and poetry, and of dismissing God as simply an energy field..
Although most of you probably think of me as being very at home with spirituality, and with a conviction of the reality of religious experience – I struggle with this a great deal. My own experiences tell me that there is mystery to God and that mystical experience can be just as real as physical experience. But my background leaves me very skeptical of anything that can’t be explained. And so I struggle just as much as anyone here with explaining prayer…though I believe in it. And I struggle just as much as anyone with understanding those dimensions of the Biblical story that seem fantastic…but the hungers of my own soul teach me that there is a reality that is beyond my mind’s grasp. My own experiences of mystery affirm that there is a dimension to reality that is beyond what can be seen and touched and easily explained – and that spiritual experience is extra-rational, not anti-rational. It is an additional dimension that is not in opposition to what our God-given minds can discover.
And so in this approach to faith, the foundational relationship is trust, not understanding. And yet, understanding is an important dimension of the spiritual journey, but it is not the whole journey. And the ethical response is a huge part of our response to God, but it is not the whole response – our fuller response is love, and it is a response that includes understanding and ethics. To respond in trust and love to God is to want to extend the love received – that something more which eludes explanation but is nonetheless consistent and real – to others, and we extend it in actions, as God has loved us in actions. God’s love comes to us not only in the mystical experience, which after all, is not something everyone experiences, but also in the generosity of creation, and in the human relationships of love – for love, in every form, is an extra-rational experience.
And so I cannot dismiss those dimensions of the Biblical story that seem unlikely, because my own experience of things that have happened leads me to believe that something indeed happened among the disciples in the Easter season, and that something that happened continued to grace their lives with the experience of the living God. And that experience led to the dynamic experiences of the early church.
And so when I read that the disciples were admonished immediately after the ascension of Jesus to not wait any longer looking for more, and that they returned to Jerusalem to gather in prayer, and that Jesus said that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, that seems utterly consistent with this prayer of Jesus, in which he asks that his glory be shown in the disciples – that their lives and ministry would indeed reveal the character of God, that our lives would reveal the character of God. This makes sense to me. And this seems to clarify our own mission in life: we are to show the character of God in our own town, as Jerusalem was to the disciples; in our country, as Judea was for them; to our enemies, as Samaria was to the disciples; and to the ends of the earth. We are to live out God’s love to those near and those far, to those like us and those unlike us. Just as God’s love is characterized by its reach, as well as its depth; its materiality as well as its mystery – so too should our care for others. We should reach out to those far away as well as near; we should reach out in ways that concretely make a difference, as well as in our respect and affections.
What are the elements of God’s character that are highlighted in this passage from John? The focus is on two qualities – the generosity of God, and the closeness between God and Jesus. So in this passage, God’s greatness isn’t connected to power and might, but to giving and to intimacy. These are also attributes of God that were revealed in Jesus. And so this is the life that Jesus models for us: a life of deep relationships with God and each other, and characterized by generosity.
And this is part of the basis of our stewardship – we are called to give as God has given to us. And we are called to give not only because it is the right and caring thing to do, but because it is how God is, and we are called to show God’s character. We are called to become givers, not only because of the needs in our church, in our town, and among peoples throughout the world – although those needs are real – but we are called to be like God. Think of all that God has given – the created world shows the generosity of God. The world doesn’t provide simply what is necessary – there is a beauty and generosity woven throughout nature. And in Jesus, we see God giving of God’s very self. And in the resurrection, we see that this giving came back to Jesus.
So that as we become more generous, and more open to deep relationships with one another, we find ourselves experiencing the freedom and joy that God intends for us – a freedom that eludes us when we are more cautious and guarded.
So what do I mean exactly – what does it mean to be generous? What is the kind of giving that I’m describing? In practical terms, what am I advocating? For I’ve been told, it would be helpful if sermons had some practical grounding. These aren’t legalistic concepts – Jesus constantly talked about, and lived out, living beyond the law. And we understand that – how many of us base our family relationships, for example, on what is legally required?
Practically speaking, God shows us in the life and ministry of Jesus, again and again, that we are called to deep and generous giving – to a life that is grounded not in a sense of the scarcity of goods, scarcity of time, and scarcity of affections, but a life lived out of God’s abundance. And in reaching for such a life, I can’t tell you how much money you should give, and how much of your time you should give, and how much of your heart you should give away. What I can tell you is that all of us can probably give more – and that giving leads to joy. The Session has sent letters to all of the high school seniors at Frame giving them the chance to give away some of the church’s money – to choose an organization to designate a gift to. And although they aren’t giving from their own funds in this case, they should have the satisfaction of knowing that because of their choices, some organizations have a little extra funding.
I was at a workshop on giving earlier this week, and we were encouraged to try increasing our giving in one of the following ways: give an additional 1% of our income, or give an additional 10% of what we’re giving. And if we are giving 2% of our income, we could try giving 3%. If we’re giving away 15% of our income, we can try giving 16%. Or, if we’re giving $10 a week, we can increase that by 10% so that we give $11 – or if we give $50 a week, we can increase it by 10% and try giving $55.
When we allow ourselves to give more and more, we find ourselves less and less attached to our belongings. Giving is one of the ways we pry our fingers off of our stuff. Likewise, when we give ourselves to other people, we find ourselves less and less afraid of what others will think of us, and we become more and more transparent. When we give ourselves more fully to God, we find ourselves more fully and freely ourselves – experiencing a sense of grounding and joy that releases us to be ourselves. Some of us have some work to do before we can embrace generosity as fully as we might want, because we might be bearing the burden of debt. In such circumstances we don’t want to postpone giving entirely, but we might choose to use a far greater portion of our income in paying off our bills as quickly as possible, so that we can be free from debt. There are some people today in our culture who will never be free of debt, because they cannot break free – between medical bills, food, and fuel, they cannot give up buying long enough to pay their bills. But when we undertake the discipling of disciplining our spending, we begin to find real freedom. And as we reject possessions as our means to joy, we bring glory to God as well, because God’s character becomes more evident to us and to others as we embrace the joy of giving. And at this time when the world is experiencing food shortages, increasing our giving is truly a way to increase God’s joy, and our own.
Just as the disciples learned that the kingdom of Jesus wasn’t about power, and restoring Israel to international leadership, present-day disciples learn that life isn’t about getting stuff and status, but giving ourselves and our stuff away. And just as the ancient disciples found that beyond the kingdom of Israel was a kingdom of greater power, so too might we find ourselves living lives of greater and deeper richness.
And we find ourselves understanding what Jesus meant in saying, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” And we begin to understand too, that there is an added something in the life of faith that is not irrational or antirational, but is indeed beyond rational. And we find ourselves understanding the joy that comes in giving, and that a life of generosity truly is a life that reveals God’s glory, that makes God’s character more evident in the world. To God be the glory, indeed. Amen.