My brother-in-law who is a Presbyterian minister told me this story.  In Tennessee, a guy sees a sign, “Talking Dog for Sale.”  He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard.  The guy goes around back and sees a black mutt just sitting there.  “You talk?” he asks?  “Yep” the mutt replies.   “So what’s your story?” he asks.  The mutt looks up and replies, “Not much, you see, I discovered I had this gift when I was just a pup.   I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift.  In no time they had me jetting from country to country sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.  I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running and I got medal after medal.   All the jetting around was really getting to me and I wanted to settle down.  So I put in for a job at the Whitehouse.  I discovered incredible dealings there and received a pile of medals working for the president.  Had a wife, a mess of puppies and just retired.”                                                                              The guy is amazed.  He goes back in and says to the owner how much he wants for the talking dog. “Ten dollars” the owner says.  “This dog is amazing, why on earth are you selling him so cheap?”   “He is such a liar. He didn’t really do any of that stuff.”

Today is our second annual picnic and once again we hear the gospel of the transfiguration.  When I was thinking up music to go with the theme of the transfiguration, I thought of the Battle Hymn of the republic.  When I was a kid we used to sing it just about every Friday in school assembly.   This hymn was born dur­ing the Amer­i­can ci­vil war. Julia Howe who wrote it must have been some lady.  She was in her forties when she vis­it­ed a Un­ion Ar­my camp on the Po­to­mac Riv­er near Wash­ing­ton, D. C. She heard the sol­diers sing­ing the song “John Brown’s Body,” and was tak­en with the strong march­ing beat. She wrote the words the next day:

I awoke in the grey of the morn­ing, and as I lay wait­ing for dawn, the long lines of the de­sired po­em be­gan to en­twine them­selves in my mind, and I said to my­self, “I must get up and write these vers­es, lest I fall asleep and for­get them!” So I sprang out of bed and in the dim­ness found an old stump of a pen, which I re­mem­bered us­ing the day be­fore. I scrawled the vers­es al­most with­out look­ing at the p­aper.

The verse that means something special for us today is:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Our second annual picnic.  Like the disciples we have followed our Lord to a lonely place.  We have come here so that the glory of Christ’s bosom will transfigure you and me so that we will be disciples of Jesus.  Luke tells us about the first disciples, “they saw his glory.”  Also Luke says that Moses and Elijah suddenly appear and Luke tells us that they appeared in “glory.” Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!  But what is this glory all about?  Glory. I recall a friend saying that the root of glory, kabod in Hebrew, means “heavy, weighty, to be of great substance”  “God is a heavyweight!” said Aelred.  Suddenly, glory, a word that had always come across to me as a sudden acclamation (“Glory be!) or a synonym for the word praise (“Glory to ‘God”) or, in referring to humans as a synonym for prestige, power, and lately, celebrity—suddenly glory expressed the depths of God’s own being, the heart of the divine.  Nowhere is the relationship of glory to presence to “God more expressed that in Exodus 33 where Moses asks to see God’s glory.  In response the Lord replies, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while by glory passes by I will put you in a cleft in the rock, and I will c over you with my hand until I have passed by.  The glory of God, the presence of the Lord, passed by.  Peter James and John saw Jesus’ glory.  Most of us have seen God’s glory, but we only glimpse it.  We glimpse when a loved one comes back from the doctor and gets a clean bill of health and no cancer.  We feel the heavy weight of glory.  When a friend celebrates the anniversary of their sobriety, we feel the heavy weight of Glory.  When our Child who is having a hard time getting his life together, turns his life around and does it all on  his own, we feel the heavy weight of Glory.  And when he graduates we say, Glory, Glory, and Halleluiah!

 

But all in all we only get the glimpses of Glory, glimpses of God himself.  And because these are only glimpses, we tend to forget them.  Today we are here to remember the moments when we have seen the glory of God, to remember and to say thank you to God who voice says today, Behold my Chosen. And he chooses you and me too! That’s what we do when we gather together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  We thank God for his Glory. We pray, Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.