We Have Seen His Glory

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14 NIV)

This verse has been rolling around in my head for a few months now as I consider the incarnation. The reflection that follows was born during my trip to Mali. The six of us who were part of the team took turns preparing daily devotions, and the seed of this reflection was the devotion I shared while we were there.

John’s introduction of Jesus in his Gospel as the Divine Logos is full of rich imagery and metaphor waiting to be mined by the of believers and theologians who would attempt to grapple with John’s words in the centuries that would follow. The notion of that Divine Logos not just taking on flesh, but becoming flesh and living with and among humanity has spawned hundreds of thousands of pages of thoughts, insights and reflections. So what follows here is nothing new, just some of my insights and reflections as I work through some of these ideas, and what they mean for my life, which may speak to where others are in their lives as well.

In reading this verse I’ve always tended to focus on the tangible, that is The Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living, full of humanity here in our beautiful mess. This is the incarnation, the Divine becoming flesh and living with us, speaking in and through flesh what had already been communicated through the prophets, which is the heart of the God who, “led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love”, and who, “lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11.4 NIV). This image of the transcendent, creative God of the universe choosing to be limited to the confines of physicality as a means of sharing God’s love for and esteem of humanity provokes and humbles me, and I believe opens a window into the very nature and character of God. It moves me past the first sentence of the verse to the second.

John goes on to say that in this movement of love from transcendence to immanence, from spirit to flesh, from “light” to “darkness” we have seen God’s glory. In my own life when I’ve thought of glory, I’ve tended to default to the image aroused in my head by the second verse of the Christmas carol, “Silent Night”:

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

I picture light streaming from heaven to Earth, as if breaking through a cloudy day, shining a light into darkness. Assuming that Jesus wasn’t actually physically beaming light, glowing as it were like Moses coming down from Sinai while on Earth, I think we’ll have to assume that our beholding of God’s glory through the incarnation must mean something different. (Although the last verse of “Silent Night” does have the newborn Christ emitting “radiant beams” from his face, but we’ll chalk that up to artistic license).

I believe John may clarify the form of this glory later in his Gospel as he shares his account of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemene in chapter 17. Jesus begins by praying for the 12, and the approaching storm they would have to navigate. He then goes on to pray not only for them, but, “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (17.20). He prays for the unity among these believers, and their inclusion into the inner relations of the Godhead (a notion by itself deserving of hundreds of thousands of pages of reflection), linking the world’s recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ actions, and authority of his teaching directly to this unity. He then drops a bomb that completely unravels my “Silent Night” notion of glory. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17.22 NIV). He goes on to say, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (17.24 NIV). John says that humanity has seen the glory of God embodied in Jesus’ humanity; he then shares Jesus’ statement that he has given those who have believed in him the glory the Father had given him. If we follow this, then “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” is given to us as those who have trusted in Jesus as the Christ. It seems that this glory is part of the incarnation, and a part that we can and are intended to participate in. What is this glory then, if not streams of light shining from God?

Hans Urs Von Balthasar would contend that there is a connection between the notion of glory and beauty, although I’ve heard many mainline protestants and evangelicals make that connection as well. The most notable that I’m familiar with would be Karl Barth, and John Piper. Thinking in this vein the glory of God could be equated with the beauty or attractiveness of God. Moving quickly and loosely here, then, John can speak of seeing the glory or beauty of God among us because that beauty is wrapped up in the grace of the self giving love of God, embodied in that movement from heaven to earth, from transcendence to immanence, and from “light” to “darkness”. God was, is and will always be love, but that love was communicated at a new and unique depth in the incarnation, in the Divine’s participation in our finiteness. This is the form of glory or beauty at the intersection of the Divine and the human. This grace and love is inherently striking, drawing and transporting us, perhaps even involuntarily to God, overwhelmed by God’s attractiveness, and possibly not able to articulate why. I think there may be a corollary here between our experience of the attractiveness of God and our experience of exceptional earthly beauty. Some would even argue that there is no separation between the two. There are times that we’re overwhelmed by something in a painting, or in a song, or a movie, or even a sunset or a mountain. We see and are struck by what we’ve encountered and are filled with what I can only describe as joy. I believe that the grace and love of God work in a similar fashion, in that they overwhelm our senses, fill us with joy, and therefore create a desire for the object that is the source of that joy, namely God.

