It's a Funny Thing is Glory
Preached at Holy Innocents Fallowfield 9th May 2004 [Easter 5]
John 13. 31-35

I find very odd. This business about glory. And I'm uneasy and confused.
So I took a big book down from the library shelf and had a root around.

It said 'glory is the fundamental characteristic of God to which believers respond by giving glory to God' [Rpt]
In other words, God has glory and so in response we give God more glory......

Then it said 'glory in people takes the form of wealth, position and power (anyone here fit the bill?)....
[and] people give more glory to God when we sing and pray or are still before God.......

And then it said 'all serious Christian thinkers acknowledge that giving glory to God is what human life is really about.' (Hmm!)

I've thought long about this all week and I've been trying hard to be aware,
as the week has progressed,
of how we people - and also me in my life - have been giving glory to God. Or not.

Was it the University CU who on Thursday came to the end of a mammoth 10 day non-stop prayer session for the conversion of the world? A spiritual decathlon if ever there was. Did that glorify God?
Or was it the chaplaincy when we welcomed the Buddhist society to come and make a home with us and begin the process of making the chaplaincy multifaith? Did that offer God glory?
Was it the many lectures and seminars and classes this past week on every aspect of human life and existence?
Or was it the many hours of therapeutic activities on campus - sport, counselling, free legal aid, the new staff mentoring scheme?

Or, wider afield, was it the war in Iraq and alleged photos of abuse?
Was it the UN security council's decision not to intervene in the crisis in Sudan?
Or was it Marseille's victory over Newcastle on Thursday?

Can and do we give glory to God by every small act of kindness,
or is glory there only when one pours out one's life?......

All I know and feel at the end of this week's events and revelations is that I'm not sure any more.
Despite the post-Easter optimism I generally bask in, this week I'm left feeling adrift; circling my own humanity in a sea of doubts.
Wondering about my own nature and that of my fellow humans.
Now don't get me wrong.
Generally I'm an over optimistic sort with boundless belief in humanity.
For years I've preached that, in the words of Saint Irenaus, 'the glory of God is a person who is fully alive' [Rpt]
And I've tried to celebrate and promote and enflesh that aliveness where ever I've been.
I'm no good at any other sort of ministry.

But this week I've been taking refuge in our two cats who seem to make a better job of aliveness and of glorifying God than we do.
They have been my solace. My soul friends.
For, all week long, they've been going about just being cats. With no pretensions to anything else.
Unless, at one point, sitting on top of the Guardian was a sign of anything.........

Perhaps, I thought, that nothing we can ever do can make a difference.
Perhaps that's what Jesus' words mean: 'where I am going, you cannot come.'
Perhaps there is an unbridgable gulf between us and God
and God is unaffected by anything we do.
Perhaps our glory, thrown up like pebbles at the almighty's window, merely bounces off and falls to earth.
Unable to disturb the Lord's intent.
There is, after all a strand of Christian thinking which says as much.
[Perhaps I am becoming a Barthian?]

But then, yesterday, Cyril came to my rescue. Not another saint, but a window cleaner.
Or a saint in a window cleaner's chamoix.
Cyril just goes about being a window cleaner. Our window cleaner.
Except that yesterday he also helped to clean my spiritual vision. The windows of my soul.

For, from his bucket, he took out love (- an unorthodox tool for cleaning windows. Heretical.).
He took out love, as needful for human flourishing as water is for human life.
He took out love. He told me of his love of the church (in his boyscouting days, at least. Now he admires the windows).
He told me of his love of the community, his friendships, his awareness of the transience of our lives and then he smiled.
And went on his way, window cleaning. Unaware of the shaft of light he'd blessed me with.

Is there still love left in our buckets and the end of this week?
Judas had just left to go about his deeds of darkness
And now Jesus got up to depart for a different destiny.
A once-for-all destiny; a believe-it-if-you-dare sort of destiny;
the sort destiny that can bridge all kinds of gaps and clean all kinds of souls.....

As he turned to go he looked over his shoulder. 'Where I am going, you cannot come', he said.
And seeing their confusion he paused.
'But here's a new commandment. Something to ponder when I'm not here and to help you on your way.
(One of you write it down.)
You've seen how I've loved you. And there's more to come.
But now you - love one another. Like I showed you.
Well - try to. And keep trying.
Try with ever fibre of your being. And never give up.

When things look bleak, at the end of an awful week
Pick yourselves up and dust yourselves down.
Take each other by the hand and start off again.
Remind each other that you are precious in God's eyes
and that each one of you (he pointed) is of infinite value.
But don't get sentimental about this.'

For loving one another - especially those we don't like or can't understand,
or those whose language and religion is different, or whose habits seem strange, whose lifestyle isn't ours
or whose suffering and exploitation has made them bitter -
loving one another is a tough hard business. A job for realists.

For the grassy path of loving soon gives way to the rough terrain of justice making
and to bearing the heavy load of responsibility for what goes on in this world, whose making we share with God.

If we want to follow, or want to want to,
if we want to play a part
in shaping what lies around us,
then we need to develop the art,
experiment with the recipe
that Jesus showed us.

Taking the human love we all share
and mixing it with courage and determination
and a large dose of imagination
to see the world through others' eyes.

And then applying it, liberally, generously, gratuitously
to whatever it is we do,
to where ever it is we are,
to how ever it is we live....

and then discover at the end of an awful week
the dust of glory on our hands.

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