The Glory of God is a Human Fully Alive

Blessed be God who animates our lives and send us the Spirit of Glory that we too might live in holy union. AMEN

Scripture is saving me during this pandemic. And while the Gospels are always salvific, I am finding new life in the psalms, the first testament especially the prophets, and letters.

Letters or as we know them epistles seem to meet me where I am and perhaps where we all are in this radically strange time! They are personal and direct. I am reminded again and again that this time of isolation and anxiety is not unlike the time after Jesus walked on this earth and people began to organize what we know as religion. In many ways we too are involved in reorganizing religions! Or as the word religion suggests: re- ligamenting. 

Anyway, when we find ourselves in times like this and the ground beneath us seems to shake and wobble, it is often consoling to be written to by wisdom itself. Letters from our ancestors often evoke memories of the central tenets of life such as love and the way forward such as perseverance. 

I recently revisited some letters, handwritten in a time most of us had moved to email, from my dear friend Gay who died too soon. I return to them not only to be reminded of our relationship but to be reminded of our mutual love of God and hope for all. 

I often emerge from a letter reading session, much as I do after prayer, with a clarity and conviction which i had felt waning. The clarity is quite simple: it is to love the lord our god with all our heart and all our mind, with our whole being. and it is to love our neighbors as ourselves, including our environmental ones! When I picture myself literally moving in the God who gives us life well I cannot then be isolated nor can I ignore the interconnections which support my very being...and yours.

Peter’s letter today provides similar wisdom and reassurance! 

His opening address is as though speaking directly and accurately to our situation: Beloved do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

And then once we realize he is intimately familiar with our plight he assures us of the participation in God’s glory. By endurance and prayer we too will be raised up into God’s glory. All will be restored and redeemed into a oneness longed for.

It is a quintessential statement of the philosophy of ubuntu: I am because we are. It is a seminal statement of our Christian belief expressed in John Donne’s meditation No Man

Is An Island. It is the motto of our life with COVID19 as we negotiate territory never before explored: we will do this together!

All of this wisdom directed to us, the recipients of the epistles, points to glory.

The glory of God to which we aspire. The glory of God glimpses of which cause us to pray and praise. The glory of God is the Oneness of which theologians speak. It is a unification and absolute web of radical love and grace flowing in and through all creation. 

The glory of God has been defined as the manifestation of God. We see it in the Hebrew Scriptures as the shekinah which is some shining holiness indicating God’s presence. We know it through poetry and art. Charged with the grandeur of God as Gerard Manly Hopkins says or Light itself painted by Rembrandt to create a divine numinosity. 

In the Gospel Jesus assures us he is to be “taken up” and to be glorified. We imagine that is to be mystically and mysteriously absorbed or melded into God’s glory, the Spirit of Glory will rest upon us. all will be one.

Just last week we learned that this Holy Spirit is an advocate and a paraclete and today we learn the Spirit has something to do with the conveyance of glory and next week well next week is Pentecost and the Spirit of love and glory and wisdom and energy will create a holy chaos which causes us to know Jesus meant what he said. The Spirit of God is upon us and we will know the Spirit is all things holy: wisdom, love, care, mercy, grace, and glory. 

One of the Church Fathers Iranaeus said “the glory of God is a human fully alive”

The extension of that is the glory of God is all creation BEING exactly as created to BE.

We were created to live fully and abundantly with thanksgiving. Even in today’s shadowed world this is the great truism. We live in God’s glory not yet fully realized. We participate in glory when we engage life with holy living.

And so as you listen to Sherry’s musical meditation of Hymn 382 one of the most beautiful hymns ever (it is on my funeral playlist for sure) may you also be filled with the Spirit of glory which assures you not only of God’s love and grace but energizes and propels us to make God’s glory manifest in the world by being our true selves, the ones we are intended to become. It is all a glorious mystery!