All is Glory

June 1st, 2014
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
The Rev. David Kendrick
St. John's Episcopal Church, Springfield, Missouri

O King of glory, Lord of Might
Who rose today in victory above all the heavens,
Do not leave us orphans,
But send us the Father's promised Spirit of Truth,
Alleluia.

Does that sound a little like the collect for today? It should. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer composed this collect for the Sunday after Ascension for the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. He based it on an antiphon that Christians in England had sung for centuries around the time of the Ascension. I'm sure that Cranmer was also thinking of the Venerable Bede, a Deacon and priest who lived from 673 to 735. He wrote a history of the early Church in England that is still read in Episcopal seminaries today. He was widely admired in his time, so much so that his death was recorded by Saint Cuthbert, and would have been well known even in Cranmer's time.

Bede had apparently been deathly ill since Holy Week in the monastery of Jarrow. All we are told of his illness is that he was "frequently "breathless." But throughout Eastertide, that had not stopped him from his work of teaching, writing and praying and chanting the Psalms as best he could. And throughout Eastertide, he had chanted this antiphon: "O King of glory, Lord of Might / Who rose today in victory above all the heavens, / Do not leave us orphans, / But send us the Father's promised Spirit of Truth, / Alleluia." Even as he approached the grave, Bede made his song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Finally on Wednesday, May 25th, the day before the Feast of the Ascension, Bede died and passed from this world.

No wonder that Cranmer, knowing all this, found in Bede's song the inspiration for the collect that we pray the Sunday after Jesus physically departs from us. Instead of "orphans," Cranmer's prayer asks that we not be left "comfortless." Perhaps Cranmer wanted all worshipers to feel included in that petition, not just those who had lost their parents. But I like the specificity of "orphans." "Comfortless" is an adjective. "Orphan" is a noun. And on this Sunday after the Ascension, it is understandable if some or most or all of us feel like orphans. The God that we could see, and hear, and touch has gone, back to the unseen Father who may seem so remote that we struggle to find comfort from that first person of the Trinity.

And yet Jesus himself on this Sunday points us in one direction: "When Jesus finished saying these things, he looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son can glorify you.'" At the beginning of this 17th chapter from John's Gospel, the time that has come is Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion. But Jesus' response is to trust that the One who sent him  will be there to glorify him. The cross is his glory, as he has said earlier. “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit...Now I am deeply troubled. What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. Father, glorify your name! Then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'" And then again, as soon as Judas had left to go betray him: "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him."

There is One whom Jesus called The Father. This is the One who said, "Let there be light," and a universe began. This is the One who created life, and helped that life grow until there were living beings who knew they had been created; and having been created, they knew that there was a creator. This is the One who gives their creatures the freedom to choose how to live in this world; and when they choose wrongly, finds a way to balance that wrong with goodness. This is the One from whom each of us came, and to whom we will return. This is the One to whom his Son points us to, and asks us to trust as he trusted.

Jesus has returned to the One he called Father, and in today's Gospel he asks us to trust that though he be unseen, he is no less there, letting us choose how to live our lives, yet always opening the door to new possibilities. And when all the possibilities of this life seem to be closed, this One, whom Jesus says we should call "Father," will be in that unseen place that beckons us, ready to take us in forever. To quote the collect, take comfort in that truth.

And then, so comforted, let us dare to let God be glorified in our lives, in our churches, in our world. On the one hand, we mourn those we have lost; we pray for those we may lose, and we pray for those who do not yet know where their sickness will take them. At the same time, on this Sunday after the Ascension, we prepare for the Holy Spirit, The Lord, the giver of life; who blew the first disciples out into the streets with hearts so much on fire that they had to tell everyone the Good News of God's love in Jesus the Christ. God wants to glorify himself in this the Church that is the Body of Christ in the world. There are many possibilities for how God might be glorified in this Church. Many of them are in the walls of the Parish Hall. Those possibilities came from you when you told us your celebrations, your concerns and your dreams for St. John's. Examine them on the walls, pray about them. And next Sunday, on the Birthday of the Church, Pentecost Sunday, come back and let the Holy Spirit guide you toward those possibilities that set your hearts on fire.

Let God be glorified in our best moments, and let God be glorified in our worst moments. Jesus did. The Venerable Bede did. In our suffering, in our dying, and in our living, all is glory.