The Incarnate Word

Hebrews 1:1-12, Psalm 19, John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All Things Came into being through him and without him nothing came into being. There is a beauty and grandeur to these words. Even if you don’t know what it means or the depth of its meaning, these are words you can live in, soak in, and be encompassed by. I think that is exactly where we are supposed to start because these poetic words are not primarily communicating ideas, they are communicating a person. These words are an introduction, a first meeting with the most wonderful, beautiful, and grand person we will ever meet. Today, in these words, we meet our creator, our sustainer, our saviour, our life, our light, our God, and our King.

In the beginning was the Word. All you have to do is look back at the first page of the bible to see what this is talking about. There is verse 3, God said. He speaks. It is through speech that God creates and brings order. Every day of creation, God speaks. So, when John says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God”, and “All things came into being through him”, he is quietly literally looking back at this fact and recognizing that God’s word accompanied him in creation and was there before anything else.

“The Word was God”. This is a theological statement about God’s oneness in many - pointing to the Trinity, but that can be hard to grasp. Right now it is communicating that when God speaks He is sending out himself. For any one of us, when we speak it communicates our character. At any given moment our words might communicate our love, our anger, our weakness, our ignorance, our devotion, our praise, and so many other things. We might not always communicate the way we want to, but that is strangely part of our character too. When God speaks, however, there is no ignorance or weakness in it, so it so fully communicates Him that it is Him.

This has a dramatic and wide-reaching affect. It means that when God speaks at creation, his words don’t just have the power to do the work, it means that God is that Word doing the work and infusing himself in the world. Like so many times before, God is giving of Himself to create, to give life, to lift up, and more. At creation, we see it in a foundational way, but this can be and is true for us as well.

When God speaks to us in Scripture, to some degree it doesn’t completely matter if we understand at first, because God comes to us in that reading. Like any relationship we can decide to receive him or not, but like any relationship, it doesn’t start with a complete understanding of the other person. The Word, Scripture, the Bible communicates and give us God and that is its primary purpose and power. Yes, the details become important in light of that, but only so that we can come to know God, the Word better, but the first part is meeting God there and being engulfed by the gift of His very life.

We can say the same thing about prayer. It doesn’t completely matter what you are praying, at first, if we are trying to meet God there, to reach out to Him, to connect. That is what prayer is, it is our conversation with God. For many of you, it might feel one-sided but it is not. Prayer often feels one-sided because we want it to be. Like in other conversations, we keep asking and speaking not letting someone else speak. When someone begins to say something we cut them off with what we want. While someone else is speaking we are too busy thinking about what we want to say in return. We get so impatient for something to get said or done that we rush it. If we can so easily do this with the people that we know, who are right there in front of us, how much more are we going to do it to God, who we don’t know as well and can’t see? Prayer is a conversation and God will speak to us in it. So, we meet him there. We are affected by him. Like creation, we are ordered and given life through it. We all need more time in prayer and Scripture, because it is there that we are given God and He becomes incarnate in our lives.

The Word orders. You might not have realized it, but one of the primary things God’s word does at creation is that it brings order. The word does create light and a vault, etc. but the word is also consistently separating, creating boundaries, ordering so that life might happen. Just like for us, our words help to define things, explain them, and limit them, of course, our words can do this in negative ways, but God’s Word is always pointing towards an order that leads to greater life. We know what a difference it makes to have the waters separate from the land, or the sky from the oceans, or for ourselves to be different than the animals. Yet, God’s good order is greater than this. God’s Word, which is His very being and character, is the order of this world. The Word, in Greek, is Logos, which also means a plan, or reason itself. You see Jesus is what makes science possible, he is the plan, the reason behind it all. He is the reason behind us. We might not always like the way he orders things, but we must realize that His goal is goodness and life and we need it. God’s Word is the life and light that manifests through that order.

At creation, we saw that life was possible because God ordered everything through His Word to create space for it. Most obviously in the creating land for us to live on. God’s Word, through its ordering, but also in its going out and becoming present was the source of life. God’s Word is why we exist, or why anything exists. It is life itself. It doesn’t just nourish us, it fills us and creates us. God’s Word is our life. When we hear the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth or hear that the Word took on flesh, it feels so welcoming and lifegiving, because it is our story too. It is the fullest realization of the fact that Jesus is our life, he formed our flesh, he entered in and gave us life. The birth story of Jesus or this poetic language, is an opportunity for us to meet our life - and so in some way, it becomes an opportunity for us to finally meet ourselves in the one who created us.

That very idea, that we need to come to ourselves, that we need to come to God is a reminder that something has gone wrong. We are removed from something as fundamental as our very being and life. Something has broken within us and throughout the world that has led to a great chasm between so many things, including ourselves that we too often feel and becomes painfully easy to see. We can try thousands of ways to cross it that barely give a few moments of comfort. The hope of God’s word becoming flesh, is that God has crossed that chasm. Life has come to us. Now, that life in Jesus Christ, is a light leading us home. It is a light leading us through the darkness. It is that ordering word that separates the light and darkness so that we might live in the light so that we might have life and so ultimately, we might become Children of God - loved, cherished, welcomed, appreciated, and more.

Doesn’t it feel a little perfect that we are being introduced to the incarnate Word, Jesus, through John’s poetic word? This should not be lost on us, because that is part of the point. The writer knows that God is using John’s words to communicate Jesus, the Word. This is an incredible gift to him and us, but it is meant to be a gift that goes further than that. We already know that our words can have a powerful effect on the world around us, but this reaches further. When we use our words to quote, express, and share God, guess what happens? God enters in. Jesus, the Word, becomes incarnate in that moment, he becomes present and dwells in us and through us. We become the tabernacles, the temples, God’s home, that communicates and carries God throughout this world. We become His image, His light, His presence to others. Actions are really important in this, but today we are reminded that words are also of absolute importance, because it is in those words that Jesus is met, known, and does His work. Our words in every season at any time, can be the presence of God we feel at Christmas, the good news that this story brings.

It is through the Word that we meet God, Jesus, the Word, our life, our light, our way, our healing, our home, and more. Today, we have seen the amazing reality that Scripture, prayers, and even our words can carry God in them and make him incarnate in our midst. We have seen that these words create order, pushing off the chaos. We have seen that these words lead to life, by creating space for it. We have seen that this Word is our light as it leads us beyond this great chasm that separates us from ourselves and others. We all need this Word, Jesus. Thank you, God, that you offer Him to us this day. Please help us to always meet you in your Word and in one another's. Amen