TEXT: 2 CORINTHIANS 3: 7-18         New Revised standard version

7  Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10 Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; 11 for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

12   Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16 but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 

17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.†

GRADUATES TO GLORY

Ruth Mitchell, Karena Owen, Rich Peterson, Jack Dotson, Ruth Fudge, Jean Otto, Roy Cabe, and Sydney Dooley—these eight—all graduated to glory amid the Covid pandemic, which means that we, the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Upland, did not have the chance to grieve them or remember them as a gathered community. And this is not even to begin naming the people beyond First Pres related to our families.  I especially lift up Lonettia and Dewayne Sparks at the loss of Dewayne’s mother, 

Of all the things we’ve had to miss through this pandemic, I think these are the most serious and the most grievous losses. 

Whenever a member of our community dies, we grieve, but there are good ways and ill ways to grieve. The right way is to grieve together—in the flesh--for the community to gather and offer face-to-face support to the family members. The family hurts the most, but the whole community is affected—we all feel it—and we were made to get over these losses as a community. That is how we heal. That is how we grow to become a deeper, more faithful community. 

Ruth Mitchell, Karena Owen, Rich Peterson, Jack Dotson, Ruth Fudge, Jean Otto, Roy Cabe, and Sydney Dooley were among us and part of us for years and we acknowledge here and now that we miss them all. 

Join me in a word of prayer: 

[PRAY]

Yet as we grieve, we also celebrate their victory in Jesus Christ, for we know that they are not lost, but have been found, and gathered, and rescued from the decay and death of this world. Their souls are with The Lord, and they have been sanctified by the glory of God in measures you and I can’t possibly imagine. 

Yes, they are in the glory of God—they see His face—which is the thing we long for every time we worship God in Spirit and Truth. 

And today, in respect of these departed Veterans of First Pres, I would ask you to consider that when we worship, one thing that happens is that we develop and increasing hunger and thirst for that glory of God. We seek it in this life and get glimpses of it, but most of all, our hearts grow and open in longing for that glory, such that when our day comes to cross over, our joy—perhaps even our ability to receive and experience that glory—will be magnified. 

Our worship is our training and preparation for that glory of God into which our graduated brothers and sisters now live and enjoy eternally. 

SECOND LETTER

As we enter Paul’s second epistle to the church at Corinth, we need to do some updating. In First Corinthians,  Paul addressed their aberrations, divisions, and messy worship. Some had come to doubt even the resurrection, and Paul gently sets them back into line and good order. 

We know something about Paul’s work in Corinth from Acts 18 and other sources as well. It seems many of the Corinthians responded with Godly sorrow and repentance. Titus, who assisted Paul’s ministry in Corinth, was duly respected.  But some holdouts went on the attack against Paul—intruders with no right to lead—so Paul has to defend his authority and do that awful chore of re-reading his resumé to the people. 

In the 50s, trouble was brewing in Jerusalem. Not unlike some American cities under siege, people with wealth and savings to protect started leaving Jerusalem to avoid all the trouble. Today, the billionaires seem to go to Montana or Idaho. In Paul’s day, Corinth was a desirable destination for people with wealth to resettle. 

As they did, the Jewish-Christians questioned Paul’s authority and apostleship. 

“Well, he’s not really an apostle, is he? Not like Peter, James, and John back in Jerusalem!”

“Paul never actually met Jesus. In that sense, he’s no different than us, and couldn’t we all call ourselves apostles in the same sense?” You know how people can talk. 

Paul defends not only his calling in Second Corinthians, but he defends the gospel from being turned back into a kind of reformed Judaism.  In our text today, Paul talks about glory, and how the glory of Christ is superior to the glory of the Law. But before we talk about that distinction, we need to just talk about glory first. 

GLORY: A HEAVY SHIELD

There are two Hebrew words for glory, and the first is KAVOD. Most literally, it is something like battle armaments—a shield or a bow—and KAVOD means “heavy” as well. We are less at home with military imagery than the ancients, but we can imagine the connection between God’s glory and His defense against the enemies of Israel. 

An example is in Exodus 16, So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord.   Israel will "see" the "armament" of God, who is the one who has done battle for them with the Egyptians. 

But we know that glory is more than just military might here; it is the power and presence of God advocating for and with Israel. Glory is the assurance that God is with them. 

SHOCK & AWE

You’ve probably heard the second Hebrew word for glory voiced as “Shuh-KAI-nuh,”  but the truer pronunciation is something more like Shock and Awe. This is a beautiful, translational pun. The glory of the Lord creates Shock and Awe indeed, and not merely in the military sense. 

Remember the shepherd boys outside Bethlehem—they were seized with terror. They were terrified not because they were simple shepherd boys, but because the glory of the Lord is something completely out of this world—shock and awe describe quite well what they felt. 

Today we might like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated than the ancients—and in many ways we are. If we saw a bright disk in the sky come hovering down, we might say, “Hey! It’s a  UFO!” and immediately pull out our cell phones and calmly begin recording. But the experience of glory is not just a visual or technological event; it is “the Glory of the Lord.” It is not merely light and sound, but an invasion of the supernatural, infused with the power and presence of God. The most jaded and sophisticated modern urbanites would, I believe, be utterly terrified at what the shepherds saw. Shock and Awe. 

GLORY IS HOLINESS

But what is glory? What is it precisely? I believe the glory of God is the going public of his infinite worth. God’s glory is the revelation of His holiness and infinite value. When God’s infinite value and holiness go public, we can’t help but see ourselves as infinitely inferior. Which is to say that the experience of glory gives us knowledge of our sinfulness. When holiness is revealed, we see ourselves in its light. Only in darkness, surrounded by absolute darkness, can we dare to think of  ourselves as good. Only in comparison to meaner or more selfish people can we think ourselves better than average, but when the glory of God is revealed—even a smidgeon—our souls are held up in comparison to true holiness and we can only see ourselves as standing far below, like people looking up from the bottom of a dark well. God’s glory reveals our true state, our actual distance from God, and the effect of it can only be described as terrifying. Again, Shock and Awe.

