Jesus came to earth... to be glorified over us

Finally. Jesus got through the suffering and the death, and reached the glory. The happy ending – or possibly the happy beginning. This is what it’s all been leading up to. Did he really have to go through all that hard stuff first?

As you can probably guess by now, the answer is a resounding yes. Across the pages of the New Testament, it rings like a clanging bell: “Cross… glory. Cross… glory. Cross… glory.” It was only through the humiliation that Jesus obtained his exaltation. Only through being born in a stable that he became king of the universe. Only through dying that he gave eternal life.

And the amazing thing is that once again, we can share in this. Jesus was glorified as a person; the whole point of his coming was to bring our humanity back into the presence of God. We are human whether we like it or not. He is human because he chose to be; and in that choosing he showed us the path to redemption. We share in his suffering, we are baptised into his death, we are raised with him in glory.

Sometimes that glory can be hard to find. The world around us, and indeed our own lives, don’t seem to reflect much of it. Jesus may indeed be sat at the right hand of God, we feel, but in that case he is way up there, and we’re still struggling down here. “As it is,” admits the writer to the Hebrews, “we do not yet see everything in subjection to him (that is, Jesus).” If everything is meant to be under his control, sometimes there is precious little sign of it.

“But,” the writer continues, “But we see Jesus.” We do not yet see everything in subjection to him; but we see Jesus. The world is not as we hope it will be; but we see Jesus. And the more we look for him, the more we look at him, the more we see his glory filtering into even the darkest of times.

When God seems far away, we see Jesus, who came to reflect his love to us.

When our burdens seem too much to bear, we see Jesus, who came to suffer with us.

When the fear of death casts a chill over our hearts, we see Jesus, who came to die for us.

When all we can feel is the humiliation of the cross, we see Jesus, who came to be glorified over us.

And as we see more clearly, we find ourselves sharing more deeply with the one who came to share with us.

And as we share in his love, his suffering, and his death, a transformation happens, and we find our way to glory.

And in a blaze of golden light, the sun rises on Christmas morning. And we see Jesus.

Photo attribution: Mhuntington1689 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

A mini-pilgrimage to Derby Cathedral

On a sunny day near the end of June, I set out to walk from my village of Findern to Derby Cathedral. If this had been 1826 or even 1926, this would have been a perfectly normal activity. In 2026, no one spends two hours walking to the nearest city. They drive, or catch a bus. It feels faintly subversive to ignore the more obvious modes of transport and to set off on foot. Priory Way, the footpath north out of Findern, is on the Six-Inch series of OS maps from the late 1800s. It has probably not changed much, give or take a few electrical pylons. The fields and farms are still there. Butterflies flew over bright yellow flowers of lady's bedstraw; a hare paused to look at me; a squirrel panicked and almost ran over my toes. After a few miles I came out at Heatherton Pond, greeting its more manicured path with relief. This is now the edge of Derby city; the boundary runs just south of the lake. However, I was surprised at how much more green space I encountered. A cycle path took me ...

Sheffield Cathedral: dogs and lions welcome

Earlier in the day I had caught the train up from Derby and visited Rotherham Minster . The Supertram from Rotherham brought me to Sheffield Cathedral just as the clock struck two. I realised as I left the tram that I had totally forgotten my cathedral passport until now. Rotherham may not have had a stamp anyway, though I probably could have got the vicar's signature or something, but I dug the passport out of my bag to be sure to remember it. The shop had a stamp, I was told, and so it did. Formalities completed, I went to explore Sheffield Cathedral. It's a strange jumble of a building; "one of those forever unfinished places" as an architectural journal describes it. This view along the church towards the east end makes it look pretty standard - a medieval chancel and a Victorian-renovated nave. But if you turn ninety degrees to the north, there is another long axis - a regimental chapel that leads through to the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. At one point in the 193...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog