In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus talks quite a lot about glory. He speaks about the glory he’s given to the Father and asks that the Father will now glorify him. And towards the end of the reading Jesus states that he is glorified in his disciples. So what can we make of all this? What does Jesus mean when he speaks of glory and glorification? 

First of all, what is glory? Although we can talk about glory in a few different ways such as fame and honour, great beauty, great rejoicing even, and praise and worship, what we can’t do is talk about glory without putting it into some kind of context, without having a reason for giving glory. So, for example, we can glorify people for their successes and achievements; we can talk about the glory of a building because of its beauty or magnificence; we can glory in something, which is what we do when we celebrate and rejoice in a situation; and we can give glory to God because we believe he’s worthy of our praise and worship. But because we have to have a reason for giving or receiving glory,  then it follows that to glorify someone or something involves saying something, and something good, positive and praiseworthy about who or what we’re glorifying. And this is the context in which we have to read this morning’s Gospel.  

Earlier in John’s Gospel, in answer to the disciple Philip’s request to see the Father, Jesus had said,  

“Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.” 

And in this morning’s Gospel Jesus says to the Father,  

“I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”  

So the Father is glorified through the work that Jesus has done, but the work that Jesus has done is not his own work but the Father’s, and the work is the Father’s to the extent that to have seen and heard Jesus work is to have seen and heard the Father himself work.  

So then Jesus has glorified the Father by revealing him to the world. In other words, Jesus has glorified the Father by saying something about the Father and showing something  of the Father to the world.  

But then Jesus goes on to pray,  

“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”  

This is both a prayer and a statement about Jesus’ own glory. It’s a statement about Jesus’ glory because it reveals that Jesus, the Son, existed with the Father before the creation of the world. He truly is, as John had stated at the beginning of his Gospel, the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God, now made flesh for all to see. And it’s a prayer that works on two levels. On one level, it’s a prayer that Jesus will be returned to his original state of glory, but on another level, it’s a prayer that the Father will glorify Jesus by revealing to the world who he really was and is. Because this is exactly what will happen through Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension. And this has to happen because the disciples must believe in Jesus and understand who he is if they are going to glorify him through their words and actions; if they are going to go out into the world and tell people about him when he leaves the world. Which is what Jesus says they will do when he says,  

“I am glorified in them.” 

The fact that we’re here in church this morning tells us that this is what those disciples did; they went out into the world and glorified Jesus by telling people about him and doing the works that he himself had done. But of course, today, that charge, falls to us. Today, we are the ones who have to glorify Jesus through our words and actions. So how do we do that.  

Well one way is to be here in church to worship the Lord. When we do that, we glorify Jesus because we’re saying to the world who we believe Jesus was and is. When we come to church, we’re glorifying the Father because we’re saying to the world that we believe he’s worthy of our praise and worship, and the content of our prayers, express why we think that, most wonderfully of course because he sent his Son into the world to redeem us from our sins and lead us to everlasting life. That we pray at all glorifies both the Father and the Son because it shows that we believe they hear and answer our prayers. So we do glorify God in many ways through what we do and say in church. But there are other things that go on in churches which call into question just who exactly it is whose glory we are seeking.  

We know that, at times, things happen in churches that shouldn’t happen. We have disagreements that lead to arguments and fall outs, which shouldn’t happen in church because everything we do in church should be to the glory of God, but they do happen. But if we really look at these things, aren’t they invariably rooted in pride? Someone wants something, someone else doesn’t want it, someone can’t have their own way, and so there’s a problem and trouble. But whose glory are these things all about? Do things like this say anything at all about Jesus or about the Father, or about the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the God who is three persons in one God head who exist in perfect loving relationship? Or do they rather reveal and say something about our own failure to live in loving relationship with others? At a simple level, it might be the old chestnut, “Nobody does more for that church than me!” but isn’t that rooted in the pride of someone who feels that they should be getting a bit of praise, a bit of glory, for something  they do and aren’t getting the glory they think is due to them? At a more serious level, it might be a problem caused when someone in the church gets a bit too big for their boots and starts to throw their weight around because they think that they and what they want are far more important than someone else and what they want. Sometimes, it leads to people being bullied and leaving a parish church, or even the Church itself. We all know these things happen, but do these things glorify God? How do they glorify Jesus who laid aside his heavenly glory to come to earth to suffer and die for us? Do these things in any way reveal anything about God, or do they say far more about us and our pride and efforts at self-glorification, our lack of love and our and Godlessness? We say that what we do in church is to the glory of God. But if we’re going to say that, then we’d better make very sure that what we’re doing does say something true and glorious about God. And if it doesn’t, we need to ask ourselves whose glory we are seeking, his or our own. And if it’s not his, then we really shouldn’t be doing it at all.  

