Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese off Toronto, on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany January 14 2024
Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." (John 1:46)
Today I’d like us to think about the word “glory”, one of the words that’s key to the season of Epiphany that we’ve recently entered (Epiphany means the showing of God and God’s glory in Christ).
First, let’s think a bit about the word “glory” itself. It’s rich in meaning, but it’s not one that we use in everyday speech, is it? It can mean beautiful, as in “that was a glorious sunrise”. Sometimes we use it to speak of olden days when things were better, particularly in sports. Toronto fans might speak wistfully of the glory days of the Leafs, though that age is fast receding from living memory.
The word has long been associated with military exploits and feats of arms. The heroes of Homer fought for glory, and probably the Victorians were the last people who could speak sincerely about fighting and dying for glory. Since the mass murder of World War One, death in battle just seems tragic and wasteful. As for politics, if anyone thinks they will find glory in elected office, well, that person should get help.
Perhaps church is one of the only places left where we we can use the word “glory” with sincerity. The psalmist says that “In the [Lord’s] temple all say Glory!” (Ps 29) and that’s pretty much what we do here on Sunday. We begin our worship with a song of praise called the Gloria, and we end with another song of praise called the Doxology which has become a bit of a dance number at All Saints. The prayer’s Doxology, comes from the Greek word doxa, which means glory, so “doxology” literally means “speech about God’s glory”.
But God’s glory is hard to talk about because it can seem like looking at the sun. In the Hebrew Scriptures, glory is one of the fundamental attributes of God. God’s glory is overpowering, otherworldly, it overpowers those who see it, which is why Moses turns white on Mount Sinai. The prophet Isaiah sees a vision of God - “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” and is ashamed because be is “a man if unclean lips” (Isa 6.3-5). Fleming Routledge notes that Isaiah’s “vision of the glory of God results in an instantaneous perception of the contrast between God’s purity and his people’s contamination, their “uncleanness” because of sin”.
A faith that stressed our continued unworthiness wouldn’t be very interesting or healthy for many, and it’s not our faith. Thanks to Christ, as one of euchariststic prayers says, we “are made worthy to stand before [God}”, and instead of dwelling on our sinfulness, Jesus has given us the much more interesting job of being his chosen and loved disciples.
Thus, we can sing confidently about God’s glory on Sundays, but, if we maybe grow a little too confident and even a little blasé about how wonderful God is, then maybe that’s what this Epiphany is for. I’m grateful for the season of Epiphany because it calls us to be like the Magi, to seek out and honour the gloriousness of God as revealed in Christ.
The lovely collect for Epiphany in the Book of Common Prayer puts it well when it asks that “we may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory” (BCP 117).
The season of Epiphany traditionally includes several stories about the glory of God revealed in Christ, from the star that leads the Magi to the voices from heaven at the Baptism and at the Transfiguration which proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, to miracle of the water turned to wine at the Wedding at Cana. All of these stories show something about who the child in the manger was born to be: a king, messiah and saviour of Israel, a miracle worker, the beloved son of God. But these are all momentary revelations. The beloved Son goes off alone into the wilderness, the light fades and he comes off the mountain to journey with his friends. If we see glory in Jesus, do we not also see the ordinary?
Take today’s gospel reading, from the first chapter of John. In the prologue to that gospel, we heard that “we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1.14). Then John the Baptist appears, and when he sees Jesus he hails him as the Lamb of God and the Son of God. But, when Jesus finally comes on to the stage for the first time, we’d expect him to say he’s going to Jerusalem, to be at the centre of things, but instead he’s decided to go to Galilee, a backwater province whose residents had a funny accent. It would be as if a superstar, like a Taylor Swift, coming to Ontario, chose to bypass th Roger’s Centre in Toronto in favour of an arena in deepest Grey County.
Certainly that’s why Nathanael is unimpressed when his friend Philip tells him he’s found the Messiah, from Nazareth. Scholars think that at the time of Jesus, Nazareth was a village with a population of around 400, not really very impressive. And so he responds with a sneer that any of us can recognize, because one thing that unites most of us is that there’s always some town smaller than ours that we like to fix our scorn and ridicule on. But those of us who wish we were better at evangelism should note how his friend Philip responds. He doesn’t try to prove his case, he doesn’t bombard his friend with dogma or arguments, he just offers three simple words: “Come and see.” It’s a good tactic because it invites someone into a relationship, and that’s exactly what happens.
When Nathanael does met Jesus, there is no display of power or majesty, but rather a relationship that begins in Jesus’ deep knowledge of Nathanael and affection for him. Jesus says, in effect, “here’s an honest man”, which isn’t said with any kind of banter or bonhomie. It reminds us of th scene in John’s account of Jesus meeting the women of Samaria at the well, and already knowing all the details of her life. It’s not glory as in a heavenly choir or a bright light, but it’s a kind of glory in that it’s a manifestation of Jesus’ knowledge of people, their thoughts and motives, in some profound and supernatural way. It’s evidence of this knowledge (how could he have seen me under the fig tree when he wasn’t even there) that convinces Nathanael that Jesus is the Messiah.
So yes, Jesus demonstrates a power of foreknowledge that impresses Nathanael, but what follows next is ordinary friendship. Nathanael and Philip and Andrew will become disciples, the twelve friends and companions who will walk dusty roads, eat and laugh together, and often get Jesus wrong. If it is glory, it is the glory of relationship that deepens over time and survives even dark betrayal as when the disciples abandon Jesus in the garden. If this is glory, it is wrapped up in ordinary lives and ways of living.
Certainly there will be miracles and signs and wonders. When Jesus tells Nathanael that he “will see greater things than these”, those words will very soon come true at the Wedding in Cana. Some of these greater things, Jesus says, will be apocalyptic, “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon son of Man”. Those words remind us of an old story from Genesis, Jacob’s dream of the ladder to heaven busy with angels, and the Lord God standing beside him. Jacob was crooked and wily, not honest like Nathanael, and yet when he woke Jacob had the wisdom to say “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (Gen 28.16).
Maybe this is how God’s glory works, it is present even when it is not seen. It comes unexpectedly to ordinary places. Yes, Nazareth may have seemed like a joke to Nathanael, but yet it was where the Angel Gabriel came to visit Mary and give her the best news anyone has ever received. Jesus saw an ordinary guy sitting under a tree, perceived the good in him, and called him to be a disciple and apostle, a founder of the church. It’s fortunate for us that God reveals God’s glory in these ordinary ways and in these everyday places, because we could not stand it otherwise. As the poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “The truth must dazzle gradually, / Or every man be blind”.
Someone told me last night that they come here every week and somehow they find God here. We may not see God in majesty and power, but as our song says, we see glory in each face, and that glory comes from a Saviour who chooses not to dazzle us, but rather chooses to befriend and accompany us. And just maybe, this side of heaven, that’s all the glory we need.
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Notes:
Many of the insights on Epiphany and glory come from Fleming Rutledge’s wonderful book, Epiphany: The Season of Glory (IVP, Nov 2023, Kindle Edition).
I’m grateful to L.M. Sacasas for the quote from Emily Dickinson, he includes it in a meditation on the gradually disclosed beauty of a sunrise. From his Substack, The Convivial Society, Jan 12, 2024.
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