Tag Archives: Incarnation

The Word became flesh: A Sermon for Christmas Day, 2025

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“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”

I’ve been at this preaching thing for some twenty years, and for all of those years, except during the lockdown, I have preached on Christmas Day. It hasn’t become any easier over those years. I’ll be honest, I’m twenty years older than I was a started out as a priest, and my body feels that every day, but especially today. I got home after midnight last night, and the alarm woke me at 6 this morning.

There’s another reason it doesn’t get easier. After twenty times preaching on this gospel text, actually more than that, because it’s also the gospel appointed for the 1st Sunday after Christmas, you might think it difficult to come up with something new to say. Well, you’re right, but at the same time, who needs something new when you’ve got the majestic prologue to John’s gospel: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this text as it relates to our cultural moment. We live in a post-truth world. Politicians lie brazenly and are not called on it. Our social media feeds are filled with fake videos produced by AI; having lost our moorings in reality, we are at the whim of the loudest shouters, the most spectacular influencers; the billionaires with infinite wealth who can spread falsehoods and sway millions. We can create AI friends in our loneliness and despair.

And it is coming into the institutional church as well. You’ve probably all heard of the various chatbots used by churches and denominations—perhaps you’ve even found yourself using them. I was appalled this past summer when I saw an ad for a webinar sponsored by a major Episcopal entity that promised to show us how we might make use of AI, in our communications, outreach, and evangelism. I know there are many clergy who use AI in crafting their sermons.

But this: in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Our Christian faith proclaims that there is a deep relationship between our thinking, our words, and the Divine Word. No matter how inadequate our words may be to express our faith, to convey the truth of our faith, when we use them, we are touching in some way, the Truth of the Word. We stretch ourselves to understand, comprehend, we stretch ourselves as we try to communicate our faith with others, and when we do, we are touching the Divine Word.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The incarnation is a great mystery of our faith, something that we should ponder and treasure in our hearts, something we should puzzle over, ponder. More than that. The Word connects us with God because our words, our thoughts are attempts to approach and understand the Word. By thinking, reflecting, struggling to understand the meaning of the Word become flesh, there’s a way in which our thinking itself makes Christ present in our minds and in our lives.

You may find all this very abstract. It is, but John doesn’t stop there. He goes on. The word became flesh and lived among us. 

With this verse, John brings us back to Bethlehem, to the reality of the incarnation. Literally the Greek reads, “and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” While John likely wants us to think of the tabernacle that was the symbol of God’s presence to the Israelites in the wilderness, it’s also the case that we are to think of Christ being among us, “living among us” in a temporary, make-shift way, like a tent. That is to say, the word took on frail human flesh to be like us. 

This paradox, this mystery is quite beyond comprehension. The Word taking human flesh. St. Augustine captures the paradox in one of his sermons on this text for Christmas:

“He so loved us that for our sake He was made man in time, through Whom all times were made; was in the world less in years than His servants, though older than the world itself in His eternity; was made man, Who made man; was created of a mother, whom He created; was carried by hands which He formed; nursed at the breasts which He had filled; cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word without Whom all human eloquence is mute.” — St. Augustine, Sermon 188

John goes a step further. For John, this infant, this tiny human creature, incapable of speech, vulnerable, utterly dependent on others for life itself, this infant reveals God’s glory to us.

So we are back in Bethlehem, back in the confusing paradox that God became incarnate in a very ordinary way, in the poorest of circumstances, in the weakest of all human forms, a baby. And it is in that paradox, that we see God’s glory. For John, it is the same paradox as the cross, which he almost always refers to as the glorification of Christ. What he is telling us is that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

To see and know Christ, the Word, in the babe in a manger, is to see and know God’s glory. To see and know Christ in the cross, is to see and know God’s glory. To see and know Christ, to taste Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast, is to see and know God’s glory. 

May we experience, may we see and know the glory of God today, in our lives, and in the world around us, in the Christ made flesh in a manger and as we kneel at the altar. May we know and believe the mystery of our faith, the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God’s love for us, today at Christmas, and throughout our lives. Amen.

Things earthly and heavenly gathered into one: A Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2025

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December 24, 2025
Christmas Eve
2025

On Christmas Eve, I always feel the chasm between the way things are and the way they ought to be especially acutely. There’s the beauty and brightness of our church, our worship, and our music; the joy of our celebration, our happy faces, excited children. And then outside, there’s the darkness of night, the realities of a world, suffering people, breaking hearts, hunger, homelessness, violence and evil.

