Last week I suggested that God communicates God’s will with us through God’s Holy Spirit, and thus we might question how much of God’s Spirit we can handle or how much we should handle as God’s people? Well, perhaps the greatest mind and the most notable Christian apologist of the 20th Century, C.S. Lewis, considered every conceivable understanding of humanity, including wisdom, reason, morality, sensibility and virtue….and ended up with Christ.1 And having done so, I am not sure he ever figured out what that meant for him or us. But on June 8, 1941, as the bombing of Britain by the Germans intensified, Lewis gave his most famous sermon to a packed house at the twelfth century Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. 2 Its title was “The Weight of Glory,” an obvious reference to St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians wherein he wrote, “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” (2 Cor. 4:17).
For Paul, as for Peter, the preparation was to suffer in this life (see Ro. 8: 18; 1 Pet 1: 6-7). The resurrected Christ even commented that Paul would suffer much for the sake of His name (Acts 9: 13-16). For Lewis, though, suffering was not paramount. What Lewis reasoned was that we should try to please God as a child tries to please its father, so that when we stand before God, we find that God is pleased with us, God accepts us, and we are welcomed into the heart of things. And Christ has shown us the way, which is to love our neighbor, taking our neighbor’s burden on our own backs to enable us both to follow our Captain into the Glory of God (Mk. 12:31).
Of course, C.S. Lewis was sermonizing. His point was that the promise of eternal Glory in the embrace of God is so immeasurably enormous, why on earth would any sane mortal ignore the pathway toward that reward? Yet, the question remains, how and how much do we take on our neighbor’s burden? And how, may I ask, are we able to do so joyously, humbly, and without judgment? Jesus came so that we would have life and have it abundantly (Jn. 10:10). May I suggest that perhaps we are back to square one, beckoning God to grant us that portion of the Holy Spirit that we can handle; and praying that God will grant us a greater portion from time to time to nudge us along God’s path just as a parent teaches a child. Gradually, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to lose our life to save it (Mk. 8: 35). That’s my own hope, anyway.
- Lewis published The Pilgrim’s Regress in 1933, an allegorical search for God. The book is available with annotations on Amazon.
- This sermon can be found currently in a paperback book The Weight of Glory, along with other addresses of Lewis. I also have a printed copy that I can make available to anyone interested.