From City Pres Church Denver:
Gloria in Excelsis (“Glory Be to God on High”) On the night Christ was born in Bethlehem, heaven was astounded. Nothing the angels had seen or experienced prepared them for the Incarnation of God. Here was something so far removed from their frame of reference that even the accumulated wisdom of millennia could scarcely comprehend it. We read in 1 Peter 1:12 that they “long to look into these things.”
So on the night of Christ’s birth the great host of angels who appeared to the shepherds of Bethlehem were perhaps in their own way as stupefied as the shepherds. And they respond in the only fashion that makes sense to such cosmic events – they worshipped. “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth.” These are the opening sentences of this morning’s Congregational Prayer of Praise, Gloria in Excelsis.
This ancient hymn originates from around 140 A.D., and has been used by the Christian Church for centuries as a hymn of praise, especially around the season of Advent, when we celebrate the birth of Christ.
The Gloria celebrates Jesus as the “Lamb of God”, a title which harkens back to the Old Testament Feast of the Passover, which was celebrated by sacrificing a lamb as a reminder that one day the ultimate Lamb, the Messiah, would come and offer himself as a sacrifice to take away the sin of His people.
Many Christians from all over the world are using the Gloria as part of their worship today.
