Overheard on the platform of Helensburgh railway station was this snippet of a conversation by two commuters:

“Things are going well now, thank god, touch  wood.”

When Helen told me this (and I assure you that my wife wasn’t intentionally eaves dropping) I smiled and thought that you couldn’t get a better definition of idolatry, ancient or modern, than that.

What sort of god was being thanked?

• The kind that you make yourself, that you can touch, kiss, caress and toss aside at will

• The kind that kindled Moses’ anger when he returned from the mountain in Exodus 32:19

• The kind that is deaf and dumb and deadweight when you need to travel light (Isaiah 46:1-7)

• The kind that you carve out of cedar trees and use the off-cuts for kindling (Isaiah 44:12-20)

• The kind that leaves you with that deep lingering fear that you are still groping around in the dark and grovelling about in the dust

In contrast, John tells us in his Prologue that the Word, who is God the Son, who comes from God the Father, is full of grace and truth.

Across the world this Christmas day these words of John 1:1-18 will ring out from stages and pulpits, from screens and podiums, from singers and preachers . . . .

If ever a world needed grace and truth it is ours. If ever there was a time that it needed it most of all it is now.

I know that last statement sounds a little theologically shaky but it is predicated on the view that the longer you perpetuate cycles and generations of rebellion, the greater will be the confident arrogance and impudence to keep living such a lie.

Reason has failed. Religion has failed. Liberal and syncretistic expressions of Christianity have failed. People remain groping about in darkness and ignorance and grovelling around in guilt and superstition. But in the Jesus of John’s Gospel the true light has come. In Jesus restored life is offered.

Jesus is full of grace and truth.

• Grace - God’s steadfast and undeserved love towards sinners.

• Truth - God’s faithfulness to centuries of promise and his eternal word.

Grace and truth are inseparable.

• Salvation cannot be cherished until sin is confessed. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

• Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, the one who prepares the way back to the Father and the only one through whom we can return.

Even the leaders of the new South Africa understood this inseparable nature of grace and truth. Mandela, Tutu and others didn’t set up a reconciliation commission or a truth commission. It was the TRC (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission).

• There could be no reconciliation without repentance.

• No grace without (recognition of) guilt.

• No forgiveness without (recognition of) failure.

And where is fullness of this glorious character of grace and truth most clearly seen? Where do we find this glory that the disciples’ gazed upon in spades? Where is ultimate repository of this grace and truth that the disciples’ were gobsmacked by in truck loads?

We see it in the signs that Jesus set before his disciples from Chapter 2 to Chapter 11. We see it from Jesus turning water into award-winning wine through to transforming a corpse into a living breathing, laughing, feasting human being.

But above all we see it in his death.

In John 12:21-33 Jesus speaks about the arrival of the hour for him to be glorified (12:23) and prays that in this action of the Son being glorified that the Father’s name will be glorified (12:28). Astonishingly the Father answers his prayer in a publicly audible way (12:29) by saying that he has and he will (12:28).

Whose glory is on view here? Is it the Father’s or the Son’s? Is it not both? The Son’s (12:23) and the Father’s (12:28).

This unique, bi-lateral (tri-lateral really, but that’s for another day), equal relationship between the Father and the Son will be most clearly seen in the Son’s death upon the cross. The very essence of who God is will be on full blazing view under the blazing light of the almost midday sun. And it will shine no more brightly than in the shroud of darkness from midday to mid-afternoon.

For here, God’s character of justice and mercy mingle in a moment that changes eternity.

• God’s glory is seen in the many thousand megapixel magnificence of Jesus’ life

• God’s glory is seen in the many million megapixel magnificence of Jesus’ death

Anyone who thinks that the substitutionary atoning death of Jesus is some form of ‘cosmic child abuse’ just hasn’t read John’s Gospel and hasn’t understood God the Father and God the Son’s unique relationship (John 10:14-18).

We don’t have to thank god and touch wood. We can know God take hold of grace. We don’t have to grope around in the dark. Jesus is full of truth. We don’t have to grovel around in the dust. Jesus is full of grace. Through his death we can be truly and assuredly forgiven.

Like the ethnic group in John 12:20, look to Jesus. Let him hold your gaze. Behold the glory of the Son.

In the words of the old chorus:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look into his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
By the light of his glory and grace