Farewell Sermon

The Glory of the Father, Son, and Keller Park Church (John 17)

By David Cramer

Keller Park Church

7 August 2011

 This morning I want to look briefly at the word “glory,” especially as it is used in Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer recorded in John 17. For us “glory” often has the connotation of something grand, weighty, or spectacular that is witnessed by a large number of people. Thus, in sports we have phrases like “Go for the glory!” or “No guts, no glory!,” which suggest that if you truly want to receive praise, honor, and accolades, you have to go all out, or, as another one of our sayings puts it: “Go big or go home.” There is glory in displays of great achievement that are widely recognized. 

 

This understanding of glory actually finds quite a bit of precedent in the Bible itself. So God is said in Exodus to receive glory from miraculously parting the Red Sea and leading the Israelites to safety from the Egyptians. Repeatedly the Old Testament states that God’s glory fills the whole earth, though it is also manifested visibly in the tabernacle and temple, where God’s glory dwelt. In these and numerous other instances, God’s glory is the visible display of God’s power, might, and grandeur.

 

But in Scripture glory is not necessarily confined to God alone; there is a relative human glory as well. We read, for example, in Proverbs 25:2 that “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Nevertheless, more often that not in Scripture, human glory is described as fleeting at best and destructive at worst. So in Isaiah 17:4 we are told that “the glory of Jacob will fade; the fat of his body will waste away,” and in Isaiah 13:19 that “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

 

In light of these usages, we might be tempted to conclude that God’s glory is displayed through God’s mighty acts and wonders, and that while we at Keller Park Church can praise and worship God for God’s glory, we should probably stay out of the glory business ourselves. After all, we’re a ragtag bunch of misfits who meet in a small grocery store converted into a meager worship space, whose air conditioning only works half the time and whose roof seems to find new ways to leak each year. We seem to attract a fair amount of new people yet we remain somehow resilient to actually growing much bigger. Our annual giving is just barely over the poverty line for a small family in the U.S. We don’t have the latest visual or audio technology. We don’t have multiple professional staff members. We don’t have multiple services, much less a radio program or video venues. We don’t have state of the art anything. Our softball team won one game last year and seems to invent new ways of blowing leads in the last inning. It sometimes feels like we are spinning our wheels in our attempt to reach the neighborhood, much less having a significant impact across the city. And on top of all of our difficulties reaching out to the larger community, we also have pain and brokenness within our church body. In short, it isn’t very difficult for us to sing “Not to us, but to your name be the glory”—since the last word we would probably think of to describe Keller Park Church is “glorious.”

 

And, yet, when we read Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, we find that he has the audacity to do just that: to suggest that we might actually share in his glory and in the glory of God the Father. John records this prayer of Jesus’s, which Jesus prays on the night before his crucifixion, just after the last supper and just before his arrest. Let’s read John 17 together, taking special note of how Jesus uses the word glory.

 

“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

 

‘Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. 

 

‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

 

‘I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

‘My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 

 

‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 

 

‘Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

 

This passage is striking on a number of levels. First, Jesus redefines the word glory; then, by drawing parallels between himself and his followers, he suggests that we actually contribute to God’s glory, just as he does; and finally, he claims that not only do we give glory to God but that God actually gives glory to us as well.

 

So, first, we see in verse 5 Jesus’ redefinition of glory. He states: “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Note that before we defined glory as a visible display of power witnessed by a large number of people. But here Jesus talks about glory as something he and the Father shared before creation, in other words, before God had demonstrated God’s power through any kind of creative act and certainly before there were any others to witness God’s acts of power. Glory is not defined here by its grandeur but by its intimacy. It is not defined in terms of an external, visible quality, but rather as something that is intrinsically beautiful—as something literally divine. In verse 24 Jesus further describes this glory as “the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” This glory is not about displays of power and might but rather is the quality shared in an intimately loving relationship between Father and Son.

 

After redefining the meaning of glory in ways that defy our expectations, Jesus defies our expectations again by suggesting that we actually contribute to God’s glory just as he does. In verse 4 Jesus states: “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” In other words, Jesus brings glory to God not so much through displays of mighty power as through humble obedience to the Father. But then two verses later, Jesus states that those the Father has entrusted to him have also obeyed God’s word and thus, in verse 10 Jesus makes the jaw-dropping claim that “glory has come to me through them.” Jesus himself has been glorified by his ragtag bunch of disciples—a group of guys who might have fit in well at Keller Park Church. Here Jesus makes it clear that we glorify him not through visible effectiveness and quantifiable successes but rather through humble, persistent, faithful obedience to God’s will as revealed to us in the life of Jesus.

 

Finally, after redefining the meaning of glory and audaciously claiming that we contribute to God’s glory, Jesus makes the even more audacious claim that we participate in God’s glory. In verse 22 Jesus states: “I have given them the glory that you gave me.” The very glory that God gave Jesus before the creation of the world Jesus has passed on to us. And as we already saw, this glory is defined as the intrinsic quality of mutual love between the members of the Trinity—a love that we as a community are drawn into. So Jesus explains in vv. 22-23 why he has given us glory: “that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” We share in the glory of God when we love God and each other and through that love demonstrate our unity in Christ to the world.

 

In other words, thankfully for Keller Park Church, God isn’t glorified through the large buildings and multifaceted ministries that a lot of churches chase after. Ultimately, those things are human glory, and as such, they are bound to fade away with the sands of time. But if we at Keller Park Church—the ragtag group of underdogs that we are—remain steadfast in our commitment to be obedient to God’s word and to love God and each other deeply, we will receive the glory that will never fade away: the everlasting glory of the Trinitarian love shared among the Father, Son, and Spirit from before the creation of the world that we have been graciously invited to participate in through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

In closing, let me pray over you the prayer of Paul from Ephesians 3:14ff.:

 

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”