If there is one thing gone wrong with Christianity now, it is that it has become a showy religion. We go for the big stuff, the grand stuff - concerts, lightings, crowds, charismatic rhetorists, and massive buildings. We fancy our Christian organisations as being highly sought after, making a great impact in society, changing lives, all in the name of "doing great things for the Lord".

Even for some of us who come from very liturgical traditions, we are taken in by the glory and the glitter of other non-liturgical traditions that model themselves after giant corporations through almost perfect concoctions of psychological theories, management skills, and marketing strategies. The way some of these liturgical traditions are aping the other "happening" Christian groups is unmistakable.

The Church as become a capitalistic marketplace, creating its niche and competitive advantage in order to create a demand for itself.

For all those times that Jesus withdrew from the crowds and all those times that He revealed His glory only to a very selected audience, we are reminded that the Christian life is not about the glory and the glitter. It is about the richness of the hidden inner self, which needs to be cultivated in secret and away from public eye.

We are challenged to withhold our "capabilities" from being exposed for self glory. We are called to understand the difference - the very subtle difference - between witnessing and showing off.

Jesus bids the Christian to come and cultivate the hidden inner life which can happen only in secret, that through our hidden inner lives, His true glory and the glitter of the Kingdom might be revealed as a reality bigger than ourselves. May the witness of the Spirit within us forbid that we might somehow be mistaken that we are the ones who have been responsible for the magnificent manifestation of the Kingdom of God in this world. For really, we are nothing.