Glimpse of Glory

Luke 2:8-32
There are several words we particularly associate with Christmas: Tinsel, baubles, egg-nog, in-laws, over-weight, over-draft, alka seltzer. For me, one word that marks and makes Christmas is the word ‘glory’.

Glory is a technical term for when we exclaim in awe: ‘oh wow’.

If Christmas doesn’t produce an ‘Oh Wow’– you’ve probably missed the point.
Glory is a divine word, occurring in the bible upwards of 400 times, generally as a noun or adjective describing God’s self revealing; or as a verb describing our response to God’s revelation. The great theologian Karl Barth wrote: ‘Glory…is the self revealing sum of all divine perfections. It is the fullness of God’s deity… the emerging self expressing and self manifesting reality of all that God is. It is God’s being – his self declaration…his out shining.’  Such is Christmas.

First, Christmas is seeing God’s Glory – an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds and the glory of the Lord shone around’ Luke 2:9.

The glory was not the angels – it was a glory reflected from God. The angels proximity to God meant they glowed! Glory accompanied their mission and message – announcing and pointing the shepherds to the birth place of eternal God. God’s glory radiated from an innocent impotent infant, in an animal feeding trough, in a stable, in a backwater of the Roman Empire, two millennia ago; as St John said, ‘We have beheld his glory – the glory of the only begotten son of God’ (John 1:11).

Even as humans approaching the Sun would be incinerated, so God’s unveiled glory is dangerous to sinful man. The only way for that glory to be shown and known was by incarnation, glory en-fleshed – God and blood wed in virgin’s womb. Thus, the Incarnation is glory’s condescension – God stoops to our level, laid in a trough. The Incarnation is glory’s contraction – the Lord of the universe, a dependent infant. The Incarnation is glory’s conjunction – not merely with us, but one with us.

Secondly, Christmas is receiving God’s Glory.
On the eighth day when Jesus is taken to be circumcised, Simeon took the child in his arms and praised God saying – ‘now let your servant depart in peace…my eyes have seen your salvation…a light for Gentiles and glory for your people Israel.’ Luke 2:32f.
Humankind, created in the image of God for intimacy with God, through rebellion fell from that image, intimacy and glory. And ever since deep in the heart of man has been a longing for glory – sought in beauty or belongings, achievement or enjoyment. All tarnish like last year’s tinsel.

In the 1970’s movie ‘Waterloo’ – Napoleon is carried off the battle field exhausted. He enquires of his aide, ‘after I’m dead what do you think the world will say of me?’ The aide replied, ‘that you extended the limits of glory’. Christmas is about Jesus extending the limits of glory – revealing God’s glory and restoring us to our former. St Paul says: ‘we who, with unveiled faces all beholding the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness, with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, the Spirit’ 2 Corinthians 3:18.

Let us behold the Glory of God, wed with blood in virgin’s womb, laid in a manger, given to the world. That is glorious, that is Christmas: Oh Wow!

Simon Ponsonby is Pastor of Theology at St Aldates, Oxford