The glory of Christ in everyday life.

We have seen his glory. John makes this bold claim at the beginning of his gospel. Yet there were many people who saw Jesus, talked with Jesus, spent time with Jesus, who did not see his glory! Their experience of rubbing shoulders with the Son of God, the “Word become flesh,” had no impact on them. Even the disciples took a while to get to this point of recognition.

How often do we miss the presence of Jesus and fail to see his glory?

Do we experience him and see his glory in the ordinary stuff of life: the school run, washing up, working on a production line, sitting in a meeting, caring for an elderly incontinent parent? He is there with us – dwelling with us. So how do we not see him? How do we fail to see the glory of his presence?

In Mark 6, we read that the disciples didn’t recognise Jesus when he walked towards them on the water, they didn’t understand the implications of the feeding of the 5000, they were amazed because they did not recognise that this man, this ‘carpenter turned teacher’ was in fact the “Word become flesh dwelling among them.” They did not see his glory! Mark tells us why: their hearts were hardened.

Here is why we do not see Jesus in our everyday life. When we do not even experience him and see his glory when we read his word, when we pray, when we meet with other Christians, even when we share communion. We need to have our hearts softened. We need to have the Spirit cut through the calloused exterior of our hearts and pour God’s love in.

We need to think again of Calvary. This is the place where for many people, Jesus’ glory was the most obscured and yet it is the place where his glory is the most evident. John 12 and John 17 show how Jesus links together his death and his glory.

Tom Lockley’s song captures it well:

See his love nailed to a cross,
perfect and blameless life given as sacrifice.
See him there all in the name of love,
broken yet glorious, all for the sake of us.

This is Jesus in his glory,
King of Heaven, dying for me.
It is finished, he has done it.
Death is beaten, heaven beckons me.

From where does the term “shekinah glory” originate?

I have been asked this question a couple of times and had to confess that I didn’t know the answer. I was familiar with the term. I used to hear it a lot when I was growing up. Preachers used to talk about the shekinah glory filling the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34,35). It was the glory of God’s presence, but why “shekinah?”

In his book, “Christ plays in ten thousand places” Eugene Peterson comes up with an answer. (This is an excellent book that I am reading at a slow pace).

He says that many years after the Hebrew Bible was completed, the Hebrew verb shakan meaning “dwell” or “tabernacle” was given a noun form shekinah that was widely used in the Hebrew religious community to mark God’s presence, God dwelling among his people accompanied by a visible display of bright glory.

So if you didn’t know before….now you do!

Of course, the impact of this spectacular extravagant light is amazing – even when it is veiled in a cloud - Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, the priests could not perform their service in Solomon’s temple, Ezekiel fell face down at the temple entrance.

Ponder then:

Hebrews 1:3a “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being,”

John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”