“GLORY BE”

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON SEPTEMBER 16th, 2007

1 Timothy 1:17 "To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

Glory. A friend of mine told me that when he heard the word glory in church it made him giggle. You see, he had an aunt Glory, and when he was a child he thought all the Scriptural references were about her. At her funeral he discovered she was named Glory because she was the first girl born after seven boys, and when the midwife said it's a girl the response was "Glory be!". And so she was named.

The Hebrew word for glory in the Old Testament is kabod. Not to be confused with Greek or Turkish sandwiches! Kabod means in Hebrew – heaviness, or weight, or gravity - which may seem strange. The famous scientist Isaac Newton was a keen studier of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Greek and was fascinated by the story of Moses and the glory of God which we find in Exodus. Realizing, through his knowledge of the language, that the word kabod meant gravity, he thought that Moses had already discovered the law of gravity! The gravity of the Old Testament word glory was of an eminent man who had heavy responsibilities, or heavy possessions - like lots of bags of money.

So we can see that in the Old Testament understanding, heaviness became an attribute of giving glory, that someone was heavy in the way of responsibility or great treasure. Yet, it is a bit of a puzzle – because, of course, God dwells in unapproachable light and is light. But he has heavy responsibilities indeed. Today's reading first reading (Exodus 32) gives us a bit of a hint about these heavy responsibilities that God has.

God had given his chosen people everything. He rescued them from slavery in Egypt and brought them through the wilderness those forty years. Now on Mount Sinai, in the midst of their wandering, God talks to their leader - Moses. But while the cat’s away the mice do play! And the people became inpatient, as the Scriptures says, and wanted more local gods - gods they could see and touch. So they made a golden calf and worshipped it. Both Moses and God were not amused.

What therefore was God's heavy responsibility in this situation? To punish them? To make them see the error of their ways? This would certainly be the human way to go - and so it seems at the beginning. But then "Moses besought the Lord his God". Indeed Moses did, and he bargained with God - as we occasionally do also. "God relented". And by a touch of irony it was Moses who was the one who got angry and wanted to punish the people. So he smashed the Ten Commandments and the golden calf, ground it into pieces and made them all drink of the ground gold in water. Moses felt he had done a good job, of course, and he returned to Mount Sinai very pleased with himself. And he wanted something from God in return – the faithful servant does his job and wants a reward. This is recorded in Exodus 33:

"Then Moses said, now show me your glory. And the Lord said ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name the Lord in your presence - but you cannot see my face - for no-one may see me and live’. Then the Lord said ‘There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen’."

So God tells Moses that he cannot see his glory - it is unbearable. All he saw was God passing by in a flash of light. But that, said God, is enough. And it had always been enough. Light was already enough for the Israelites to see God's glory through those years in the wilderness. The shining cloud and the pillar of fire led them, displaying God's presence, his glory, to his people as they wandered in that desert.

The glory of God is full of light, and He dwells in unapproachable light. St Paul says, "Christ is the shinning radiance of God's glory". S we cannot divorce the word glory from the word light. And when we want to visualize Christ's glory in the Resurrection on Holy Saturday, we do it with the large Paschal candle lit from the fire which lights up the whole Church and everyone in it. And the cry goes up: "Christ our Light", and we all respond: "Thanks be to God".

Light and glory. At Baptism, lighted candles are given as the first taste of glory for the new Christian. From then on, from that moment, the glory of God is shown in our lives - not by how good we are to God, but by how good God is to us.

Today's Gospel makes that quite clear. No matter how much we dim the light of God's glory in our lives, God will not let us go. He will seek us out and bring us back. The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are the fulfillment of the conversation between Moses and God on Mount Sinai.

And of course, like the people of Israel, we might forget the glory of God, and go after local gods. Isn't that the trap our Church falls into all the time - always looking to the local rather than to something greater? Do you remember all that talk about ten or fifteen years ago, about evangelism being our first duty to God. Our first duty: not worship or prayer, but evangelism. Of course passing on the Good News is part of being a Christian. But what happened was that the Church treated God as a product, treated itself as a product to be sold. And treating the Church as a product to be sold, seems far removed from glory. As indeed did all those public relations campaigns and programs that went with what was called the decade of evangelism. St Paul, by contrast, definitely passed on the Good News and was the greatest evangelist ever known. But he was not concerned about programs, or committees, or advertising campaigns. Just a simple acknowledgment of what God had done for him, and as a result, to preach about God's love for us.

St Paul went on to establish many churches that all lived the vocation that St Paul taught them. They all were in communion with each other, they were devoted to the Eucharist, and they believed in the faith they had received. And in doing that, all those little churches revealed God's glory.

And that my brothers and sisters, is the way that we will reveal God's glory.