Tracing Glory

A sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 26, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-30

“In Epiphany we trace all the glory of his grace.” Those words belong to a hymn in our previous hymnal, the Hymnal 1940. The hymn explains the seasons of the church year. It’s especially appropriate for children, and it’s also a favorite of Kathy Randel’s, our outreach coordinator, who has made sure I know it. And, to the hymn’s credit, it explains exactly what we are doing this Epiphany season. We are recounting how the glory of God is revealed through Christ: as the magi follow a star and visit a child; as Jesus is baptized and the Father speaks; as Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding; and eventually, as Jesus is transfigured in dazzling white on a mountaintop. 

And today, too, in a synagogue as Jesus reads from Isaiah–today glory is revealed, although it is very different from the grand glory of stars, of a voice thundering from heaven, of Jesus with Elijah and Moses on the mountain. Today’s is a more ordinary glory. Jesus proclaims that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. He is the One on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, and who is sent to bring good news to the poor; proclaim release to captives; recover the sight of the blind of eyes and heart; free those oppressed by sin and death; declare that God’s favor and grace are here, even for us. Jesus reveals this glory, this mission, today. He tells us exactly what he’s about, exactly what he’s up to. 

And all the people said, amen. They nodded politely and continued their prayers. They joined up with Jesus as his disciples in order to participate in God’s work. They embraced that glory that had traced its way into their hearing, into their hearts, into their lives. Well… not quite. If we read just a few more verses, we would see their reaction; they become angry. So angry that they try to throw him off a mountain. When the glory of God comes to their doorstep in the person of Jesus Christ, they take offense and become angry, unable to embrace that difficult glory that had traced its way into their lives.

Their reaction is not so different from the reaction of the people in Nehemiah. These are people hearing the law, God’s word spoken to them, for the first time after a period of exile and separation from their homeland. And they weep. Despite the exhortation to rejoice, they weep. In the midst of good news, they weep. When the glory of God comes to them, the weight of that glory brings them to tears. Like the hometown folks in Galilee, they are unable to embrace the difficult glory of God when it traces its way into their lives. 

“In Epiphany we trace all the glory of his grace.” The glory of God in Christ Jesus traces its way from a star over Bethlehem, to a river for baptism, to a wedding feast where they’ve run out of wine, to a synagogue in Nazareth, to a mountaintop with dazzling light, and it arrives on our doorstep with its radical grace and offensive love, embarrassing forgiveness and poured-out life for the world. It brings with it folks we would rather not be around. It lifts up the vulnerable and hurting with divine comfort; it brings down the prideful and self-assured with divine affliction. And it calls all of us to the equal plane at the foot of the cross of Christ, where there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female, but where we all drink of the same Spirit of the living God, made one in Christ. I wonder, will we embrace it? Or like the people in Luke and Nehemiah, will we run from it, angry, weeping, offended, holding to our own way?

Truthfully, this is a difficult glory, a costly glory that invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good. It is as sweet as honey in our mouths, but it can make our stomachs bitter when we understand the radical nature of God’s grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy poured out for all in the blood of Jesus–not just those like us, or those who “deserve” it, but each and every person, even our enemies. 

Yes, this is a difficult glory, a costly glory that invites us to come and live in the Spirit! But in the same breath it invites us to come and die to self, to our way, to the divisions and hostilities within us and in our world, to sin. And we weep, for the word of God, that sharp two-edged sword, cuts out the decaying corpse of arrogance that tries to convince us we don’t need mercy and grace.

This is a difficult glory, a costly glory that invites us to the feet of a teacher on a mountain who says that the way of blessedness is the way of poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and even persecution. But too often, we, addicted to the dog-eat-dog and power-hungry ways of this world, pierce those feet with nails. Instead of crucifying our sin, we crucify the Lord of life. 

“In Epiphany we trace all the glory of his grace.” And it’s wonderful, but terrifying. The glory of God is shining in the person of Jesus–in his teaching, in his way, in his life, death, and resurrection. The glory of God is inviting us to follow him, regardless of where it leads, even when it leads to a cross—and it always does. The glory of God is inviting us to give up everything else that stands in the way of our discipleship. It is a difficult glory, a costly glory–but it is the glory of heaven itself, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

Like the people in Nazareth, this wonderful and terrifying glory has traced its way into our hearing, into our hearts, into our lives. It has encountered us. It encounters us still–or maybe confronts us–in the Word faithfully proclaimed, in the Sacraments duly administered, in the face of the stranger who does not look like us, in the life of the person without a home, in the still, small voice that urges us on. The glory of God is here among us, even now, asking us to follow Jesus. And I need you to know today: following this glory will cost you everything; but it will also give you everything. 

This costly glory has traced its way to us, into our hearing, into our hearts, into our lives. And we can become angry, or we can weep, or take offense. We can reject the Lord of life and choose to create our own glory of rust and decay. Or we can follow where our Savior leads, even when that costly glory takes us to the cross, confessing him before the world as the only Lord of all.