GLORY CENTRAL

God’s glory is central. God’s glory is the absolute center of His Creation. Question number one from the Westminster Catechism is one we should all know and probably have memorized: 

Q: What is the chief end of Man? 

A: The chief end of Man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

God’s glory is central and the central principle by which we order our lives and the agenda of the Church. Some churches have abandoned God’s glory in favor of what they call “human flourishing,” as if God’s greatest desire is that we all get along and take care of each other. Make no mistake, God wants us to get along and take care of each other, but only insofar as doing so brings glory to God. Human happiness is not the measure of God’s glory. God’s glory is its own standard.  The danger is when the human side of obeying God becomes an end in itself. When that happens, Christians stop seeking God’s glory—they stop proclaiming His infinite value—and seek only the glories of humanity and the here and now. This is mere Humanism. Humanism seeks the glory of humankind—and I’m saying apart from God it is a heresy to be avoided. 

Our worth depends upon God’s worth, not vice versa.  God’s glory is the measure of every good deed, every pious act, and every prayer—otherwise, we’re just playing church for whatever personal benefits—individual or collectively—that we can take from it. 

GLORY OF CHRIST

So now we can turn to today’s text in which Paul tells us that the glory of Christ surpasses the glory of the Law.  He reminds us that Moses beheld the glory of God and it changed his face. He wore a veil except when he read the Law to the people. Glory was too intense for the people to endure for long. When Moses finished reading the Law, he veiled himself again. 

But Paul says that the glory of Christ surpasses the glory of the Law. His main audience here is the Jewish Christians who continued to demand Jewish observances of themselves and the converts from the Gentile world. He says their minds are still veiled, for they haven’t yet comprehended the freedom from the Law offered in Christ. 

This is Paul’s chief theme in Romans, as we studied earlier this year. It’s his point in Galatians 3, where he tells us that the Law was our babysitter until Christ came to make us adults. The law is like those training wheels we no long need once we know how to ride.  

Now even after nearly 2000 years, Christians get anxious when they hear anyone talking down the Old Testament Law, and this comes from a good place. It’s not that the Law is not good, not holy, and not of God; but rather that the light of Christ is so far superior that we should live by that light rather than the light of the Law. 

Think of it this way—this should illustrate it well. Glory is like light. To glorify something is to shine light onto it.  Now imagine you are in a strange house and you have to go down to the basement, but it is pitch dark. You take a few steps and hear the treads creak, but you can’t see a thing—not even your hand in front of your face. You peer around but find you are in total darkness. That is the human condition of sin: being in the dark. 

Then you discover that in your back pocket you have a tiny, penlight flashlight. You take it out and turn it on. Glory! It’s small, but now you can see a small circle of things at a time. You don’t fall down the steps because you can spot them below, one at a time. In that darkness, you are grateful for that little light and you might call it your salvation. This little light is good! And it is, no doubt. 

But then, by using the penlight, you find a light switch. You flick the switch and find the basement filled with light—bright light—from end to end, every shadow chased away and every corner revealed. You move about freely and are no longer taking cautious, small steps. The lights are on; this is the fuller glory of Christ. 

And now, with all the lights on, do you keep using the little penlight? No, for now, it looks dim by comparison and it is pointless to use. The glory of the penlight leads to the greater glory of the fully lit room. In the same way, the Law is good—it has a glory that gives light in the darkness—but once the lights are turned on, its value and function change. The greater glory eclipses the lesser glory, and so the greater glory of Christ eclipses the glory of the Law. 

REFLECTING GLORY

Finally, I’ll say that it is our role and purpose to reflect that glory as best as we can. Verses 17 and 18:  

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17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

This is our life: being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Our mission statement at First Pres is Growing in Christ and Making Him Known, which happens not by our good intentions, but by the Spirit’s work in us. 

It’s not that we are all little flashlights, producing small amounts of the same kind of light that is God’s glory, but rather that we are little mirrors, usually slightly dirty mirrors or slightly distorted mirrors—and, we’re all working on it—but we are made to reflect God’s glory, not manufacture it. We can’t. 

God's glory is the radiance of his holiness, the radiance of his manifold, infinitely worthy, and valuable perfections. We are small, imperfect mirrors, but if we are oriented in the right way, we can and will shine. 

“Let your light so shine before others,” says Jesus, without telling us the obvious, which is that He Himself is the light. He provides all true light, and our role is to participate in sharing His glory by becoming decent reflectors. 

Q: What is the chief end of Man? 

A: The chief end of Man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 

QUESTIONS

1.  Paul’s authority in the Corinthian church was certainly legitimate.  Given that people don’t change much from era to era, what motives may have led Paul’s detractors in their defiance of his leadership?

2.  Paul says his fellow Jews have “veiled minds” when they read the Law. What was Paul getting at in referring to their “hardened minds”?

3.  Discuss the difference between living by the Law versus living by the Spirit. 

4. Why is it meaningful to say that as Christians, we are less like penlights than mirrors? What is the source of light in each case?

5.  We all may desire to be transformed into the image of Christ “from one degree of glory to another,” but how does that transformation occur? 

6.  Given that we, as mirrors, are all somewhat dirty or slightly distorted, how much effort should we put into cleaning ourselves up and fixing our distortions? 

7.  How much more important is our orientation as a mirror, given that even a somewhat dirty or slightly distorted mirror can reflect the bright light of the sun very well? 

8. What does it mean for a person, like a mirror, to be oriented toward the light?