Those differences have always been present, but in the past decade or so, I’ve been feeling that disjuncture more acutely, and it seems that gap between the world’s suffering and our celebration grows ever wider.

We live in tumultuous, chaotic times, as we watch our society collapsing, behavioral norms vanishing, as we witness the attacks on civility, on science, and learning, as institutions we held dear are under attack. We are fearful, anxious, and we know that others around us are even more frightened as families are ripped apart and immigrants deported. We avert our attention from the news because we can’t bear knowing all the details, whether it’s suffering in Gaza, war in Ukraine, or attacks on our healthcare system that put all our lives in danger.

This chaos has even come to Christianity as it is experienced and practiced in the United States. The rise of Christian nationalism has transformed the figure of Christ from the Prince of Peace to a Warrior, as it rejects his message of love of neighbor and enemy, and his embrace of the outcast, the vulnerable, and the foreigner.

It may be that you are tuning me out right now, because you came here to get away from all of that, to have a little peace and quiet, to sing familiar carols, to be reassured of well, normalcy, in these strange and unsettling times. We want to keep the barbarians, or our deepest fears, outside the gates, and activate security systems in our homes and our psyches to keep the chaos at bay.

But there are similar contradictions at the heart of the Christmas story, at the heart of the Christian faith. Think about Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. On the one hand, he places his narrative squarely in the context of the Roman Empire: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” We see the reach of empire—a capricious, violent ruler demanding that the population be counted, why, so imperial domination could extend its way to the furthest reaches of the population. Rome, the eternal city, the city to which all roads led, the greatest power the world had ever seen.

On the other hand, and the contrast couldn’t be greater, another city is mentioned, the city of David, Bethlehem,  a tiny village far from the centers of power. But with the mention of David, an allusion to a long-ago monarchy that was conquered, a subject people, and a far away history.

And the people: the emperor, the governor, men in power, men of power, and Joseph, a powerless nobody, Mary, a pregnant, vulnerable teen. Their places: palaces, sumptuous furnishings and meals, many attendants; the other, Joseph and his family at a manger, in a cave? Because there was no room in the inn. Even more: The emperor would be announced throughout the empire as Savior, bringing peace; that’s the good news, the euangelion, the gospel. But the angels use the same language: a savior is born.

These contrasts like other contrasts of the season: light and darkness; the contrast between the emperor who reigns in Rome, and the king who is born in Bethlehem; the empire that rules by violence and intimidation; and the reign of God that ushers in peace and justice.  

Such dichotomies are present throughout Luke’s story. Think of the Magnificat, Mary’s great song of praise:

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Such divisions, between the weak and the powerful; rich and power are divisions we know too well today, as the differences between the haves and have nots grow wider, billionaires increase their wealth while people go hungry and unhoused around us. These divisions which we know so well are used to divide and demonize the other.

But it’s not just in the world around us where we see such stark differences. We see them in ourselves, as well. We know the person we want to be, and the person we so often are; the differences between our hopes and aspirations and the realities of our lives; the differences between what we should do, and what we actually do, all the ways we fall short and disappoint ourselves and the ones we love. 

Our tendency, when it comes to our own lives, and the dichotomies in the world in which we live, is to overlook or try to ignore those differences, to hide them from ourselves, to insulate ourselves from the suffering and pain in our hearts and the world around us. We may even want to hide them from Christmas, in our efforts to have the perfect celebration in an imperfect world.

But that’s precisely the sort of misguided exercise we humans tend to attempt. In fact, what we are celebrating at Christmas is the breaking down of those barriers: God becoming human, the word becoming flesh. In the words of a blessing often used at Christmas: “Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly…”

Or St. Paul: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Godself”

Christ comes into the chaos of the world, into its suffering and pain; takes on that suffering and pain, redeeming it, and us. In Christ, we receive adoption through grace, grafted onto his body. In Christ, all things are made new.

We see that taking place as Christ takes on human flesh, as a baby, in all the vulnerability and weakness that symbolizes, in the dependence of a baby on the love of parents and others. 

We will go from this place out into a cold and dark world, the light of our candles extinguished, but the hope in our hearts rekindled. The world will not have changed. There is still suffering, pain, despair; in the dark places of the world, and in the dark places of our heart.

But the coming of Christ brings rays of hope and love into that darkness for the light, the light of Christ, shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. May the light of Christ, may the light of Christmas, shine in the darkness of the world, the darkness of our despair and fill us with his light and grace.

