Glory is something that is very important and yet it is
something that is hard to understand.
What is glory? We’ll get to God’s
glory, but let’s start with glory among us.
Glory is when a person is set apart and made praiseworthy because of
something about them. An athlete
achieves glory and is given praise when he or she is better than the rest of
the competitors. The scholar achieves
glory and is given praise when a scholarship or award is given. A rich person is glorious in the display of
treasures that sets him or her apart from those who can’t afford such
things. Glory makes a person different
and praiseworthy.
What is the glory, then, that God has? He is set apart and different. He is worthy of praise. He is the most powerful. He is wisest.
All wealth does not really belong to any person, because each will die
and it will go to somebody else. God
alone possesses it all. This makes him
glorious, set apart, and worthy of all praise because nothing is good except
him.
What effect does glory have on the person who is beholding
it? Again, we might see this better if
we first consider the glory of human beings.
When we come into the presence of someone whom we know as having more
glory than us we become bashful. If we
aren’t sure that they have more glory than us, then we might compete with them,
hoping to have more glory than they have.
But when we are sure that they have more glory than us, then we become
reserved and deferential. Someone who is
poor, for example, might become embarrassed of their poverty when they come
into the presence of someone rich, because the richness of the one brings
attention to what is lacking in the other.
This might help us understand a little bit better what is
going on when people come into the presence of God’s glory. The surpassing goodness of God brings into
sharp contrast what is lacking in us.
This is what we see in the Bible, without fail. Whenever the fullness of the glory of God is
beginning to be made known the people who see it are deeply affected.
There are many examples of this, including our readings for
today, but we can see this effect in a special way with Moses on Mt.
Sinai. Moses boldly asked God once, “Show
me your glory,” but God said to him, “No one can see God and live.” But so that Moses could get an idea of God’s
glory he shunted him away in the cleft of a rock, shielding his glory from
Moses with his hand as he passed by, and Moses was allowed to look after he had
passed by. Even though Moses did not
fully see God’s glory, it had a lasting effect on him. When he came down from the mountain his face
glowed with the reflected glory of God.
The people couldn’t stand to look at him and so he put a veil over his
face and would only take it off when he went to speak with God. Here you see the power of God’s glory, and it
was not even the fullness of his glory, but only his backside.
Now consider the final destiny of all people and every
individual, including you. Job says that
he knows that his Redeemer lives and at the last he shall see him face to face
with his very own resurrected eyes. The
glory of the Lord is coming to you. This
is not something that is boring. Rather,
it is precisely the absolute opposite of that.
There is nothing more stupendous, terrifying, amazing, mind-boggling,
exciting—and maybe we can wrap all these words into one: there is nothing more glorious than to be in the presence of
the living God.
Experiencing the glory of God is the major theme that runs
through all history including each of you and this present day, and we see this
clearly taught in the Bible from beginning to end. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created
in God’s image. They were by no means as
glorious as God. They were less than
him. But they were also compatible with
God. They did not feel ashamed when the
thought of him and his glory came to mind.
They took delight in God even as God took delight in them.
This, however, was horribly marred by sin. After Adam and Eve sinned they did not want
to be together with God. They ran away
from him. They were now in need of
redemption, which God promised to provide for them in the seed of the woman who
would crush the serpent’s head. From
this point on, because of the marring effect of sin, Adam and Eve and all their
children could no longer see God and live.
There was no longer fellowship and communion with God by sight, but only
by faith, and this faith is notoriously weak as we can see in all of God’s
people from the beginning until now. It
is not until the sin in us is dead by virtue of the fact of us dying, and being
transformed by the resurrection from the dead in Jesus that we will once again be
partakers of the fullness of God’s glory like Adam and Eve were before they
sinned.
In the meantime, before we are transformed by the resurrection
of our bodies, we are nursed along by God as we see in the Old and the New
Testaments. In the Old Testament God hid
his glory in the tabernacle and later the temple, but the people were given
access to him and his glory to strengthen and preserve them in their
faith. The Law that Moses received on
Mt. Sinai taught the people how they could live together with God and his glory
without being harmed by it, because they were sanctified by the sacrifices God
prescribed for them.
The Old Testament was preparation and a foreshadowing of
what would come with the New Testament.
The sacrifices and blood of animals would be replaced by the one and
only great atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross. He was punished in our place for the sins that
we have committed, having taken them upon himself. The price of our redemption from the serpent
was God’s own beloved Son. It is by his
death and resurrection that we have the sure and certain hope of seeing God in
all his glory and being blessed by the radiance of that Sun instead of being
scorched and burned as we otherwise would be with all our sin. The warmth of that Sun has healing in its
wings and we shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. Meanwhile the wicked shall be burned like
stubble.
Between that first Easter and the culmination of all these
great things with Christ’s second coming, God continues to nurse us along with
his New Testament just as he did in the Old.
