The Promise in Flesh

The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day
December 25, 2025
John 1:1-14
“The Promise in Flesh”

Over this Christmas season, we may spend time with family members and friends that we haven’t seen for awhile. It’s good to catch up over holiday gatherings. When we come together and see someone who has been absent from our lives for a time, we may say something like: “It really is you in the flesh!” When loved ones are no longer with us, but have joined that great multitude around the throne of heaven, we remember Christmases from the past and long for those days when we were together in the flesh. In our virtual world, we have become very accustomed to online work meetings as well as staying in touch with people through Zoom and Facetime. This holds true in the church where we have become accustomed to online meetings. Earlier this month, we had our annual congregational voters meeting online. This is one of those big takeaways from five years ago during COVID, when coming together in-person carried great risk. Many people continue to have regular Zoom gatherings with family members who live all over the country, and even the world. But there is no substitute for that face-to-face, in-person gathering; of being together in the flesh. On this Christmas day, we celebrate God’s promise made and kept to send a Savior in the flesh. On this Christmas day, we celebrate the Nativity, the Incarnation, of Christ Jesus. The message for this day, rising out of the appointed Gospel lesson, is entitled “The Promise in Flesh.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God did not accomplish our salvation virtually; remote and from a distance. In Jesus, the eternal Word of God took on human flesh and blood, entering our world so steeped in sin and suffering in order to redeem it; to reshape and renew it. There is no substitute for that in-person, in-the-flesh presence of our redeeming God. He knows first-hand what it is to be human; to experience the ups and downs of life; to feel joy and sorrow, exhaustion and exhilaration, pain and sadness. The promise of God fulfilled in the flesh by Jesus means that we have a God who understands what we ourselves go through. We don’t have a virtual God who is remote and removed from our lives. No, in Jesus the Word made flesh, we have a God who came to dwell among us. In Jesus the Word made flesh, we have a God who sympathizes with our weakness; who became like us in every respect, except for sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Some years ago, National Public Radio aired a program in which a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and reporter named Helene Cooper was interviewed. Cooper was covering the “then on-going Ebola outbreak in Liberia. Cooper talks about how difficult it is to slow the spread of the virus that is so often contracted by caring for sick loved ones, especially in a culture that so values physical touch. She talks about Patience, a mother who contracted Ebola from her ill and crying two-year-old daughter: ‘When you’re seeing a familiar face that you love so much,’ says Cooper, ‘It’s really, really hard to… physically restrain yourself from touching them’” (Sundays and Seasons: 2026., Year A – Guide to Worship Planning. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2025; p. 48). In the Word who became flesh and came to dwell among us, God demonstrates that he will not be restrained or held back from touching our lives and our world so infected by sin and its consequences. The promise in flesh means that the Word made flesh, Jesus himself, came to touch the untouchable; to make whole what is broken; to heal what is sick; to bestow forgiveness, life, and salvation. Jesus has come to take upon himself our sin and its consequences: the suffering and sorrow, the loneliness and isolation, the fear and anxiety, the guilt and pain. All of this and more, Jesus has borne for us on the tree of the cross. There is a direct line from the cradle to the cross, because this is why the Word became flesh. And in so doing, Jesus is the fulfillment of that prophetic word from Isaiah: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

The promise in flesh that is the Word made flesh continues today as we gather around God’s gifts of Word and Sacrament on this Christmas Day. It is here in these gifts that God promises to be present. Filled with his Word and Spirit, this same Jesus becomes known to the world one person at a time through ordinary, everyday believers like you and me. Baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are his ambassadors. This happens not through some slick program or fancy slogan, not through coercion or guilt, but through the power of Christ’s redeeming love that makes all things new. The promise in flesh that is Jesus is for all people. The good news of great joy is for every people and tribe and race and language. No one is excluded. And we are the ones who get to share this good news. We get to be the messengers.

May the promise in flesh fulfilled in Jesus who is the Word made flesh give you abiding joy and fresh hope now at Christmas and throughout the coming New Year. Amen.