AI and the Word: A sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, 2024

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December 29, 2024

I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t done much thinking about, or exploring of Generative AI. Maybe it’s because at this point in my professional and personal life, the idea of adopting and growing comfortable with yet another technological innovation seems rather pointless. Perhaps it’s because I don’t see its relevance to the kind of work I do. Oh, I remember back when ChatGpt was introduced, seeing a couple of theologian/pastors post about their attempts to use the new technology to write sermons—their efforts, if I recall correctly—were largely failures.

I’m aware of the questions raised by AI—ethical, environmental, moral. I read of faculty who struggle with students who turn in AI generated or assisted essays; of the wild claims made by its advocates for doing away with all sorts of creative work, mostly by plagiarizing work that’s already been made by those creators. I know of the vast environmental toll taken—the energy and water required to run the computers. I’ve seen the stories about the inadequate responses generated by AI to questions posed—and problems presented—in healthcare for example.

But I think the real reason I have no interest in making use of AI in my work is that it goes against what I take to be a fundamental part of my Christian faith, grounded in these first verses from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Each year we hear these words twice in succession. It’s the gospel reading for Christmas Day, and in the Episcopal Church, the gospel reading for the first Sunday after Christmas. As I point out every year on Christmas Day, I’ve preached on this text every year that I’ve been ordained, and a couple of years before that. I’ve also preached on it on many first Sundays after Christmas, so I’ve written lots of sermons about it. But that’s ok, because no one single sermon could exhaust the meaning and power of this passage.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Centuries ago, it was the custom of preachers and theologians to take a phrase or verse from scripture as their motto. They might include it on every title page of works that they published and they used it as a kind of polestar by which to guide their ministry and their work. If I were to adopt such a practice, I would probably choose this sentence from John’s gospel—because it conveys the mystery of the incarnation 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It may be that these words, more than any other in scripture reassure me when I am most apt to question my faith. That brief phrase, in fact the whole of these first verses of John’s gospel have provided food for thought for theological speculation across the centuries of the Christian tradition. In the early church, John’s use of the term logos—word to refer to Christ provided an avenue for the introduction of Greek philosophical reflection into Christian theology and inspired deep theological reflection.

Hidden in these words is first of all the notion that Christ was present in creation, indeed, that Christ, the Word was the means by which God created the universe. After all, in Genesis 1, God speaks, and by speaking brings the universe and all that is in it, into existence. But John’s gospel goes further, by proclaiming that not only is the logos, the word the means by which the universe came into existence, the logos also became flesh, became incarnate and lived among us. 

That notion goes much further than any ancient greek philosopher would go. Indeed, it is an idea that would be repugnant to most of ancient greek thought, because it was understood that the material world, the world of matter, of flesh and bone, was corrupt, or if not corrupt, was less good than the spiritual world, the world of ideas. So when John proclaims the Word became flesh, he proclaimed that the spiritual world intermingled with matter.

There is something else that is significant here. The reason I have found these words so reassuring over the years is that they provide a link between our words and God. For John to say that in the beginning is the word, is to suggest that in our language, in our thought, in our attempts to understand God and the nature of the universe, we approach, even touch, the divine word. There is a way in which we, created in the image of God, are created in the image of the word of God. In other words, to think, to reason, is a way of coming closer to God. 

So I find all of that quite reassuring. But John doesn’t stop there, with a message only for intellectuals. He goes on. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is what caused problems for sophisticated Greeks, and it is a problem for us as well. Greeks didn’t have any trouble conceiving of God as some sort of divine reason or order brought the universe into existence and sustained.

The notion that this underlying order, this reason might take on human form was nonsense to Greeks, because the material world, the world of flesh and blood was a pale, blemished imitation of the true, real, spiritual world. 

With this verse, John brings us back to Bethlehem, to the reality of the incarnation. Literally the Greek reads, “and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” That is to say, the word took on frail human flesh to be like us. But John goes on and in one of his key paradoxes, reminds us that in that temporary dwelling, we catch sight of God’s glory.

So we are back in Bethlehem, back in the confusing paradox that God became incarnate in a very ordinary way, in the poorest of circumstances, in the weakest of all human forms, a baby. And it is in that paradox, that we see God’s glory. For John, it is the same paradox as the cross, which he almost always refers to as the glorification of Christ. What he is telling us is that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

But we have the reality of that incarnation before us in many ways. We see it, we taste it in the bread and wine of the eucharist, when we receive the body and blood of Christ. We see it in the very imperfect Church, both our local community, and the worldwide communion, bodies filled with flaws and imperfections, but also, mysteriously, the body of Christ. And finally, we may see it in ourselves, imperfect human beings though we are, but by the grace of God filled with the presence of Christ. May this Christmas season rekindle in all of us the knowledge of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s glory, in ourselves, in our church and community, and in all the world. 

