THE PRAYERS OF JESUS: PRAYER OF GLORY

(Preached on Easter Sunday, April 11, 2004)

“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”                                                                     -Luke 24:6-7

 

Early on Easter morning, some women from Galilee went to the tomb where they had left Jesus.

They came because they had been up all night, as people in grief often are, and because it is somehow easier to grieve at the grave site.

That is how the Easter story starts — not with everybody jumping to their feet to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but with some women bringing spices to a tomb in order to keep Jesus’ dead, decaying body from smelling bad.

It isn’t a very pretty image.

Death never is.

 

But when they get to the tomb death is not what they find.

Instead they discover an open, empty grave.

As they stand there puzzling it out, they are suddenly joined by two men in dazzling clothes.

They are dazzled.

What a great word.

The dictionary defines dazzle as: “to bewilder, amaze, or overwhelm with spectacular display...to inspire admiration or wonder.”

What they experience is the glory of God.

 

In the Hebrew Bible the glory of God came in the form of a cloud.  It had a specific name — the Shekinah, the glory.

It was the sign of God’s presence among the people.

It led them through the wilderness; it hovered over the tent of meeting; it came to rest more permanently in the most holy place.

It affirmed God’s saving presence on a journey that led the people to new life.

And on Easter, when the women went to the tomb expecting to find death, they encountered instead the glory of God, God’s saving presence leading them to new life.

 

Jesus’ entire life was a prayer of Glory. 

Everything he did, said, and was became a love-offering to God to bring glory to God’s name.

His whole being was consistently directed towards showing people the glory of God -- the saving presence leading them to new life.

All of his teachings, all of his actions, drew people to that new life.

His love, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, peace, joy and healing was the glory of God bringing new life into the world.

His life so in tune with God’s glory, that even death could not contain him and God’s glory burst forth with dazzling power on Easter; raising him from the dead and exalting him in glory.

 

To make Jesus’ prayer of glory, “God, glorify your name” our ceaseless prayer and to be consumed with a passion for God’s glory is eventually to be filled with that same glory.

It is the witness of the Easter gospel.

It is the promise to us through the resurrection of Jesus.

 

Norman Vincent Peale told of a newspaper reporter who was sent to cover the Easter sunrise service held each year on the rim of the Grand Canyon.

It was below freezing; and as he stood there shivering he wished he were back in bed.

Then the sun rose and poured into the canyon.

The reporter said: “I forgot all about being cold.  Then came a flood of radiance, torrents of light plunging down the canyon walls, making them blaze with color.  Watching the shadows vanish I had the conviction that the darkness that had filled the great gorge was an illusion, that only the light was real, and that we silent watchers on the canyon rim were somehow a part of the light.”

That is why we gather together on Easter Sunday, isn’t it — to catch a glimpse of the glory of God?

 

Perhaps you came here today feeling like those male disciples of Jesus?  Caught in the brutal realities of life.

You wanted to believe in new possibilities of life in God, but the terrible facts of life have you feeling trapped in an impossible situation, losing your bearings, wondering what to do next.

Maybe it is the impossible situation of a marriage that is almost or altogether on the rocks.

Maybe a friend has left you disillusioned, or maybe you’ve hit the bottom financially, or perhaps you’re in trouble at school, maybe you need to sell your house and can’t find a buyer, maybe you’re caught up in an addictive behavior that has you bound in its clutches, maybe — impossibilities — we face them all the time.

Now you hear what sounds like nonsense, wishful thinking.

Jesus is raised from the dead.

Seems like nonsense?  Of course it does.

It is so foreign to our benighted way of seeing and doing things, but think back to what Jesus’ teachings and actions have been saying all through the gospels.

Remember:

the ridiculous case of the first sign Jesus did at the wedding in Cana?  How he turned about 300 gallons of water into wine?  300 gallons!

Or the parable about the mother who decides to bake some bread, goes prodigal and mixes up enough dough for 60 loaves of bread?

Or that pivotal parable about the father who recklessly give his second son half the value of the family farm and allows him to go off to the city and squander it; and when the young fool comes crawling home asking to be a slave, the father runs to meet him and throws a giant party in his honor?

Or Jesus’ commendation of the woman who in great love for Jesus anointed his feet with costly perfumed oil worth about $30,000?

Over and over the Gospel story has been telling us this: get ready for a God who does the unexpected and the ultra-extravagant thing.  Don’t try to confine God to our little human notions of what seems like common sense; break out from what seems reasonable.  God us unreasonably extravagant, gloriously unpredictable.

That is the glory of God we experience on Easter.

 

That glory is our hope for new life in the midst of the impossible situations we find ourselves in this day.

A man tells of walking down the street, and passing the lady who sold flowers.

She was old and wrinkled, but her face was alive with joy.

As he stopped to buy a flower, the man said, “You certainly look happy this morning.”

She responded, cheerily, “Why not? Everything is good.”

The man noticed how shabbily she was dressed, knew she must be very poor, noted how frail she seemed, so he said, “I only mean that you wear your troubles well.”

She said, “Let me tell you how I do it.  When Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, that was the worst day for the whole world.  Then, three days later — Easter — he rose again.  So, when I get troubles, I’ve learned to wait three days.  Somehow everything gets all right again.”

The man related, “She smiled at me as she waved good-bye.  Her words still follow me whenever I think I have troubles.  I ‘wait three days.’”

Sounds simplistic, yes.

Sounds like nonsense, yes.

Sounds impossible, yet.

Yet that is what Easter is all about.

It is the good news that the God of the impossible has a way, in God’s own time, of bringing hope out of our hopelessness and life out of our death.

 

But Easter is more than just a day.

God’s resurrection glory is going on all around us all the time. 

If we will embrace it in faith, seeking to pray the prayer of glory with our entire lives, we will become more and more aware of that glory all around us.

In fact, we will begin to be agents of that resurrection glory.

Megan McKenna, a prolific and profound Catholic writer tapped into this truth one day leading a Bible study in a local church.

It was a large group and they were studying the story from Luke 7 where Jesus encounters a widow in a funeral procession to bury her only son and Jesus raised the boy and restores him to his mother.

Someone called out harshly, “Have you ever brought someone back from the dead?”

Megan had been saying that life happens when we are interrupted, and that some of the most powerful acts of resurrection happen to the least likely people; that we are the people of resurrection and hope, called to live passionately and compassionately with others, to defy death, to forgive, and to bring others back into the community, to do something that is life-giving, that fights death and needless suffering.  And then this challenge came from the back of the church.

Her response was: “Yes.  Every time I bring hope into a situation, every time I bring joy that shatters despair, every time I forgive others and give them back dignity and the possibility of a future with me and others in the community, every time I listen to others and affirm them and their life, every time I speak the truth in public, every time I confront injustice — yes — I bring people back from the dead.”

 

On Easter, in the resurrection of Jesus, the glory of God exploded into the world.  It may sound like nonsense.

We may not be able to explain it or ever understand it.

But I stand before you today to bear witness to its power.

Because of Easter, resurrection glory is present in our lives today and we can become agents of that resurrection glory.

Whenever we with compassion open our hearts, minds, and souls to the pain of the world, we help bring suffering beings back into the land of the living.

When we cultivate the art of making connections, the walls of separation come crashing down and new life can spring up out of the rubble.

Every time we forgive someone, another resurrection is in the making.