So then if one grants the notion that graceful, self giving love is the form of Divine glory and beauty, then there is a sense in which Jesus’ gift of glory to us is our participation in this form. In other words our participation in and emulation of that graceful, self giving love of God is us as believers sharing in the glory and beauty of God. As we imitate God’s actions in this manner, interacting with those around us, we recreate the attractiveness of God, and so participate in God’s glory. This participation then is also how the beauty of God becomes real in the lives of those around us. In the same way the love of God was embodied in Christ in the incarnation, it is embodied in us as we imitate the self giving love of God in our incarnation. In this understanding when a person imitates this love they take on the form of Divine glory, embody the attractiveness of God, and so become a conduit for the worship of God in that God is the only true source of this attractiveness and beauty, therefore the Divine, namely Christ, is at the heart of both the action of the one loving and the worship of the one recognizing the source of the action. Therefore when a person gracefully loves they witness to and argue through their action for the preeminent glory and beauty of God.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see it not only in the life of Christ, but also when we imitate the graceful loving actions of our Saviour. As we emulate these actions, we too embody the attractiveness and beauty of God and participate in the glory given to Christ by the Father. As I attempt to continue to understand these relationships I stand in perpetual amazement, simultaneously filled with awe and joy as I stand witness to the beauty of the grace lavished by God through the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.

Reflections on Mali

Disclaimer: What follows may come across as an overwrought, “what I did on my summer vacation”. If it does I apologize. To be honest I think I’m still working through a lot of what I saw and experienced in Mali, and I suppose I will be for a while. But it’s been a few weeks since I returned, so I can at least share some of my ruminations thus far, for better or for worse. Let me just say first that my trip to Mali was literally the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t expect this to be the case, which probably contributed to the difficult time I had. I had expected to be challenged, but I expected I’d be the strong one helping everyone else on our team. The reality was quite the opposite. But I’m jumping ahead; let me share what we were doing in Mali to begin with.

Around 2 years ago a member of our congregation, Jason Beach, volunteered for the Peace Corps, and was assigned to the country of Mali in West Africa. He was designated a water/sanitation volunteer and assigned to the rural village of Koumantou, the capital of its commune, the equivalent of a county in the U.S. Upon learning of Jason’s endeavors, one of the pastors of our church, Jay McKinley, proposed the possibility of leading a team from our church to help Jason with a project. Our project took shape from there. Jason’s major project in Koumantou was the creation of soak pits that keep standing water underground, thus preventing mosquitoes from using it to breed. The problem of standing water also arose from a drainage ditch that drained water from the town to a large wash containing rice fields. It had existed as a ditch around 3 feet deep, and around 3 feet wide, but had filled in over the years so that much of it was just flat ground. In the rainy season the water that would have been collected by the ditch flooded the homes and businesses along the road. When the rain let up, water would collect in the uneven places as well. This is the project Jason proposed to Jay, and that we eventually tackled.

There were 5 of us who left the church January 20th for Dulles Airport, Pastor Jay McKinley, Joel Wagner, Mitch LeFevre, Christian Hanley, and me. It felt to me like we were leaving for an adventure. I felt very sure of myself, apprehensive because I hate flying, but anticipating an amazing experience. We had been meeting once every other week or so for around 3 months preparing ourselves for this. We boarded the plane around 10 and landed in Paris about 6 ½ hours later. We then boarded our flight for Bamako, the capital of Mali, and landed there around 5 ½ hours later. Everything had been perfect thus far. I was pretty tired, I don’t sleep on planes, but that was expected. The experience at the airport was far easier than I expected. Customs was easy, retrieving our trunks was easy, and finding Jason outside of the airport was easy. We even found two cabs quickly and easily. We were planning on staying the night in Bamako at Avant Ministries, a facility that houses different ministry and missions personnel on a short term basis. On the way to the mission house we encountered a football mob. The Africa Cup was just beginning when we arrived, and Mali had won its first game, and everyone was ecstatic, so much so a group stopped our cabs opened our doors and tried to take our hats. We found out later that Jason, who had been in Mali 16 months, was pretty freaked out. At any rate I really wasn’t perhaps because I didn’t know enough to know to be afraid. Ignorance I suppose was bliss. I slept wonderfully at Avant, under my first mosquito net.

The next morning we left for Koumantou. We rented a small van outside of the mission compound which took us to the bus station. Jason purchased our tickets in our Malian names, which he had given us in the states. I was Solo Dumbia. We also had Alou Sangare, Salif Keita, a Coulabale, and a Kone’. The Malians got a kick out of the white guys boarding the bus when the names were read. Koumantou is about a 4 to 5 hour bus ride from Bamako. The Bus ride was uneventful. We left around 8, and the morning was cool, so the bus ride was very comfortable, aside from the seats.

