Some time ago now I was paid a visit from a member of the community and provided with a document. The document began by extolling the progressing globalisation of the world and what it claimed to be the results of that.

“Fundamental principles have been identified, articulated, accorded broad publicity and are becoming progressively incarnated in institutions capable of imposing them on public behaviour,” it claimed.

The world’s religions must now, it said, recognise one another to be equally valid in nature and origin, and recognise that beyond all diversity of cultural expression and human interpretation, religion is one. The document referred to what it called “the transcendent Figures who gave the world its great belief systems.”

What it did not do was refer specifically either to the Person or to the words or work of Jesus Christ.

These thoughts express the ideological language that all of us are becoming engulfed in, a language that is pressing on us so much through various public utterances, that the race of man is in danger of finally losing its capacity to think, and so succumbing to a herd or crowd psychology.

The last bastion against this tendency, which is fatal to true humanity, appears to be  traditional Christianity, because this is not based on merely human words, but is both derived from and refreshed by the Person and words of the one true and perfect manifestation of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even to say this would be judged by the purveyors of those so-called “fundamental principles” that are “accorded broad publicity and progressively incarnated in institutions capable of imposing them on public behaviour”, to be guilty of arousing religious prejudice and alienation.

The truth is that the principles by which the Church stands and to which it aspires, will inevitably and increasingly be judged by others to be those that arouse religious prejudice and alienation. If you think the church should avoid such charges at all costs, perhaps here would be a reason for you to jump ship and become an agnostic.

The great high-priestly prayer of Jesus of St. John chapter 17 includes the following words: “I have given [the disciples] the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me. ...All mine are thine and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.”

Here, Jesus observes that He has imparted to the apostles His words, which the Father gave Him, and that they have received them. We often refer to the great imperfections of the disciples at this time, but here we see our Lord in His prayer to the Father referring to things that the disciples had got right.

Moreover the fact that they had received His words, and also knew that Jesus had come from the Father, meant that Jesus was, as He said, “glorified” in them. Now there is a very strong connection between “teaching” and “glory” in the original language.

It would be impossible for Jesus to say that He was glorified in His disciples if they had not received His words. And it makes nonsense to say that we glorify Jesus if we do not receive His words, but start teaching things that do not agree with His teaching. For it is His glory and His words that are the only true and consistent international standard.

I believe the concept of glory being revealed is difficult for our age, because it has to do with the admission that neither we nor our own time are self-sustaining.

When the glory of God is perceived, and now when those that are His glorify Him, and declare His glory to one another and the world, life is sweetened.

So we read at the end of St. Luke’s Gospel, that when Jesus parted from them and was carried up into heaven His disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. Not in the act of Ascension alone, but in the whole drama of His revelation to them, His ministry on earth, His Passion, His rising and His appearing to them in the days after the Resurrection, His glory had been revealed, because through His words to them they had been shown the truth. “I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes”, Ezekiel had prophesied.

They knew that the Father had invested the Son with all glory, and now He was being glorified in them as well. In spite of the physical withdrawal of His presence, life was becoming very sweet for them.
The 180E change in direction that discipleship to the Lord had involved for them, was being eternally vindicated.

I pray that more and more we will even as the course of our life proceeds, be blessed through being reproached for the name of Christ, for then we may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed, as St. Peter puts it (1 Peter 4: 13).

God has glorified His Son and His Son has glorified His Father, and our task and our delight, even in these days, is to be those vessels in which Christ is honoured, obeyed, and taught and glorified.