LEAN INTO GLORY

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

A few days ago I received an email from a young woman in Taiwan. She said she and two friends, all members of a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, would be coming to Ketchikan to work for a seafood company this summer. They were hoping to find that visiting our church and worshipping here would be a possibility, so she asked how far we were from the factory and what sort of transportation was available. She gave me the name of their pastor in Taiwan- his daughter is one of the three girls who are coming to Alaska- and a link to their church web site. I clicked it, but it was all in Chinese characters!

That email may be a sign of many things to come, I don’t know for sure. But for certain, it was a sign to me of at least two things: summer is indeed coming, and our web site is reaching people all around the world.

But, it is also a sign- a proof- of something that Jesus said in our lesson this morning: “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."

In fact, Jesus had a sign that his lifting up- his death on a cross- was drawing near, for he had some persons of a different ethnicity, language and culture come looking for him.

It may not seem like much of a sign to us, but it was to Jesus, because he knew that his death and resurrection would be eye opening events for cultures and nations worldwide.

But this sign- well, it was a bag of mixed news.

If his mission was almost complete, that meant his death was soon.

Even though he believed in resurrection, death was not an easy subject to consider.

In the face of those troubling thoughts, Jesus prayed a strange and public prayer: “Father, glorify your name.”

What does “glorify” mean?

It means to make something look really good, to show under a bright light what is not always easy to see.

I remember a television show from years ago. A teenage girl was getting ready to go to the prom, and when she was completely dressed and ready she came into the living room to present herself to her family.

They all saw her in a way they had never experienced before, and her younger brother immediately prepared to make a wise crack. But her father, stunned, proud, and speechless to see his daughter as a beautiful woman, grabbed his son and covered his mouth before more than a syllable could be uttered. That afternoon, his daughter was glorified.

In longer paraphrase, this was Jesus prayer: “Father, I have an experience before me which terrifies me. I am prepared for it as best I can be, but I am placing the success of what I do into your hands- so I pray that in my death and resurrection the whole earth will truly see you as wonderful as you really are!”

“Father, glorify your name.”

Well, he got an answer: "I have glorified it, and will glorify it again."

Both the question- and the answer- say in no uncertain terms that God is doing some very significant action. The prayer asks God to do something, and the answer says that God HAS done something and WILL CONTINUE to do something.

"I have glorified it, and will glorify it again."

But that answer wasn’t for Jesus- it was for us. It was for every one who is doing their best in trying circumstance to live the sort of life that God is asking us to live.

That answer tells us that when we do hard and difficult things for God, it shows the world- or at least a small corner of the world- that we believe God is worthy of our love and devotion.

One week not too long ago a man who is experiencing some hard times of various sorts brought in several cans of food and gave them to our food pantry.

That was not a death defying act, but it was a sacrifice. More significantly, it was an action that glorified God. God’s promise to him is that God was working IN HIM to do that, and that God will continue to work in him.

Every week we have Lynette on our prayer list. I saw her mother a few weeks ago, and she told me that Lynette was hanging on- a bit overwhelmed at times, with two daughters in school, a three year old at home, and lots of college course work. But on Friday, when I sent out a prayer request saying that Maxine would be going to see doctors in Anchorage, Lynette emailed back right away that she would like to see Maxine when she is in Anchorage, to give her some cheer and comfort during a time of stress. God’s promise to Lynette is that God is working IN HER to do that, and that God will continue to work in her.

Thursday noon Joanna Desantos gave a speech at Toastmasters, down in our fellowship hall. She began by playing a verse of a song on her guitar, then she told the story of her friend Melanie, who died just a few weeks ago.

Joanna met Melanie when Joanna was a young woman doing an internship at Harborview Hospital. Melanie was a volunteer at the hospital, visiting patients who were in pain. Melanie was just 26 at the time, and she had gone through 5 excruciating years in which she had suffered five strokes and lost most of her agility and much of her mobility.

Melanie learned that Joanna played a guitar- a small, worn, fragile instrument. So Melanie gave Joanna her guitar- the guitar that we saw and heard Thursday. Joanna told us it was very expensive guitar which had cost Melanie $3000, money she had saved up over a number of years.

It was a gift that stunned Joanna, but Melanie insisted, and a friendship was forged. But until Melanie’s funeral, Joanna never knew the whole story of that guitar.

All her life, Melanie wanted to be a musician. She studied and practiced and sacrificed to be able to play, ad she sacrificed to buy an instrument worthy of playing. But when she suffered stroke after stroke, she lost much for which she had worked so hard.

Those losses were the subjects of many prayers, until finally she gave the guitar away- not in frustration, not in regret, but in willingness. Because in giving away her guitar, she knew she was saying yes to what God wanted her to do with the rest of her life, which was to reach out to persons experiencing pain.

In the gift of an expensive guitar to a brand new friend, God was glorified.

In Melanie’s decision to live through all of her difficulties by giving comfort and hope to persons in painful circumstances, God was glorified.

In Melanie’s decision to be content with her life, even though much was taken from her at a very young age, God was glorified.

But this was God’s promise to Melanie, and it is God’s promise to us: I am in you, helping you to do loving and merciful things.

Sometimes life presents us with decisions that are almost impossible, and sometimes our faith nudges us towards a response that is almost inconceivable to the rest of the world.

I wonder if I could learn to be content if I was ever placed in Melanie’s shoes.

I don’t know if my temperament is up to a test like that. But I do know that God has made me a promise. And, I believe I can learn to lean into God, for the help I may need someday in all sorts of trouble.

Last week’s Friday Night Insights featured a video documentary of Mardy Murie, an Alaska girl who spent her 1925 honeymoon dog sledding 550 miles into the arctic with her husband, doing research on caribou. In 1998, at the age of 96, Mardy was presented with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the documentary Mardy repeated some advice her father had given her when she was 15, the summer she spent with him at a salmon canning factory: “If you can take the first step, with the best knowledge that you have, there’s usually enough light to take the next step.”

Sometimes the first step of faith is incredibly hard, but we start with the best knowledge we have: God is with us, and when we take that step, God moves in us. In a very wobbly and hesitant manner, we become dance partners with God.

This is how the prophet Jeremiah described it: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

There was a rabbi who taught his congregation to read scripture so that its words would become written on their hearts.

His congregation asked, why ON our hearts, and not IN our hearts?

The rabbi responded, “Only God can put them in your hearts. But if you put them on your hearts, then when your hearts break they will fall inside.”

So put this knowledge on your hearts: Jesus died for you, and that was glory to God.

Then lean into that glory, and see what God might do for glory, in you.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen