Glory of the LORD
Week of 6 Easter, Friday
Ps. 85 86; Ps. 91 92; Ezek. 1:28–3:3; Heb. 4:14–5:6; Luke 9:28–36
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky. (Psalm 85:10–11, NRSV)
This was the first thing that stood out when I read the Psalms this morning, this beautiful image of love and faithfulness meeting, of righteousness and peace exchanging a kiss. Such a wonderful personification of the goodness of God manifested in His creation. Moving along, the beauty continued with the OT and NT readings. For example, this strange command to Ezekiel to eat the scroll and when he does, “it was as sweet as honey.” How odd, and yet how powerful! The prophet takes the word of God into his very being, and it’s not a bitter pill, but a sweet treat. Oh, if only reading Scripture were always like that!
The reading from Hebrews is beautiful for a different reason: in this passage, God is not far away from us (as in a song made popular by Bette Midler), but He is right here, sharing our humanity with us in the form of our High Priest, Jesus. “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:16, NRSV)
And then we come to Luke’s description of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The story is familiar to most of us, from Sunday School stories and from being read aloud in church. But to sit and contemplate what it would be like to be in the disciples’ place, to see this glory, to meet these famous people from our religious history, it defies description. No wonder, then, that the passage says the disciples were terrified. I can only imagine…(Hey, that would make a good song!)
Reading all of this, I am struck by the balance in these readings between fantastic, glorious descriptions of the glory of God and a groundedness that emphasizes how close we are to God all the time. For example, in the Hebrews reading, Jesus is not out there, “watching from a distance,” but he’s right here, experiencing what we’ve experienced. And the glory of God is reflected all the brighter.
Psalm 91 says, “You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’” And it strikes me that a fortress is no good if it’s floating around in outer space, but only if it’s here and now, for us to seek refuge. May we never forget that God is HERE. Immanuel, “God with us.”