We arrived in Koumantou around noon, and were immediately greeted by the mayor as we stepped off the bus. People from the town grabbed our trunks and bags, and we were ushered to a welcoming ceremony outside of the mayor’s offices. There was a crowd of around 200. There were drummers, and singers, a small sound system, and chairs set aside for us. We were greeted by the mayor, the adjunct mayor, the local imam, and Pastor Chaka from Jason’s Malian church. They were all very welcoming, and friendly, and full of blessings for us, which is a part of the culture. As a drummer I loved watching what they were doing with the drums, in essence as a drum chorus. Three drummers playing 3 very different, but relatively simple drum lines created these amazing beats that I’d been trying to recreate with one djembe, no wonder it never sounded exactly right to me.

From there we were escorted through very dusty, trash strewn streets or alleys to the concession that would be our home for the next two weeks. We each chose a circular mud brick hut to stay in. They had concrete floors and walls, and a thatch roof. They were actually pretty nice. I had seen them in pictures, but sitting there on my trunk in my hut was a very different experience. As I set up my tent, which we were using as portable mosquito nets, kids watched me from the outside, and I started to feel very foreign, and far away, and alone. After all of the wonderful experiences traveling to Koumantou, now that I was there I realized I couldn’t leave, and would be there for 2 weeks, half of a month.

That night I couldn’t get comfortable in the cots we brought, and ended up unsuccessfully trying to sleep in the concrete floor. I understood Rich Mullins difficulty with the dark in a new way. He sang in Hold Me Jesus that he woke up in the night and felt the dark, and in Hard to Get he asks Jesus if he could remember just how long a night could get. I just couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t get the comforts of home out of my head. I realized just how much I depend on the technology around me to numb me to myself. At home if I can’t sleep, I’d get up and watch some TV, or play a video game until I was sufficiently tired. Here I was alone with my own thoughts, fears, pains, and history, with no way to take the edge off the voices that were screaming at me. The next night was the same thing. In three days and two nights I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep, and I wasn’t able to sleep in the day either for fear that I’d be up all night. What was even more frustrating is that I had taken sleep aids which didn’t put me to sleep. We had arrived in Koumantou on Tuesday. By Wednesday I was fraying emotionally. By Thursday, the beginning of our ditch digging project I was putting on a brave face, or at least trying to, but I was a tumult of anxiousness and fear underneath. The days were fine, but I was terrified of the night, and the hours of being alone with myself and failing to sleep.

An hour into the ditch digging project I had to hurry back to our concession because of an urgent need, only to find our contraption brought for those needs, called a luggable loo, basically a bucket with a toilet seat attached, locked in a hut. With the “need” being as urgent as it was, I was quickly acquainted with the nyegan, basically a whole in the ground with a type of concrete floor. Given I was already unraveling emotionally this pretty much sent me over the edge, and I spent the rest of the morning lying on the floor of my hut, obsessing over the comforts of home.

The next day I lost my breakfast before heading to the work sight, but made it through the morning. I didn’t eat lunch, yet when we went back to the work site I threw up all the water I had been drinking. Jay walked me back and on the way back we talked about the possibility of my early return to Maryland. I didn’t think I could take another week of this. When the team returned from the work sight they met with me and really encouraged me and suggested I would regret leaving early, and that I should at least wait until Sunday. It was the team showing me the grace of God, and I agreed to at least stick it out until then. It ended up being exactly what I needed, the possibility of leaving, and a deadline. It was the spotter in weight lifting in essence saying, “OK, 2 more reps”. I was still sick on Saturday, but began to eat MRE’s in the evenings, so as to get some calories in me. I had moved into Jay’s hut to sleep the night before and had begun to actually sleep. The next day Sunday would be the day everything turned around for me.

