Today’s gospel shows us a heart and mind expanding vision of God shown in the glorious transforming ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Wherever he went…they laid the sick in the market places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. Mark 6:56
The main issue for the church today is – how much of a vision of God do we have? How magnificent is God to us, or more exactly to you or I? How big is your God? How real?
You can be sure of this – however magnificent and real he is to you today there’ll be a greater magnificence and reality in store for you!
On a few occasions in my ministry I have been on the scene when the glory of Jesus evidently illuminated someone.
I think of Bernard who came stumbling around to the Clergy House of my Curacy beaming all over his face. Was he drunk? I thought. No. Jesus had come real to him. The Holy Spirit had opened his inner eyes.
I think of an older man to whose troubled deathbed I’d been summoned. As I read the 23rd Psalm deep peace descended upon him. It was as if Jesus appeared and just took him away. He died joyfully as I prayed.
Or some time back when a young man called James described to me how for several months he had helped his wife cope with a spiritual problem, Jesus made himself known. James started a confirmation course. A short meeting opened my eyes with his to God’s wonder and magnificence.
What a difference it makes to someone when they see Jesus! They see glory – glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
To see Jesus is to catch hold of a radiant beauty quite out of this world, a beauty that is compelling and extraordinary in its attractiveness.
Could we wish anything more wonderful for anyone than a personal revelation of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
It can be ours this morning at the Eucharist. With St John we are to call out: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty; he was, he is and he is to come.
In this celebration earth is joined to heaven. There steals on the ear the distant triumph song as our words of praise find echo and amplification from angels and archangels, St Giles and all the company of heaven.
God grant us a vision of himself more to his dimension and less to ours as we come before him this morning to thank him for his joyful goodness!
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