We love our stained glass.
Grace Church has some very good stained glass. Old stained glass. The restoration brought the fullness of their brightness and colors out.
My wife Susan and her father used to have a running argument over which are better, icons or stained glass. Which one reveals God better?
They would argue about how they can tell stories, or inspire prayer and contemplation.
Susan always argued for stained glass. Henry, my father in law, always argued for icons.
Inevitably they would try to pull me into it.
Well, the long and the short of it is that I agree with Susan.
The thing about stained glass is that it can be simply ornate, or illustrate something important, but when sunlight hits the glass directly, and when we get to be on the other side of that glass, good stained glass comes alive, it sparks and pops, liquid lightning pours through it.
Stained glass, good stained glass, testifies to the light, it lets us see light. We are blinded by sight.
Older glass is better. You can tell the difference. Modern glass is smoother, the bumps and edges are more fluid. Older glass is more jagged and edgy. When light hits those jagged edges what happens stills the heart.
The Gadsden window, the window in the back of the church, looks like nice old brown glass, boring and innocuous, pleasantly ornate, but when the sun hits it in the late afternoon, it becomes a silent wild fire, testifying to the light.
Old jagged glass, it makes all the difference.
John was not an old man, but he was jagged and edgy, he was born old, with sharp broken edges that would never wear smooth.
He bore witness to the light, he testified to the light, he showed us the light.
Old jagged glass, it makes all the difference. It helps us see what is shining down on us all the time but we can’t see it, unless something or someone bears witness.
A jagged man sent from God to bear witness to the light, the light that is life, the light that shines in the darkness, that reveals God, that was before all things and is in all things.
Through John that light shown.
And John had a message about that light, to get ready, because that light was about to walk and breath and speak to us as a flesh and blood human.
Jagged glass reveals the light; now get ready to meet the light in person, living light.
Get ready to touch light.
The early Christians spoke of God’s glory as vivifying splendor. The more exposed we are to seeing God’s glory the more alive we become. The reverse is also true, the more we are turned away from God’s glory the more we wither and die.
God’s life giving glory shines in so many ways, through creation itself, through relationships, through jagged prophets like John, but the fullness of that glory is a living man with a name and a life and a family, Jesus.
It is interesting how the jagged edges of life are where Jesus is revealed most fully.
We find our humanity in those jagged God filled edges of life.
Will we bear witness to the light?
Will our life and words testify to the light?
Not just sometimes when we can fit it in, when it is convenient.
How can we be filled with that light and testify to it?
That is our calling. That is our vocation.
We love our stained glass.
Be the silent wild fire that testifies to the light.