All Minister's Letters

Mar 2008	They Met at Calvary
Apr 2008	Keeping the Easter Rumour Alive
May 2008	The Way to Pentecost
Jun 2008	Where our Unity lies
Jul 2008	The Californian Redwood
Sep 2008	"Dwight L. Moody, 1837-99"
Oct 2008	Nine Marks of a Good Church
Nov 2008	Mammon
Dec 2008	Advent and the Evangelists
Mar 2009	A Pattern for Lent
Apr 2009	We have seen His Glory
May 2009	Witnesses To The Resurrection
Jun 2009	The Holy Trinity

Minister's Letter - April 2009

We have seen His Glory

WE HAVE SEEN HIS GLORY

We could describe the gospel of John as the gospel of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. This is where John’s gospel begins. The Word became flesh and we have seen his glory – the glory of the Father’s only Son.

The first of the signs which Jesus did at Cana in Galilee - changing the water into wine - was the first occasion when he revealed his glory, or disclosed his real nature and his true being.

Throughout the gospel of John Jesus speaks of the hour of his glory as not having arrived. This is because the hour of Christ’s glory was in fact the hour of his death on the Cross.

In the Upper Room - because his hour had come - Jesus laid aside his garments and began to wash the feet of his disciples.

Jesus compared his death and resurrection to the hour of childbirth when a mother’s pain and joy follow closely upon each other. The hour of Easter glory is the hour when all is accomplished and new life is about to come forth.

God’s glory shines at its brightest in the hour that the world might consider defeat – Calvary, when victory remains with love.

No one witnessed the actual glory of the Resurrection. But in the appearances of the risen Christ the glory of that other world broke into this one. In John’s gospel there is no record of the Ascension – though the Ascension cloud of the presence of God’s glory is referred to elsewhere.

The final glory of the Easter gospel is that, according to Jesus, the glory which God the Father gave to his Son - Christ has given to us. This equates well with the words of St Irenaeus: the glory of God is a human being fully alive.

Norman Wallwork