He gives us his glory—not in its raw, naked power, which would destroy
us—but clothed, so that we may be strengthened and preserved in our faith by
it. And so God has given us the washing
of rebirth and regeneration in holy baptism by which we are united with Christ
in his saving death and anticipate our resurrection with him. This is a truly glorious thing even if it
goes unrecognized by the scoffers and unbelievers who think that it is nothing.
God gives us the glory of Christ’s own body and Christ’s own
blood united with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus himself calls this the “new testament”
that is given and shed for the forgiveness of all our sins and for the
remembrance of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross. Those who receive this sacrament worthily,
that is, by faith in Jesus’s words, are greatly benefited by this contact with
the glory of God. Those who receive this
sacrament unworthily are scorched and harmed by it as St. Paul says in 1
Corinthians 11. God’s glory as it is
communicated in the sacraments are no play thing to be taken lightly.
Thus we see in the New Testament that God nurses us along
with his glory. He does not do this with
tents, tabernacles or temples. He does
it by the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. The proclamation can be done with words alone
as Christians testify to their hope in Jesus, or it can be in the form of the
sacraments which God has given to us to receive his glory and to be enriched by
it. This nursing along of our faith has
taken place from the first preaching of the Gospel in the Garden of Eden and
will last until the end of the world.
The whole reason for this preaching is so that one day our faith may be
replaced by sight and we can behold the full glory of God in heaven. This is the salvation that we are speaking
about when we speak of Jesus as our Savior.
What we have been talking about today with God’s glory and
the way that he communicates that glory to us is relevant to our topic today,
which is Christ’s transfiguration. Here
we see Jesus transformed in his appearance.
The glory that he has as the eternally begotten Son of God shines
through, and Peter, James, and John see what was otherwise hidden. Jesus speaks to Moses and Elijah, the two
great figures from the Old Testament.
Moses represents the Law. Elijah
represents the prophets. Both of them
point to Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s revelation.
Upon seeing this glory St. Peter has a pretty reasonable
suggestion from an Old Testament point of view.
He knows that he is seeing God’s glory before him just as the Israelites
saw God’s glory being manifested at Mt. Sinai.
He comes up with a way to keep that glory around and suggests tents or
tabernacles—one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. He’d like to make this situation more
permanent because he recognizes that this is something good that is happening
before them.
But he isn’t even done speaking when the Father interrupts
him. Peter’s plan won’t do. This man Jesus is God’s beloved Son with whom
he is well pleased. The Father is well
pleased with the Son not just as he goes from triumph to triumph and is praised
and lauded by the people like he was on Palm Sunday. The Father is also well pleased with the Son
when he is abandoned by everyone, is spit upon, mocked, and nailed to the
cross. Jesus was not going to sit in a
tent or a tabernacle to be worshipped that way.
He was going to be glorified (as Jesus says several times) when he was
lifted up upon the cross, dying for the sins of the whole world.
The Father says to Peter, James, and John, “Listen to him.” “Listen to Jesus.” It might be relevant what happened just
before the transfiguration. Just before
this is when Peter tells Jesus that he is the Christ, the Son of the living
God, and Jesus gives him the name “Peter” for his good confession. But then Jesus tells them how it is necessary
for him to go to Jerusalem, be mistreated by the authorities, suffer, be
crucified, and die, and be raised on the third day. This is when Peter is given the awful name of
“Satan” when he discourages Jesus from such a course of action.
Perhaps when the Father tells these men to listen to Jesus
he is telling them to put aside whatever thoughts of glory they might have or
how they think God ought to be worshipped.
Jesus is going to be glorified and should be worshipped when he is on
the cross, in agony and sadness and despair, for that is where the love of God
for you is made manifest. His greatest
glory is not so much just in the way that he is more powerful than everything
else, but in the depth of his love for you, and the lengths that he goes to for
your forgiveness and salvation.
When the bright cloud overshadowed these men and the voice
spoke to them they fell to the ground. I
think our translation might be a little bland when it says that they were “terrified.” It was more than that. They were extremely, extremely
terrified. They were so frightened that
they almost died. The glory of the Lord
brought out all that was so sorely lacking in them. But then when it was all over they lifted
their eyes and saw Jesus only.
That is a good word for us to end on today. Although I’ve spoken a lot about God’s glory
today, I don’t really understand it.
There is no way for us to understand it until we experience it. And even then, I’m of the opinion that it
will take eternity to begin to understand it.
But what is really necessary is that we focus on Jesus only. If we look to him, the Good Shepherd, then we
will not go wrong. Sheep do not
understand what the shepherd is doing, and we won’t understand everything about
God and his glory. But as the Father
say, “Listen to Jesus.” In
another place Jesus says, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me. They hear my voice and follow me.”
Great, magnificent, mind-blowing things are in store for
each one of us. The glory of God awaits
us. That can be a frightening
thing. But Jesus says, “Do not be
afraid. Follow me.”
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