The Creche and the Word: A Sermon for Christmas 1, 2019

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Today is the first Sunday of Christmas. You know that there are 12 days of Christmas, and that those twelve days begin, not end, on Christmas Day. Christmas continues right up to the Feast of the Epiphany—although in many places, Christmas decorations remain in the church until February 2, which is Candlemas, or also the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple. Continue reading →

And the Word became flesh and tented among us: A Sermon for Christmas Day, 2016

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“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”

We live in difficult times. The world is a dangerous, scary place. The future looks bleak. Not only are the problems we face apparently beyond our will and capacity to solve. It’s not just the ongoing wars, a challenging economy; Climate change seems to be occurring at a frightening pace—with reports this week about warm temperatures in the Arctic causing unprecedented ice melting.

It’s not just the immensity of the problems, in recent years truth and reason themselves have come under attack. First it was Stephen Colbert and “truthiness.” Now, we are victims of “fake truth” the manipulation of the media, and a widespread and vicious attack on science.

Some of this latter can be blamed on a certain understanding and worldview within Christianity. It’s been a practice among some Christians for centuries to draw a sharp contrast between faith and reason—to argue that one must believe in spite of evidence to the contrary; that faith in God goes against reason. In recent decades, that view has led to some Christians making contortions in their efforts to explain away the theory of evolution, the fossil record, the big bang, arguing that scientific evidence like fossils were given by God to test our faith, or worse, planted by Satan to deceive us.

In a way all of this has led us to this point; where we’re not quite sure of anything; that every position no matter how supported by scientific evidence, is only a matter of opinion.

These majestic, transcendent verses from the very beginning of the Gospel of John reflect and present us with a very different perspective. John is writing from within a particular worldview that permeated the Hellenistic culture of his time. In the beginning was the Word, in fact, in the beginning was the Logos—more than word, it could be translated as reason. You could understand it as the underlying order of the universe, natural law, if you will.

John is asserting not just that God created the universe, but that this created universe is imbued with divine order and reason; that it makes sense, and also, that by exploring the universe, we can come to know something about the nature of God.

Of course, to translate logos as “word” is to make another important theological point—that at the very beginning of things, the second person of the Trinity was present, involved in creating the universe. Indeed, in Genesis 1, God creates by speaking the universe into existence—God said, “Let there be light.”

This is all well and good, but the reality is that the world we experience only dimly reflects the divine order and creative power that brought it into being and maintains it. Our fallen natures have clouded our reason, and creation itself bears signs of our disobedience of God.

We experience our own sin and fallen-ness, we know our broken-ness and the broken-ness of the world, and we struggle to know and to love God and ourselves. Given that, we’re tempted to experience or understand God as utterly beyond us, beyond our comprehension or understanding, remote, uncaring, unmoved or unmoving.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the heart of this passage, the heart of the gospel, it may very well be the heart of Christianity. The God who is utterly beyond us, incomprehensible, infinite, has become one of us, has dwelt among us. The God who created the world and us, has come to us in human form, becoming human, sharing our lives and our existence.

But more than that, the word we translate as “dwelt” could be translated as tabernacled or tented—it’s a reference back to the experience of the Hebrews in the wilderness when they created a tabernacle to be a symbol of God’s presence among them as they wandered through the desert.

That’s one way we should think about it, that in the Word becoming flesh God tented among us, taking on a frail, temporary body like ours, but also that God journeyed with us, that God journeys with us, that God is with us as we wander through our lives.

It’s a remarkable journey that we make through our lives, it’s a remarkable journey of struggle, change, and love. There’s a remarkable journey in this text, from before time and the universe existed, to the Word becoming flesh and tenting among us.

To ponder that mystery, not just what the words say, but the mystery of the nature of God to which it bears witness—a God beyond our comprehension and imagination, but a God who so cares for us and loves us, that the very Word of God comes to us, becomes one of us, dies for us.

To contemplate that God, the God we see dimly in the beauty of creation; the God we see clearly in the incarnation; the God we see in the words and life of Jesus Christ; the God whose self-giving love embraces the whole world in his outstretched arms.

To contemplate that God, to contemplate that love, and to begin to express and share that love; that is what and who we are called to be by Christmas. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Babies, Tents, and the Incarnation: A Sermon for Christmas Day, 2014

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“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” These majestic words, the beginning of John’s gospel capture the profundity and the mystery of our faith. For two thousand years, Christians have read these verses, wrestled with them, pondered their meaning. We do that today as we celebrate the miracle of God becoming flesh and living among us.

