On this first Sunday after Christmas, the church gives us a story that feels a little strange.

There are no angels here.

No shepherds.

No manger.

No one is kneeling beside a crib.

No one is hurrying through the night with good news.

There is no stable, no star, no newborn wrapped in cloth.

Instead, we are given language.

Big language.

Ancient language.

Language that feels almost too large for a quiet Sunday morning after Christmas.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

John does not tell us how Jesus was born.

He does not tell us where Mary stood or what Joseph felt or how the night sounded.

John tells us something else entirely.

He tells us what kind of reality we are living in now that Jesus has come.

That matters, because by this point many of us are already shifting gears.

The calendar is turning.

The decorations are coming down.

The music fades.

The energy of Christmas thins out faster than we expect.

Some of us feel relief.

The pressure is over.

Some of us feel let down.

It went by too fast.

Some of us feel tired in ways sleep does not fix.

And some of us are carrying grief that Christmas did not resolve, only exposed.

Empty chairs.

Old wounds.

Relationships that did not heal just because the season told us they should.

Ordinary life has a way of returning quickly, and it often returns with unfinished business.

John’s Gospel speaks directly into that moment.

Not by recreating the Christmas scene, but by widening the lens.

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

Before traditions.

Before memories.

Before expectations.

Before schedules and obligations.

Before success and failure.

Before fear and hope.

Before anything we now worry about, there was the Word.

John reaches back past Bethlehem, past David, past Abraham, all the way to creation itself.

He echoes the first words of Genesis: “In the beginning.”

He is telling us that the story of Jesus is not an interruption in history.

It is the deep logic of reality finally made visible.

This is not a random universe.

Not a silent one.

Not a meaningless one.

It is a universe shaped by meaning, intention, and relationship.

A universe spoken into being.

A universe that has always been held by something more than chaos.

And then John makes his central claim, the one everything else turns on: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

That sentence should stop us.

Because it refuses to let faith remain abstract.

This is not poetry meant to float above real life.

This is not philosophy designed to keep God safely distant.

This is a claim about where God chooses to be found.

God does not remain an idea.

God does not stay safely spiritual.

God does not hover above human mess.

God enters human life as it actually is.

Limited.

Exposed.

Dependent.

Hungry and tired.

Vulnerable to pain.

Subject to time and loss and death.

The Word becomes flesh and moves into the neighborhood.

Not the ideal neighborhood.

Not the polished one.

Not the one with everything figured out.

The real one.

That matters, especially now, when Christmas is fading and life is asserting itself again.

Because the world Jesus enters is not suddenly improved.

It is still violent.

Still unjust.

Still anxious.

Still divided.

John does not pretend otherwise.

He is clear-eyed.

He tells us plainly that the light shines in the darkness.

Not instead of it.

Not after it. In it.

And the darkness does not overcome the light.

That is not the same thing as saying the darkness disappears.

It doesn’t.

We know that.

Some of us are living with diagnoses that did not go away because it was Christmas.

Some of us are facing decisions we wish we didn’t have to make.

Some of us are watching the world feel increasingly brittle and harsh, and we are not sure where to place our hope anymore.

John is not offering denial.

He is offering orientation.

He is not saying, “Look on the bright side.”

He is saying, “Look at the light.”

The light shines.

Even when darkness is real.

Even when outcomes are uncertain.

Even when faith feels thin.

The light shines because God has chosen to be present in the middle of things, not outside them.

Then John does something curious in this soaring, cosmic opening.

Right when the language is at its most expansive, he interrupts it with an ordinary man.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”

Not the Word.

Not the light.

Just a witness.

John the Baptist does not glow.

He does not solve.

He does not save.

He points.

“He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

That detail matters.

Because it shifts the focus from what God has done to how people respond.

The Word has come into the world.

The light is already shining.

The question now is not whether God is present.

The question is whether we will notice.

Whether we will receive.

Whether we will bear witness.

John tells us that some do not receive the light.

Some miss it entirely.

Some reject it.

Not because it is hidden, but because it threatens familiar ways of seeing and living. And yet, John says, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

Not power as control.

Not power as certainty.

Not power as immunity from suffering.

Power to belong.

Power to be named and claimed.

Power to live as people shaped by grace rather than fear.

That kind of power does not shout.

It does not dominate.

It does not draw attention to itself.

It shows up quietly.

It shows up in truth spoken without cruelty.

In compassion practiced without applause.

In attention given when distraction would be easier.

It shows up in the refusal to treat other people as objects, problems, or threats.

It shows up when we choose honesty instead of image, patience instead of speed, faithfulness instead of convenience.

When the Word becomes flesh, faith can no longer stay theoretical.

It cannot remain a set of ideas we agree with or a season we observe.

It has to take shape in bodies.

In choices.

In relationships.

In the way we move through the world after Christmas.

John tells us that grace and truth come together in Jesus.

Not one without the other. Grace that does not ignore reality.

Truth that does not crush.

Grace that says you are loved before you are fixed.

Truth that says your life matters enough to be transformed.

That is what the light looks like.

And it still shines.

Not because everything is resolved.

Not because darkness has vanished.

Not because we finally have answers to every question.

It shines because God has entered human life and refused to abandon it.

Because the Word has taken flesh and stayed.

So, the invitation of this text is not simply to admire its beauty, though it is beautiful. It is not simply to marvel at its poetry, though it deserves that.

The invitation is to live differently because of it.

To live as people who trust that meaning is deeper than chaos.

That love is stronger than fear.

That God is not far away from the ordinary days now returning.

The dishes.

The emails.

The appointments.

The long roads and short tempers and unfinished prayers.

Christmas does not end here.

It deepens.

It moves from spectacle to substance.

From announcement to presence.

From story to life.

The Word has taken flesh.

And the light still shines. Amen.