And that goes for what we do outside church too. As disciples of Jesus, we shouldn’t just be glorifying God in church for an hour or so, once a week, on Sunday morning, our whole lives should be lived to the glory of God. If out discipleship goes no further than the doors of the church, what does that say about our glorification of God? That he’s only worthy of being glorified for an hour, once a week, and no more? God is worthy of more than that surely. All we do and say, each and every day, wherever we go, should say something to others about who we are and about what we believe. They should reveal to the world something of the truth about God.   

This is really what the Church is driving at when it talks about developing missional leaders in our churches. Of course we want to grow our congregations, we want people giving glory to God in our churches, but also people who will take that out into the world and give glory to God outside their churches too. People who can, and will, go out and glorify God in the world through their words and actions so that other people will come to know and believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and, in turn, also give glory to God in church and in their own lives. And perhaps that is the very best way of all that we can give glory to God, to do what Jesus did and charged those first disciples to do, to make God known, really known, to people so that they will believe and set out on the road to eternal life themselves.  

 Amen.   

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Propers for the 7th Sunday of Easter, 17th May 2026

Entrance Antiphon 
O Lord, hear my voice, for I have called to you; 
of you my heart has spoken: Seek his face; 
hide not your face from me, alleluia. 

The Collect 
Graciously hear our supplications, O Lord, 
so that we, who believe that the Savior of the human race is with you in your glory, 
may experience, as he promised, 
until the end of the world, 
his abiding presence among us. 
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God, for ever and ever. 
Amen. 

The Readings 
Acts 1:12-14 
Psalm 27:1, 4, 7-8 
1 Peter 4:13-16  
John 17:1-11 

Prayer after Communion  
Hear us, O God our Saviour, 
and grant us confidence, 
that through these sacred mysteries, 
there will be accomplished in the body of the whole Church 
what has already come to pass in Christ her Head. 
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. 
Amen.  

In these days when ordained clergy are so few and far between, you may be asked, or perhaps have been asked, whether your church has a priest. And in answer you may have said “Yes” but qualified your answer by saying that you have to share him with another parish. And that would almost certainly be the kind of answer that person was looking for. But another way you could deal with that question is to ask the one asking it to qualify the question. Are they talking about ordained clergy, or about the general priesthood of all believers? Because if they mean the former, Yes, one that you have to share but, if they mean the latter, your church, this church, has as many priests as it has people. And those priests are you.  

This is an understanding of the Church that we find in quite a few places in the New Testament, and one of them is in this morning’s Epistle when St Peter tells his readers,  

‘…you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’ 

We can get further insight into just what this means if we read it together with something St Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans: 

‘I appeal to you therefore … to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’  

So to be the holy priesthood we’re called to be means to offer ourselves, body and spirit, to God, through Christ. It means to conform ourselves to Christ, because Jesus’ whole life was an offering of himself in God’s service. As Jesus himself says in this morning’s Gospel,  

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do…” 

But we mustn’t reduce this to something that’s merely functional. While priesthood in a sense, is about what we do, it’s much more about who and what we are. If, for example, we do the kind of good works that Christ did, but do them for our own glory, or because we think we’ll benefit from them in some way, far from serving God through Christ, we’re really using Christ to serve ourselves and that is not the way of Christ, and it is not priestly service.  

But what is priestly service? What is a priest? All Christian priesthood, whether that’s the general priesthood of all believers or the particular priesthood of the ordained must be rooted in the priesthood and priestly service of Christ, and it must mirror the priesthood and priestly service of Christ. So if we want to know what Christian priesthood is like, what our priesthood must be like, we have to look at Christ’s priesthood.  

Christ, like all priests were, and are, called to do, served God and his neighbour, and he did that in various priestly ways. He was a teacher. He was a man of prayer. He was a pastor. He led worship. And he offered sacrifices on behalf of the people. And these are all things that we are called to do as Christians are they not. We’re called to teach by proclaiming the Gospel. We’re called to pray. We’re called to be pastors by caring for the sick and needy. Our call to lead worship is nuanced because the Church reserves certain things to the ordained priesthood, but we can all lead our brothers and sisters in worship in some ways. We can read lessons, lead intercessions, lead singing, we know that this is something Jesus did. And we can offer sacrifices too. We can offer ourselves as those ‘living sacrifices ‘ St Paul speaks of. Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, of course, was made once and for all so we can’t offer that sacrifice again, but we do plead Christ’s own sacrifice on the Cross at every Mass, every Eucharist, and in that way we’re enabled to take part in Christ’s sacrifice and share in it. So in all these ways we are a priesthood because we share in the priesthood of Christ. But I must add something here.  