One of my great joys as a priest is to visit parents of newborn babies in the hospital. Each time I enter the room, I am overwhelmed with the joy, excitement, and love that a new mother and father have for their child. There is also awe and wonder, and usually, especially when it’s a first child, looks of amazement and bewilderment. As I sat with one couple recently, we talked about the life this baby would have, what he would see and experience, who he would become.

I’m awed by the responsibility parents take on. I’m also awed by the vulnerability, weakness, and dependence of newborns. This year, as I’ve reflected on Christmas and thought about what it means that God became flesh in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem, I have pondered the mystery that God comes to us, that God became human by being born as a baby, vulnerable, weak, utterly dependent on others for life.

For all the mystery and wonder about the first verses of John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” I think that in some ways, it’s easier for us to get our heads around what John is trying to say here than it is for us to comprehend the fact that God became incarnate in a baby in Bethlehem.

Even if it may be difficult to believe that God created the universe and that the Word was present at creation, such notions at least conform to the idea of God that we have. If there is a God, certainly God created the universe. That’s the sort of thing philosophers debate and a notion that is worthy of an adequate concept of God. But for such a God, as the philosophers argue, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, for a God like that to be born as a baby, that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Immediately, all sorts of questions come up that curious people might wonder. If God is all those things, all powerful, all-knowing, what was God like as a baby? How could a weak, vulnerable infant contain a being of infinite possibility and infinite nature? How do we make sense of these two ways of understanding the way in which God became incarnate—the story Luke tells of Mary and Joseph, of a manger and stable, of shepherds and the story, or poetry of John: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Well, John himself makes the connection a few verses into the gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” More literally, “the Word became flesh and tabernacled (or tented) among us.”

That’s such an evocative image both for our present context and for the biblical story. Tents are something we’re familiar with. They provide shelter, yes, but they are also relatively insubstantial. They might protect us from rain, but they aren’t much use in a heavy storm with strong winds and few of us would want to have to live through a Wisconsin winter with only a tent for shelter. The image of the tent seems to capture something of the frailty of human nature.

But in the biblical context, the idea of tent or tabernacle takes on even greater significance. For it was in a tabernacle, a tent, that God was present with the Hebrews as they wandered in the desert for forty years. And in the tabernacle, God revealed God’s glory to the Israelites.

John uses that imagery as he seeks to help us understand the nature of God in Christ. For, he says, “we have seen his glory, … full of grace and truth.” Just as God revealed God’s glory to the Israelites in a tabernacle made from the skins of animals, so we see God’s glory in the frail flesh of a new-born baby.

That is the mystery of our faith, that we encounter God in a newborn baby born in Bethlehem. St. Paul articulates this fundamental paradox in the phrase: “power made perfect in weakness” because of course it is not just that we see God in the manger in Bethlehem. We also see God dying on the cross.

In John’s gospel, the paradox of the incarnation is also the paradox of the cross. John loves to use that word “glory” or “glorification” when speaking of the cross. Like Paul, John is telling us that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

Manger, cross; God’s weakness, God’s vulnerability; God’s power. That is the mystery of the incarnation. That is the mystery and the bedrock of our faith. We may not understand, we may not comprehend it, but we can see it and experience it with our very eyes. We have the reality of the incarnation before us in the God who became flesh and tented among us, the God who died on the cross and was raised again.

But we have the reality of that incarnation before us in many ways. We see it, we taste it in the bread and wine of the eucharist, when we receive the body and blood of Christ. We see it in the very imperfect Church, both our local community, and the worldwide communion, bodies filled with flaws and imperfections, but also, mysteriously, the body of Christ. And finally, we may see it in ourselves, imperfect human beings though we are, but by the grace of God filled with the presence of Christ. May this Christmas rekindle in all of us the knowledge of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s glory, in ourselves, in our church and community, and in all the world. May we experience the reality of the incarnation for ourselves, and share it with the world!

 

 

 

 

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: April 9, 1945

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“To be conformed to the image of Christ is not an ideal to be striven after. It is not as though we had to imitate him as ell as we could. We cannot transform ourselves into his image; it is rather the form of Christ which seeks to be formed in us (Gal 4:19), and to be manifested in us. Christ’s work in us is not finished until he has perfected his own form in us. We must be assimilated to the form of Christ in its entirety, the form of Christ incarnate, crucified and glorified. Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He became Man even as we are men. In his humanity and his lowliness we recognize our own form. He has become like a man, so that men should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.” Cost of Discipleship