Most things we hear or read stay with us for a moment or two, but some words and phrases and clauses stay with us for a very long time. I still remember very clearly how struck I was by whole sentences and paragraphs of a sermon I read more than 25 years ago, a sermon that had been preached in another country more than seven years before I was born. I read the sermon for the first time in 1999, and I’ve been returning to it more or less regularly ever since.

I’m referring to a sermon preached by C.S. Lewis on June 8, 1941, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Oxford.  Lewis preached this sermon during World War II, more than a year after he had preached another sermon in this church that was published as “Learning in War-Time.” This new sermon, preached after the sustained aerial bombardment of British cities by the Luftwaffe, was given the title “The Weight of Glory,” but it could just as well have been “Living with Neighbors in War-Time.” But “The Weight of Glory” is a better title, if only because the sermon takes much of its power from II Corinthians 4:17: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (KJV).

After Lewis establishes a context for what this text tells us about our own present and future glory, he goes on to consider what such a text could mean for our relationships with our neighbors:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

The first time I read this paragraph, I had to read it again, more slowly. Several passages have been etched into my memory—they provide a remarkable argument, concluding with principles that illustrate the meaning of the opening claim about “the burden of my neighbor’s glory”:

• The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
• It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
• And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
• Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

These words, these sentences, this sermon, given to us in a time of war, can still command my full attention.

The prayer of application that we have to add at the end of this sermon should be simple and direct: May the God of all mercy equip us to bear the weight of our neighbor’s glory, and to do so with gratitude for the giver of that great gift. Amen.

(The sermon is online here: https://www.doxaweb.com/assets/weight_of_glory.pdf)