The Gospel of John describes the church as a visible unity, manifesting the glory of God. Doxa or glory in the Greek has as its parallel in the Hebrew, the word kabod, which means “weight” or “heaviness.” To manifest the weight, the heaviness, the presence of God is no small charge. The weightiness of God’s glory can be too easily identified with the grandiose, where human pretension and true pettiness obscures everything, but our vanity, when, in fact, the doxa, the kabod of God is felt in efforts both large and small.
William Willamon writes:
In the church where [I] was raised, Dorothy was a perpetual member of the third grade church school class. Every child in the church knew that, when you arrived at the third grade in the primary division of the Buncombe Street Church Sunday School, Dorothy would be in your class. She had even been in the class when some of our parents were in the third grade. Dorothy was in charge of handing out pencils, checking names in the roll book, and taking up the pencils. We thought she was the teacher’s assistant. It was much later, when we were nearly all grown up and adult, that the world told us that Dorothy was someone with Down syndrome. When Dorothy died, in her early fifties — a spectacularly long life for someone with Down syndrome — the whole church turned out for her funeral. No one mentioned that Dorothy was . . . afflicted. Many testified to how fortunate they had been to know her.
At the end of an era in which the church has identified so closely with our own culture, it may be time — indeed, past time — for the church to consider the implications of John’s message anew. It is not the passing glory of our own visions, but the enduring glory of God that the world needs. And there is nothing in our dreams that can give the kind of ultimate unity to the diverse mix gathered at commencement ceremonies that can substitute for the one who, in the words of John, was “In the beginning.”
The glory of God and His presence are indeed weighty considerations. When I became a Christian in 1970 I attended a spirit-filled church and missionary school. I would like to think that all churches are spirit-filled but they are not. The Scriptures teach that we should turn away from those who deny the power of God. It seems that lots of people are spooked by anything supernatural. Perhaps the word “supernatural” is just our way of saying that the presence of our Lord and thus His glory is beyond our understanding which it is. There are always people who mock or make a mockery of the sacred but that should not stop Christians from expecting Jesus! When His presence draws near one cannot help but melt into tears or feel like dust and ashes. He is awesome and beyond any words I can use to describe Him. I think the ancients who painted the halos were right on track. Whether we realize it or not all Christians are under the umbrella of God and His glory does rest upon us. It is too much for me to expound on the glory and presence of our Lord in this short space but I will exclaim I have experienced Jesus’ splendour. The world and all its allure cannot compare to Jesus. I pray for our eyes to be open, opened, and remain open.