Sunday we slept in, got ready and went to Jason’s church, The Evangelical Protestant Church of Koumantou. It was a small concrete building, with a cross on the outside, and arched steel windows that propped open for ventilation. We were escorted to the front of the church and seated on the platform, which in and of itself was very humbling. Christian stayed back because he began to feel sick the night before. The service started with music, which consisted of 2 drummers and the people’s voices. The people brought their own hymnals, or knew the music. Many of the songs were translated English songs and I recognized the tunes. When they sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms in their own language I recognized the tune and was able to sing along. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of singing this song in English with these believers singing the same song in Bambera. In addition I was overwhelmed by the idea in the song. Up to that point I had been so focused on my discomfort, and my problems that I wasn’t able to conceive of God’s presence there, and so I was trying to muddle through, pushing through on my own brute strength. I was moved by the love and gentleness of God who can keep me “safe and secure from all alarms” and on whose everlasting arms I could always lean. It was familiar, yet new. It was God speaking to me through my language, music. We were asked to do one of our songs, so Jason retrieved his guitar, I borrowed the djembe and the rest of the guys sang Open the Eyes of My Heart. It was wonderful to be able to play drums, it felt familiar and it enabled me to focus even more. Later Jay’s message on John 13, speaking of washing each other’s feet, and serving one another again reminded me of why I was there, to attempt to embody that self giving love of God. The church service was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was the first time I had sensed God’s presence in Africa, and I never felt that absence of that presence again while I was there.

Monday we returned to work on the ditch, and while it wasn’t easy, in fact the work was extraordinarily difficult; I had emotionally turned a corner and was able to at least try to focus on something other than myself, namely the project, the Malians, and the team. I had greatly over estimated my conditioning and stamina. I don’t remember having this much difficulty with manual labor at 25, let alone 30, but I worked as I could, which was less than Joel and Mitch, whose stamina and positivity made huge impressions on me, and far less than the Malians who were artists with a pick axe, and whose stamina was reminiscent of Olympic distance runners.

The second week moved far more quickly than the first. We had settled into the routine of getting up at 6:30, having breakfast at 7, working from 8-12, having lunch from 12-2, going back to work from 2-4, coming back, showering and spending time with visitors from 4-7, eating dinner sometime after 7, and going to bed by around 9:30. I finally had a rhythm. I still struggled, with lack of stamina, with heat, with the food, with the dust and smoke, with my own expectations, but because of the support of the team, and Jay’s kindness in allowing me sleep in his hut, and the sense of the presence of God, and Jason’s generosity in allowing us to play his guitar in the evenings (which was huge in giving me a sense of familiarity and a connection to my second language) I was able to begin to do more than muddle through.

I never enjoyed myself the way that Jay did. Mali seemed like a second home to him, as if he were visiting old friends and family at a church homecoming. I never enjoyed myself as much as Joel who seemed the entire time like a fish in his own pond, always smiling, always ready for the next experience. In my sickness I was never as positive as Christian was in his. I obsessed over the things from home I lacked. Christian made a list of them so as to rob them of their power. I never engaged the people with Mitch’s fervor, attempting to speak their language from day one. I never had Jason Beach’s confidence and grace. While at first I envied them of these things, I’ve come to realize I was on my own journey. It was with them, involved them, and was shaped by them and all they brought to our team. My journey wasn’t about excelling, though I would have liked it to be. My journey I think was about learning to fail.

Before we left for Mali, Jason had said that he believed the trip would be a success if we just showed up. While it was nice to accomplish as a team the completion of our ditch digging project, which was completed at sundown on our last day of work, my journey wasn’t about any accomplishments. It was about the freedom to “fail”, the freedom to fall short of my own inflated self-expectations. It highlighted to me the importance of embodying the love of God. When I made the decision to go to Mali after Jay had called and invited me along all those months ago, I saw it as an opportunity to give hands and feet to the big ideas that had been swimming around in my head. I saw it as my opportunity to go “Into the Dark with God”. What I wasn’t prepared for was how truly dark the darkness was. What is funny is that I believed the darkness I would be traveling with God into was Mali, that serving this community of mostly Muslims and a few Christians would allow me to live out Christ’s incarnation, traveling from heaven to earth so to speak. I was surprised to find that I was the darkness through which I would travel with God.

Before I left I don’t think I had sensed the pride and hubris of my thoughts. The notion of living out Christ’s incarnation, while I believe theologically sound, still smacked of my own self importance, and that nagging belief that I try so hard to shake, that I am in some way superior to those around me. My journey was about attempting to move out from that, at least in practice, and focus on the other, whether that is the Malian, or those on my team. In doing so the movement begins in emulating the self giving love of God. So my failure to meet my own high expectations of myself, and my failure to live up to my high opinion of myself actually allowed me to be the love of God with my presence, in spite of myself, as opposed to believing myself to be the love of God. To play with James’ notion, in short thinking without action is dead. In the end I think my journey was only a step, but a step I needed to take.