Our waiting is almost over. The day is here. It is nearly

time to light the candles and sing Silent Night and

receive the gift of Christmas. In our Advent sermon

series, only John’s Christmas story remains. We have

spent time in the wilderness with Mark, gathered around

the family tree with Matthew, listening with Luke to Mary

sing God’s praise. And John seems to understand that

we are here now only to celebrate. He doesn’t take the

time to describe the details of Jesus’ birth or consider

the complexities of its context. No, John begins his

gospel in the mind of God. He starts “in the beginning,”

at the creation of the cosmos. He echoes the opening

words of the Hebrew scriptures, “In the beginning…”

Genesis and now John frame the story of creation. “In

the beginning was the Word.” And so, we wonder, which

word? What did God say?

And we don’t have to wait for long. John’s Christmas

“story” comes in verse fourteen: “And the Word

became flesh and lived among us.” In John’s typical

fashion, it is dramatic, succinct, and comprehensive.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Everything we need to know about Christmas,

contained in one simple sentence.

I’ve been reflecting on that phrase this season as we

we’ve explored each gospel writer’s Christmas story.

Mark’s wilderness message. Matthew’s beautiful and

complicated story. Luke’s poetic praise. What John gives

us is a vision. He sees the miraculous coming true, and

he paints a picture of that truth.

God chose life with us. There is something central to

the very being of God that could not abide the distance

between Creator and creation. And so, God lived among

us. Not as a conquering warrior but as a vulnerable

infant. Flesh and blood.

This year especially, I think we need a reminder of the

reality that God did not wait until everything was right

with the world to show up. Instead, God’s love arrives in

human form when we need it most. In all our weariness

and wandering and wondering.

Yes, our world is weary. Exhausted. Fed up. Undone

by the unraveling of community, the senselessness

and cruelty of violence, the deep sadness and grief of

inexplicable loss. Our world is weary, and words often

fail. When we do not know what to say, we remember

that our silence carries the prayers too deep for words.

We give expression to God’s own tears and compassion.

We remember that it was into our world of darkness

that the Word of God became flesh. We remember that

God spanned the distance of time and space to be in

relationship and redeem not the world as it might be,

but the real world, the world as it is.

This week as I have walked with those in our own

community experiencing unimaginable loss, I have been

thinking of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s book Lament for A

Son. The theologian wrote the book following the tragic

death of his twenty-five-year-old son. He struggles to

understand God in light of such a horrific loss. As a

father, he reflects on the comfort he eventually found.

Wolterstorff writes: “The history of our world is the

history of our suffering. Every act of evil extracts a tear

from God, every plunge into anguish extracts a sob from

God. But the history of our world is also the history of

our deliverance together. God’s work to release himself

from his suffering is his work to deliver the world from

its agony; our struggle for joy is our struggle to relieve

God’s sorrow. When God’s cup of suffering is full, our

world’s redemption is fulfilled. Until justice and peace

embrace, God’s dance of joy is delayed.”i

Today we remember. We remember the heart of the

gospel: that God could not keep distant from human

pain. Not then, and not now. As my teacher Shirley

Guthrie wrote, “The birth stories of Jesus remind us that

God is with us not in the sense of a beautiful idea or

an abstract truth. It happened at a particular time, in a

particular place, in connection with a particular mother:

‘In the days of King Herod’ ‘In Bethlehem’ ‘of Mary.’”ii The

glory of the real presence of God on earth is the heart

and soul of the Christian story.

God’s glory, John sings out, has been embodied. Not

distant, but close. In Jesus, we are given a permanent

picture of God. This is the truth of incarnation: that God

comes close enough to touch and hold. No otherworldly,

disembodied, abstract, remote idea, but a flesh and

blood picture of the God who is with us now.

Eleven years ago, I tucked a prayer into one of my

Advent books, and each year, when I open that book,

the prayer falls out. It is a prayer of lament and hope

written just days after the horrific shooting at an

elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, just eleven

days before Christmas in 2012.

“Your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. But

you were born in the dark, right? You came at night.

The shepherds were nightshift workers. The Wise Men

followed a star. Your first cries were heard in shadow.

To see your face, Mary and Joseph needed a candle

flame. It was dark. Dark with Herod’s jealousy. Dark

with Roman oppression. Dark with poverty. Dark with

violence. Herod went on a rampage, killing babies. Oh,

Lord Jesus, you entered the dark of your day. Won’t you

enter ours?”iii

Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not—

cannot—overcome it.

This final day of the waiting season of Advent, John’s

vision has an important truth for us. God shows up

in human form. The light shines in the darkness of a

broken world.

Each year, I read again W. H. Auden’s powerful

Christmas Oratorio titled For the Time Being. I’m

particularly drawn to his words of poetry. Auden writes:

To those who have seen The Child, however dimly,

however incredulously, the Time Being is, [in a sense] the

most trying time of all.

Remembering the stable, where for once in our lives

everything became a You and nothing was an It.

That’s the vision. That’s the light shining. We know the

destructive force of evil in our world, but John calls us

to remember the vision we have seen of God’s glory, full

of grace and truth, embodied in a vulnerable innocent

infant child. Immanuel. Born for us into a broken

creation still waiting, still waiting for redemption. Having

seen his glory, we now live in its light. Because of this

vision, you and I can find the courage and the strength

to claim our identity as God’s children and extend that

grace to all. This morning, take hold of a vision of God’s

love. The Word becomes flesh and lives among us. And

so, Christmas comes again. Amen.