Some denominations of the Church have used the idea of the general priesthood of all believers to deny the need for an ordained priesthood. But the vast majority of the Church haven’t done that . The majority of the Church, including the Church of England, obviously, still call people from the general priesthood of all believers to be set apart as ordained priests. 

The orders of ordained clergy we have now developed in the first century of the Church’s history, but the roots do go back to the very early Church. In the New Testament we find people being selected for leadership from among congregations and hands being laid on them to formally approve and sanctify their choice. So the case for calling people out to be ordained is a sound one. But what we mustn’t do is completely separate the ordained priesthood from the general priesthood of all believers. 

And unfortunately, this has happened many times, and in more ways than one! On the one hand there’s sacerdotalism, a belief that the ordained are a distinct priestly class, over and above the laity. And I once heard that expressed in very simple terms when a priest once told me that,  

“The business of the laity is to turn up, pay up, and shut up!”   

But on the other hand, some lay people seem to have seen the existence of an ordained priesthood as absolving them from anything that we might call general priestly responsibility. And I’ve heard this expressed in simple terms too. Someone at a parish I once worshipped at was once asked if he’d be interested in coming to Bible study classes if the vicar ran them. His answer was,  

“Whadda we wanna to study t’Bible for? That’s what t’vicar’s paid to do innit?”  

Both of these ways of understanding priesthood are wrong. The ordained priesthood may be called from the general priesthood of all believers, but they are still part of that general priesthood and can’t exist without it. But the existence of an ordained priesthood in no way absolves the lay person from responsibility for fulfilling their own calling and service as part of the general priesthood of all believers.  

In his book, The Christian Priest Today, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, summed up the relationship between Jesus, priesthood and people in this way; 

‘…the ordained priest evokes and serves the ministry of the people of God, and he sees so many of the laity eager to serve and to lead. While he is called to bring the expertise and the authority of his ordination into this scene, he knows that the expertise and authority are rooted in the humility of Christ.’  

That was written over 50 years ago, but I think it is very much in line with what the Church is asking of us today. For the ordained priest to be an enabler, to evoke, to stir up, the people of God to lead and to serve. To fulfil their own vocation as part of the general priesthood of all believers. To be built up into the spiritual house and holy priesthood we are all called to be. And to do this not for their own glory, or for brownie points, but humbly in the name of Christ and to the glory of God. I must ask though, 54 years after Archbishop Ramsey wrote those words, how many are eager to lead and to serve today?  

In an even earlier book, Ministerial Priesthood, written in 1897, but still considered a classic work on an Anglican understanding of priesthood, the author, R.C.Moberley, wrote that the office of ministerial priesthood, that is, ordained priesthood, is the consummation of the priestly office. By that he didn’t mean that the ordained priest is the ultimate of what a Christian priest should be, and I don’t know any priest who thinks that they are the ultimate expression of that, but that in the ordained priest, all that belongs to the whole Body of Christ, comes together and is focussed. The teaching, the prayer, the pastoral work, the leading of worship, and the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice are all visible in the office of the ordained priest. But this is a representation of what belongs to the whole Body of Christ. Because in due measure these things belong to each individual member of the Body. And Moberley urges us not to be taken in by appearances; priesthood is not about what we do but about who and want we are, the spiritual reality that lies behind what we do and makes what we do real rather than simply empty ritual.  

And that is something that applies not just to the ordained priest but to each and every member of the Church. To look at themselves and perhaps ask themselves, Why am I doing this? Why am I not doing that? What could I do, what can I do, to fulfil my calling as part of the general priesthood of all believers? To ask, in what ways to I need to be built up so that I can make the words I heard from Jesus in this morning’s Gospel personal, to me: 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do…” 

Amen.  

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Propers for Easter 5, 3rd Sunday 2026

Entrance Antiphon 

O sing a new song to the Lord, 
for he has worked wonders; 
in the sight of the nations 
he has shown his deliverance, alleluia. 

The Collect 

Almighty ever-living God, 
constantly accomplish the Paschal Mystery within us, 
that those you were pleased to make new in Holy Baptism 
may, under your protective care, bear much fruit 
and come to the joys of life eternal. 
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God, for ever and ever. 

Amen. 

The Readings 
Acts 6:1-7  
Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19 
1 Peter 2:4-9 
John 14:1-12 

Prayer after Communion 

Graciously be present to your people, we pray, O Lord, 
and lead those you have imbued with heavenly mysteries 
to pass from former ways to newness of life. 
Through Christ our Lord. 

Amen.