Monsters or Magnificence
This is the final meditation on C.S. Lewis’s famous sermon “The Weight of Glory.” The sermon was preached in Oxford on June 8, 1941.
The words “weight” and “glory” don’t really compute when put together. What is glory and what weight could possibly be attached to it?
In the first post on this we explored Lewis’ introduction in which he discusses one of his favorite and most important themes: longing, or desire. Contrary to much current thought, he says for Christians the issue is not to avoid desire as a way to alleviate suffering, and desire is not evil. But, we are easily deceived. We experience longing, sometimes called sehnsucht, a deep and abiding sense that something is missing, something of vital importance to us. It is a hunger, a deep hunger that aches. Our modern post-Enlightenment minds cannot conceive of this as the “God-shaped vacuum” as Augustine expressed. So we fill it with experiences, with art, with new relationships, with job changes, dream cars or whatever we think will fulfill that longing. It works. For a bit, then it returns and we then think that no, it wasn’t a new life partner I actually needed, but a vacation home in the Bahamas.
Lewis says we are actually longing for “the far-off country.” We don’t desire too much, we desire too little.
