“And the Glory of the Lord shall be Revealed”

nd the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it… Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him; and His work is before Him. He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those who are with young.

One of the things I love most about the Christmas season is that we get to hear again those familiar choruses of that masterpiece of Baroque sacred oratory, Handel’s Messiah. My personal favorite of all the choruses, even though it has been eclipsed by the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, happens to be the one which sets to three-quarter time those words which we heard this morning from Isaiah chapter 40, verse 5: “And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” It’s the opening chorus of the Messiah.

We don’t usually hear the Messiah in its entirety. We usually only hear the ‘highlights,’ the ‘best of” the Messiah. And that’s too bad, because it’s only by following along from the first movement to the last that you hear the real brilliance behind the Messiah, which is simply the way all the various Scripture passages have been put together to lead us through the Divine plan of redemption from Old Testament prophecy, through the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and Ascension, to the Return of Christ. And so it encompasses all the major holy days of the Christian year, even though we hear it mostly at Christmas time.

Now one could get the impression from all this—and just from listening to the incredible music of Messiah—that Handel must have be an extremely devout and pious man. I don’t know about you, but I hear the Hallelujah chorus and I wonder: how could anyone write such music, such high and glorious praise, without it being somehow by divine inspiration? In fact, it was reported that Handel once said that, while he was composing the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, it was ‘as if I saw God on his throne, and all his angels around him.” But its not true! Somebody else put those words in Handel’s mouth years later. And, in fact, Handel wasn’t an exceptionally pious man, although he worshipped twice a day in his local church. (O, to see the day that it could be said that worshipping twice a day in church wasn’t exceptional!) Messiah was actually the only sacred oratorio Handel ever wrote. And even though it was the only oratorio that was ever preformed in his lifetime in a church, Handel’s librettist—the guy who put the scripture words together—only ever intended it to be, in his words, “a fine bit of entertainment,” which is exactly what it has become. Who goes to see the Messiah these days? Everybody, believers or not; Christians or pagans. Why? Because it’s a fine bit of holiday entertainment.

I’ll never forget going to a Christmas concert in San Francisco a few years back in which we heard several of the choruses from the Messiah intermingled with “congregational” singing of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” and a reading from “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” But we all did the traditional pious thing of standing through the singing of the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, like we stand for the gospel reading.

And I can remember walking away from that concert just sort of amazed that here were all these people, most of them probably unbelievers, and they were hearing the words of Scripture which proclaimed the greatest message of all time – that the Lord of all Glory has stooped so low as to enter into our world by being born as one of us, to die for us. And yet they went away unfazed, because it was all just a nice bit of Christmas entertainment.

Now maybe I’m just a horrible skeptic. Maybe the Lord did open the hearts of some to hear and to see the true glory of Christmas in those great Messiah choruses.

But it’s true: the glory of the Lord has been revealed. It is revealed every Christmas season through Handel’s Messiah, and a million children’s Christmas pageants, and through Lessons and Carols, and through a thousand other means. And all flesh has seen it together. But how many have really looked beyond the entertainment value of the Christmas story to truly perceive the glory of the Lord in the face of a baby lying in manger? Only those who have the eyes of faith, because it only the eyes of faith that can see glory in such humility.

That’s what we’re called to do this fourth Sunday in Advent: to clear our eyes—our spiritual eyes—of all the commercial Christmas crud, of all the tinsel and glitter of the Christmas entertainment machine, so that when we hear again the message of the angels, and go again in spirit even unto Bethlehem to see this thing which is come to pass, and the babe lying in the manger, we may truly see the glory of God in the face of Jesus. So this morning we are called to prepare to enter in this next Saturday to the holy season of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

I think that when St. John wrote that great summary statement of his Gospel, he must have had that fifth verse of Isaiah chapter forty in mind, because the two verses are almost perfect mirror images of each other. John speaks of “the Word.” “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it,” says Isaiah. “Became flesh and dwelt among us,” writes St. John. “And all flesh shall see it together,” writes the prophet. “And we have seen His glory,” “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” Do you see how the two passages mirror each other? It’s as if St. John were saying, “Here’s how Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled. What I’m telling you in my Gospel is that the glory of the Lord has been revealed. We’ve seen the glory of the Lord in the flesh. He came and tabernacled among us,” is what he literally says. “What I’m telling you in my Gospel is that the glory of the Lord has filled the tabernacle—not a tent in the wilderness, or even the glorious stone temple in Jerusalem, but the tabernacle of our own human nature, the temple of our body of blood and bone and skin. And the glory of the Lord has been revealed in flesh that all flesh might see it together, and that seeing it—seeing Him—they might believe and receive of His fullness grace upon grace. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Remember how Moses wanted to see the face of God on Mt. Sinai, but couldn’t? God said that no one could see His face and live. Instead God granted him a momentary, refracted glance of the “back-portion” of His glory, is how it literally reads in the Hebrew. “But My face,” says God—my unmediated glory—“shall not be seen.” Why? Because what did Moses have in common with God? What does the creation have in common with the Creator? What does a sinner have in common with absolute holiness? What does flesh and blood have in common with pure Spirit? Nothing! And therefore, just as shadows can’t exist on the surface of the Sun, neither can we, who are the mere reflections of God’s glory, stand to be in the presence of the Divine Original. To behold the full, unmediated glory of God would be instant annihilation. We’re not of stout enough stuff to stand in the unshielded presence of that all-consuming fire.

So how can God’s face shine upon us and be gracious unto us? How can we look upon the Sun of Righteousness is such a way that He brings healing in His wings and not burning? The message of Christmas is that now we do have something in common with God: our own humanity. God became man. Or to say it another way, God took a true flesh and blood human nature into His very being to be forever united in the person of Christ. And therefore to look into the human face of Jesus, as John and the all apostles and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds did, is to see God face to face. And what do we see when we look into the human face of God? We see His glory revealed, but in grace, and gentleness, kindness and tenderness. To borrow the words of C. S. Lewis, what was once blinding, suffocating fire apart from Christ, it is now cool light and clarity itself, and wearing the form of a Man.

So the Glory of the Lord has been revealed, and all flesh has seen it together.” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” In the other words of Isaiah, God rolled up His shirtsleeve and bared His right arm in our sight, the arm that rules for Him. But what did we see? Did we see the arm of a god, an arm of burnished bronze, an arm all muscular and carrying a sword? No. We saw a baby lying in a manger. And to all who have eyes to see, we may still behold the glory of the Lord dwelling among us in humble means. If you have eyes to see it, and if my preaching is faithful to His word, you may indeed see Jesus standing before you, speaking to you His words of grace and truth. If you have eyes to see it, you may still see the Right Arm of God coming to you with the reward of His righteousness in His Hand, and as a shepherd to feed His flock. If you have eyes to see it, you may still behold the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, standing here upon this altar in the bread and wine. If you have eyes to see it, you may perceive that by partaking together of what we now have in common with God— His body and blood—we participate in His divine nature, as says St. Peter, and that we are now the temple His body, His flesh and blood, and the glory resides in us… if you have eyes to see it.

So let us pray that God would give us those eyes to see His glory. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And He still dwells among us. He dwells in His word, and in His sacraments, and in His people. Don’t be like all those people who hear The Messiah and go away unfazed by the greatest message of all time. Don’t go away this morning without truly having heard and having seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus here among us. Set your eyes, focus you faith, that you may receive from Him grace upon grace. +