The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis SPCK, 1942 23 pages
available in many of CS Lewis’s books of collected writings
Combine a healthy, focussed imagination with a deep understanding of the way Christians see things, add an enviable command of language and you will eventually come up with CS Lewis.
Such gifts are rare, like the gift of Charles Wesley who successfully combined experience with doctrine in his sacred poetry, much of which we still sing today..
Such people (and there are more) are appreciated, revered and cherished by those who live after them, enjoying their work and finding inspiration and delight in what they have left for us.
The Weight of Glory was a sermon preached by CS Lewis in Oxford in 1941.
The starting point is desire, a feeling common both in the natural world and in the supernatural, too.
Separating those desires that are purely self-seeking or mercenary from those that are perfectly legitimate consummations of spiritual desire is the first task of this writer.
He turns then to the idea of glory which is traditionally linked with crowns and thrones.
Then comes the surprise. Glory is not primarily linked with crowns and thrones but with being ‘appreciated’ by the Almighty, God himself. The divine accolade “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” – that is the true glory. The ultimate purpose of our relationship to our creator is that we should receive the divine accolade. Therein lies the true glory.
It brings to mind that great sermon of Dr Will Sangster ‘The Home-sickness of the Soul’ (to be found in Westminster Sermons vol 1) based on the text in 2 Corinthians 5 8 ‘At Home with the Lord’.
CS Lewis brings together the desire and the glorious fulfillment of the desire in arriving home at the last, the spiritually rooted aspiration and its eventual realization in heaven, the home of the saints.
The preacher himself asks whether he has been ‘indulging in speculation’.
You won’t be able to answer the question unless you read the sermon.
It is worth reading twice.