Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

For these twelves days of Christmas we proclaim the gospel as we pray to God with these words sung by the presiding minister.

In the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh you have opened the eyes of faith to a new and radiant vision of your glory, that, beholding the God made visible, we may be drawn to love the God whom we cannot see. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship: Leaders Desk Edition)

This prayer is a response to the opening words of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe translated the Greek expression here as, “in the beginning was the act.” In this way the great German author caught a most important aspect of the Biblical proclamation,

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The understanding of language as action has come to new prominence in our perception of the world. It was the British philosopher, John Austin, who shifted the focus on language away from the idea of conveying information. Then the truth of the information could be judged by the receiver. The reader or listener remains unmoved while making judgments about the information being communicated.

There is a different way for us to understand language and our own selves. John Austin proposes the proper use of language. The proposal becomes the title of his book, How to Do Things with Words (1955). Austin’s philosophical work revolutionized the understanding of language. It’s not something new to which Austin directs our attention. It is actually something old that we have forgotten. In antiquity the primary use of language was to move people. Language was a force to be exerted upon the world. Rhetorically speaking, the use of language was to move the heart. Philipp Melanchthon, world-famous rhetorician, made sure that the Lutheran tradition understood and explained scripture, preaching and sacraments with this in mind.

The author of John understands language similarly. He attributes to Jesus the metaphor of “Word.” The author does not mean that Jesus gives us correct information about God. No, he means that Jesus is the very act of God to bring about God’s will. The revelation of God’s will is not a manual which we are to read and then set to work to construct a model. No, the proclamation of John announces clearly that God is the one who is acting in Jesus to communicate—but not just information. The announcement that the Word was with God and the Word was God is a claim that God has acted in Jesus Christ who is the revealer.

In the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh you have opened the eyes of faith to a new and radiant vision of your glory, that, beholding the God made visible, we may be drawn to love the God whom we cannot see. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship: Leaders Desk Edition)

We must enter into the text of the Gospel of John, especially the opening sentences. They set the whole agenda for what is to follow. The prologue to John is not only giving us information. Yes, there is information here, but something more is happening.

The Gospel reading today invites you to take a look at the extraordinary in the ordinary.

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. (John 1:18)

The Gospel of John announces that God has, in fact, made an appearance. God does not come down like a great Wizard pulling levers and pushing buttons so that we will be saved. No, God comes down in the form of human flesh. Of course, this is foolishness to the modern mind. Why would God want to meet us here? Here there is nothing eternal. Nature cycles over and over; and within those cycles, we humans come, and we go. While we are here, there is suffering–more for some than for others. The Gospel announces that we lower our sights and look no further than the realm of flesh if we want to behold the glory of God. This is truly amazing.

It is no wonder that we do not recognize him. We want the extraordinary in the “out of the ordinary.“

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. (John 1:10-11)

When we take offence at the incarnation, we reject the possibility that the Word became flesh. We reject the possibility that the Word might come to us and give us life and light. Not only do we suffer by being stuck in the ordinary, but we lose our own calling to be witnesses to the extraordinary power of God who through the Word created the world and who in the Word comes to us.

To say that the Word came to his own is to say that the God who created us placed creator-self under the same ordinary conditions that you and I suffer. To say that the Word came to his own and his own did not accept him is to say that God placed himself under the tragic conditions of our blindness. For it is in our blindness that we inflict suffering on the world and on the Word. To say that the Word became flesh and lived among us is to say that the extraordinary dwells in the ordinary and the extraordinary has conquered our perversion of the ordinary.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3b-5)

Dear congregation, today we gather on the Second Sunday after Christmas in order to continue the celebration of the Incarnation. We gather together in humility to hear the Word, “And the Word became flesh.” We take ordinary things and God makes them extraordinary. This is what God accomplishes with the Word.

That is why at the Holy Meal we can declare,

In the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh you have opened the eyes of faith to a new and radiant vision of your glory, that, beholding the God made visible, we may be drawn to love the God whom we cannot see. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship: Leaders Edition)

Some want to spiritualize the Word without respect to the physical body of our Lord Jesus Christ. They refuse the mystery of the Incarnation by thinking that the extraordinary is available to us without respect to the ordinary. By taking in the elements of bread and wine transformed by the Word of testimony, we are transformed into the Body of Christ. The extraordinary once again finds its home in the ordinary.

The mystery of the Incarnation is that God comes to us in the ordinary. God becomes available, yes, even vulnerable to us. The miracle of the Incarnation is that we, who partake of the extraordinary in ordinary things, are made available to our neighbor. Thus, in receiving him we discover that the grace and glory, the truth and light of God are enfleshed in us and among us.

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. (John 1:12)

Amen.