12/28/2025 - First Sunday After Christmas - God Chooses Nearness

John 1:1–18

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God.
And the Word was God.

John begins Christmas not with a baby, but with mystery. With poetry. With God’s own breath and speech. The Word—Logos—through whom all things came into being. Before there was light in the heavens, John tells us, there was Light at the heart of God. Before there was life on earth, there was Life moving through God’s own being.

And then, just when we think we are dealing with something vast and untouchable, John brings us all the way down to earth:

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Not visited.
Not observed from a distance.
Not managed from heaven.

The Word became flesh—and dwelt among us. Set up a tent. Took up residence. Chose nearness.

Christian faith makes a staggering claim here: that God does not save us by remaining above the world, but by entering it. God does not fix creation from a distance, but from the inside. God chooses proximity.

This matters because so much of our suffering, the world's suffering, is shaped by distance. We know what it is to feel unseen, unheard, untouched by help.
We know the ache of being physically present but spiritually abandoned.
It is into that reality, John dares to say: God does not stay away.

The Word becomes flesh.

Not idealized flesh. Not sanitized flesh. But real flesh—subject to hunger and fatigue, joy and grief, touch and pain. God chooses the vulnerability of human life as the place where love will be made known.

Theologian, mystic, and civil rights leader, Howard Thurman, understood this deeply. Writing from the underside of American life, he refused a faith that wasn’t in relationship with suffering. 

Thurman insisted that God meets us not at the edges of life, but at its center—where fear, weariness, and hope all collide. He wrote to those whose backs were against the wall, reminding them that God’s presence is not proven by power, but by companionship.

For Thurman, the question was never whether God exists, but where God chooses to be found. In Jesus and the Disinherited, he writes, “God is not remote, but near, closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” 

This echoes John’s Gospel: God is found in the thick of human life, especially where dignity is threatened, and courage must be summoned day after day.

The Word becomes flesh—and dwells among us.

To me, this is disruptive theology. Because if God chooses nearness, then God cannot be confined to sanctuaries or doctrines or moments of certainty. God shows up in kitchens and hospital rooms, in streets and shelters, outside of immigration buildings, in the silent mental health and life struggles, loneliness, heartbreak…

In all those places where people are holding it together with more grace than anyone sees.

John tells us that “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” 

Not grace once.
Not grace when we get it right.
Grace layered upon grace, arriving even when we are exhausted, even when faith feels thin.

And here is the astonishing thing: John says that this nearness continues. “To all who received him… he gave power to become children of God.” Not spectators. Not admirers.

Participants. Bearers of the same divine life that chose to draw near in the first place.

The incarnation is not only something God does—it becomes something we are drawn into. If God has chosen nearness, then we are invited to practice it.
To move toward rather than away.
To risk presence in a world trained in avoidance.

Howard Thurman wrote about listening for “the sound of the genuine” within ourselves—that place where God’s Spirit whispers beneath fear and fatigue. That listening, that attention, is itself an act of nearness. God draws close, and teaches us how to do the same.

So when John says, “No one has ever seen God,” and then dares to add, “It is God the Son who has made God known…” 

He is telling us where to look:
Look for flesh.
Look for love embodied.
Look for courage practiced quietly.
Look for people choosing presence in a world that rewards distance.

The Word became flesh and lived among us.

This is not just good news about God.
It is a calling for us, the church.
To be near.
To stay.
To dwell.

Because the God who chose nearness once still chooses it now—and invites us to recognize, receive, and reflect that nearness in this world God so loves.

Amen.