`Glory to God in the Highest!’ These are the words imprinted on the Christmas stationery from my Christmas letter this year. It’s now late in December and time for me to `lighten’ the refrigerator magnets from their function as standard bearers for the holiday season. Along with the dinner invites, shopping lists and menu notes those magnets have upheld, my eye caught a glimpse of that Christmas stationery and the phrase, `Glory to God in the Highest!’ Clearly, there is no other phrase that has so aptly captured the message of the Christmas Season. The multitude of the heavenly host, the Bible records, is overheard singing it. Popular Christmas carols are saturated with it. Even Christmas cards, particularly the religious ones, are often marked by its characteristically yuletide pronouncement. In granting freedom to those refrigerator magnets and filing the Christmas letter away until next year, I am compelled to share one insight: While the entire six- word phrase, `Glory to God in the Highest!’ is indeed most popular, it is the word glory all by itself that really matters. Applying a bit of grammatical surgery to the divinely inspired phrase: `in the highest’ is intensive, placed there for emphasis, and `to God’ is an accusative clause that drops out, leaving the word …. GLORY. Glory is, finally, all that matters.

In the Hebrew scriptures (our Old Testament), the word for glory, transliterated, is kabod, which means `heavy.’ Bearing some resemblance to the expression of the 1960’s, when something or someone was, `Heavy, man,’ kabod testifies to that which finally and unadulteratedly remains, when all is said and done. To better describe kabod, one might recall the process of metal purification, the refiner’s fire referenced in the Book of Malachi. By use of intense heat, all the impurities, heretofore attached to the precious metal, are burned off, leaving the precious stone to settle unto itself. That settled substance, the desired sediment which remains unto itself, is to understand the heaviness of kabod.

In the sacred writings of the early church (our New Testament), the word for glory, transliterated, is doxos, which adds a bit of sparkle to the Hebrew definition, without detracting from the sense of `heaviness which remains.’ Either way, when the multitude of the heavenly host sang `Glory to God in the Highest,’ they were bearing witness to the only reality that finally and truly matters – GLORY. And the content of that glory is the story of Jesus, the reality of God yoking Himself to humankind. To be sure, the actual yoking of God with us does not compromise that reality one iota; rather the divine yoking extends glory to earth, identified as peace between God and humankind. Yet, it always and enduringly remains GLORY – God’s glory. Thus, the angels’ song is befitting as a prelude to how we ought to live our lives, giving GLORY to God.

Human life, worth living, gives GLORY to God , a life of doxology (doxos) that keeps the Jesus story as the subject and object of all things. While Christmas glory eventually fades into the other storied chapters of His life, it is His life which remains ever before us, testifying to what is reality – the way, the truth and the life -- what is GLORY.

As I look at the `liberated’ refrigerator magnets, anticipating the next seasonal `hangings,’ I can clearly hear the voice of Linus, from `A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ paraphrasing his own words when he says, `The birth, the story of Jesus -- that’s what GLORY is all about, Charlie Brown.’

Pastor Kopp

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Rev. Rodney S. Kopp, Pastor
Wayne Lutz, Church Administrator
Karl Schneider, Shut-InMinistry
Sheila D. Booker, Director of Music
Rebecca Ehrlich, Parish Associate

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