“Glory to God in the highest!” (Luke 2:14)

This week, as we continue our The Weary World Rejoices series, we’ve been listening to the soaring music of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and “the Christmas story” as we are given it in Luke 2:8-15.  We’ve thought about the shepherds (why send angels to them alone?), the noisiness of our hearts and times, and the humility of heaven, God in Christ taking on our human flesh and nature.

Today we’ll look at a word threaded through the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, the life of Jesus, and through all Scripture: glory.  After receiving an angelic announcement, Mary sings, “My soul glorifies the Lord!”  The angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest!”  The shepherds return from the manger, glorifying God for what they had just heard and seen.  Simeon praises God as he meets the One who will be “a light of revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel.”

When you see the word glory, what comes first to mind?  A brilliance too bright to look at?  The crescendoing thunder of worship, praise and adulation?  Cheers, applause, a grand celebration of victory and freedom, of justice and peace?  Yes to all this, and more!  Glory to God!

And yet: the Hebrew word usually translated glory is kabod.  Kabod means weighty, dense, an idea Paul echoes when he writes to the believers in Corinth about “the weight of glory” that is theirs in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:17).  

Let’s play with the idea of glory as something massive, weighty and dense.  Science tells us that the more massive and dense an object is, the greater the gravitational attraction it exerts.  Unlike magnetism, which can only act on certain metals, gravity acts upon everything, draws everything in towards itself.  We catch a glimpse of this when we feel ourselves “drawn” to the mountains or oceans, “drawn into” a great work of art, when we are “pulled,” even against our wills, by something “outside” ourselves: beauty, love, holiness, justice.

So to “give glory” to God means to give to God the weight God deserves.  The glory of God is that “force” that acts upon everything and everyone, drawing all things towards the One who spoke them into existence, sustains them as they travel, drawing them into the divine presence and purpose.

In that Bethlehem manger was placed a tiny infant whose glory pulls all things towards himself: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph; shepherds; Simeon, Anna in the Temple; fishermen; folk common and exceptional; Israel, Gentiles; nations and empires; the best our human race has aspired to and achieved, along with the very worst; planets, moons, stars, galaxies; you, me—all of it drawn, pulled, acted upon by the glory of God that can explode upon the unlikeliest of people in the unlikeliest of places.

We can miss it; we may attribute it to other things, try to explain it away, but nevertheless: it is pulling, drawing, attracting, inviting.  Something is happening, something is at work, more powerful than kings, than viruses, than the “economy” and “politics,” than history, evolution, science, technology, social media, injustice, devastation, money, power and everything else.  A baby; a crucified man; an emptied grave, an outpoured Spirit: the glory of God.

It doesn’t look brilliant, spectacular, magnificent—yet.  But what if we allow ourselves to be drawn in, to take a closer look?

How is “the gravity of glory” working on you this season: into what is the Spirit drawing you?